Smoking is definitely harmful. This bad habit interferes with both her adherent and the people around him. However, many people suffer an uncontrollable craving for tobacco smoke, which is quite difficult to get rid of. Some make attempts to quit smoking, and in the future, on the basis of their experience, they claim, like Mark Twain, that this is not difficult at all, and they themselves did this many times.
The tobacco industry is an integral part of the food industry and the agro-industrial complex of many countries. Manufacturers usually value brands that have been known to consumers for decades. One of them, “Herzegovina Flor”, was born in tsarist Russia, survived revolutions, two world wars, the era of Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, three more general secretaries, the collapse of the USSR and exists to this day. Her story is closely connected with the annals of the whole country.
Gabaya Factory
This story could illustrate the theory of the tremendous opportunities that capitalist freedom of enterprise provides. After the wars with Turkey, Russia was enriched by a new ethnic group, namely the Karaite people, whose representatives were traditionally engaged in the sale of tobacco. Crimean Samuel Gabai, with the financial support of the Kharkov merchant Abraham Kapon, created an enterprise in Moscow in the second half of the 19th century. This energetic man did not stop at ordinary mediation, and invested profit in the development of his brainchild. Cigarettes at that time in Russia were only coming into fashion, and in 1883 Gabai began their production. Successful competition required some kind of commercial "trick", and the owner of the "Tobacco Factory Partnership S. Gabay" found it. He began to import fragrant raw materials from the exotic Indonesian island of Java. The products really had a delicate aroma, and it went. By the beginning of the new century, Samuil Gabay was the owner of two production buildings, he changed the brand, naming it after his most popular cigarettes “Java”. It seemed that commercial success was achieved, you can rest on our laurels.
But the capitalist system requires constant development, and at the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century, a new product appeared in the assortment of Java - cigarettes Herzegovina Flor.
Sweet tobacco
As in the case of Java, Samuel Gabay made the right marketing move. He named the new brand of cigarettes in honor of the locality of origin of tobacco with which he stuffed his products. But in this case, the brand corresponded not only to the geographical location of the raw plantations. In the Balkans, namely in Herzegovina, a special fragrant variety grew with a rich bouquet (if one can speak of such a thing as applied to suffocating smoke). In fact, the trademark corresponded to the botanical name of the plant Herzegovina Flor (Herzegovina Flor), and today the seeds of this tobacco are presented on the core market. Everyone can buy them and try to grow such a self-garden in their summer cottage. True, one should take into account the specifics of climate and soil, otherwise everything would be very simple. In Russia, suitable conditions exist only in the Krasnodar Territory, where Virginia varieties also readily grow.
New times
In 1917, events occurred after which marketing research lost all meaning for a long time. However, in the end, stern military communism was replaced by a certain relaxation in the form of a new economic policy. In the twenties there was even a need for advertising, and the great proletarian poet, and part-time author of voiced slogans, Vladimir Mayakovsky even dedicated a pair of his ingenious words to Herzegovina Flor cigarettes, rhyming with the name TM the motto “will give odds”. In the sense that everything else is far from them. It is possible that he himself smoked this brand.
About cigarettes in general
During the years of hard times, which the history of our country of the 20th century is so rich in, tobacco products for the most part became a shortage. A relative exception was the shag, which was part of the rations of soldiers. Cigarettes Belomorkanal were considered a class lower than Troika or Herzegovina Flor, tobacco was simpler, and the pack was much more modest, but even this simple production of the Soviet food industry was not accessible to everyone. The quality of cigarettes produced according to state standards at many factories of the USSR also differed. For example, the Leningrad “Belomor” was considered the best in the country, in Odessa the famous “Salve” was made with a cotton filter in the mouthpiece (also an old-mode brand). In the first post-war years, some types of tobacco products were considered elite goods, they were even sold in Torgsins.
After the Victory from Germany, reparation equipment was removed for the production of oval cigarettes without filter, some of which are produced today (Polet, Nord, Sever, Priboy, Prima, Vatra, Priluki in Ukraine " and etc.). They are supposed to smoke through the mouthpiece, but it is possible that way, only often you have to spit tobacco crumbs. But most senior party workers preferred, in imitation of the leader, the cigarettes Herzegovina Flor. Cigarettes massively captured the Soviet tobacco market later when they were equipped with a filter.
What did Stalin smoke
With the light hand of Soviet filmmakers, a picture was rooted in the mass consciousness: JV Stalin opens a pack of Herzegovina Flor cigarettes, takes out one, wrinkles a sleeve, and stuffs his pipe with loose tobacco. Perhaps he did this a couple of times, but most likely, infrequently. The fact is that the pipe needs special, coarse-cut tobacco, otherwise it will either burn out very quickly, or will soon go out. The Soviet leader had the opportunity to smoke tobacco of any sort (for example, "Prince Albert" or "Edgeworth"), and he did not need to invent anything. And he smoked cigarettes, and so, in the most usual way, the chronicle brought these historical moments to contemporaries. It should be noted that there were almost no special workshops producing products for the Kremlin, another thing is that the purchases were made by a special department of government protection. But the fact that “Herzegovina Flor” were the favorite cigarettes of JV Stalin is really true.
