Please join the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (CSEEES) and the History Department for a special lecture with History Department alumna and Former FLAS Fellow Dr. Tricia Starks for a discussion of her research into cigarette smoking in Russia and the Soviet Union.
In her book Cigarettes and Soviets, Tricia Starks examines how the Soviets maintained the first mass smoking society in the world while simultaneously fighting it. The book is at once a study of Soviet tobacco deeply enmeshed in its social, political, and cultural context and an exploration of the global experience of the tobacco epidemic.
Starks examines the Soviet antipathy to tobacco yet capitulation to market; the development of innovative cessation techniques and clinics and the late entry into global anti-tobacco work; the seeming lack of cultural stimuli alongside massive use; and the expansion of smoking without the conventional prompts of capitalist markets. She tells the story of Philip Morris's "Mission to Moscow" campaign for the Soviet market, the triumph of the quintessential capitalist product—the cigarette—in a communist system, and the successes and failures of the world's first national antismoking campaign. The interplay of male habits and health against largely female tobacco producers and medical professionals adds a gendered dimension.
Smoking developed, continued, and grew in the Soviet Union without mass production, intensive advertising, seductive industrial design, or product ubiquity. The Soviets were early to condemn tobacco, and yet, by the end of the twentieth century Russians smoked more heavily than most other nations in the world. Cigarettes and Soviets challenges interpretations of how tobacco use rose in the past and what leads to mass use today.
Speaker Biography: Tricia Starks is Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Arkansas Humanities Center at the University of Arkansas. In her research, she investigates the intersection of culture and public health in the Russian and Soviet context. Her first book detailed the intertwining of hygienic and revolutionary concepts in daily life in the Soviet 1920s. Her second and third revealed the deeply entrenched social and cultural meanings of smoking in Russia and the Soviet Union. She currently researches the anxieties around male health and vigor during the Soviet period and into the present day.
If you have any questions about accessibility or wish to request accommodations, please contact CSEEES at cseees@osu.edu. Typically, a two weeks' notice will allow us to provide access, but we will try to accommodate requests that come in after the two-week mark.
