Using unusual sources and approaching tobacco from the perspective of users, producers, and objectors, this monograph provides an unparalleled view of the early transfer by the Russian market to smoking and presents the addictive, nicotine-soaked Russian cigarette – the papirosa -- and the sensory, medical, social, cultural, and gendered consequences of this unique style of tobacco use. Starting with the papirosa’s introduction in the nineteenth century and foundation as a cultural and imperial construct, the monograph moves through its emergence as a mass-use product of revolutionary potential, towards discussion as a moral and medical problem, on to its mass-marketing as a liberating object, and concluding as it became a point for increasing conflict for users, reformers, and purveyors. Material from newspapers, journals, industry publications, etiquette manuals, propaganda posters, popular literature, memoirs, cartoons, poetry, and advertising images is combined with wider scholarship in history, public health, anthropology, and addiction studies, for an ambitious social and cultural exploration of the interaction of institutions, ideas, practice, policy, consumption, identity, and the body. Utilizing these unique approaches and sources, the work reconstructs how early-Russian smokers experienced, understood, and presented their habit in all its biological, psychological, social, and sensory inflections.