Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria

by Mary Neuburger

This fascinating book explores the history of tobacco and tobacco culture in Bulgaria from the mid-19th century, when the country became partially and then fully independent from the Ottoman Empire, to the postcommunist present. Neuburger... argues convincingly that smoking and the production of tobacco products played an important―if not the key―part in Bulgaria's political, economic; and cultural modernization during this period.... Summing Highly recommended. ― Choice

In Balkan Smoke, Mary C. Neuburger leads readers along the Bulgarian-Ottoman caravan routes and into the coffeehouses of Istanbul and Sofia. She reveals how a remote country was drawn into global economic networks through tobacco production and consumption and in the process became modern. In writing the life of tobacco in Bulgaria from the late Ottoman period through the years of Communist rule, Neuburger gives us much more than the cultural history of a commodity; she provides a fresh perspective on the genesis of modern Bulgaria itself. The tobacco trade comes to shape most of Bulgaria’s international relations; it drew Bulgaria into its fateful alliance with Nazi Germany and in the postwar period Bulgaria was the primary supplier of smokes (the famed Bulgarian Gold) for the USSR and its satellites. By the late 1960s Bulgaria was the number one exporter of tobacco in the world, with roughly one eighth of its population involved in production.

Through the pages of this book we visit the places where tobacco is grown and meet the merchants, the workers, and the peasant growers, most of whom are Muslim by the postwar period. Along the way, we learn how smoking and anti-smoking impulses influenced perceptions of luxury and necessity, questions of novelty, imitation, value, taste, and gender-based respectability. While the scope is often global, Neuburger also explores the politics of tobacco within Bulgaria. Among the book’s surprises are the ways in which conflicts over the tobacco industry (and smoking) help to clarify the forbidding quagmire of Bulgarian politics. 

Genres: History, Bulgaria, Nonfiction, Bulgarian Literature, Academic

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 5, 2012

Reviews

[Ilia Markov]

Great book and a really interesting way to look at Bulgarian history post-liberation. I was hoping for a bit more detail on tobacco industry — the main players for example, but excellent as a starring read

[Nick]

Ah tobacco, as Mary Neuburger says, it along with coffee and sugar truly are symbols and fuel of modern 20th century society and often consumed alongside one another. Neuburger takes the reader on a journey of roughly 200 years using tobacco cultivation, processing, trade, marketing and consumption to tell Bulgaria's story from being a backwater Ottoman province, to emerging monarchy, a site of conflicting national identities, a communist client state and finally as one of the newest member of the EU.

Tobacco might seem to be a weird choice to use as a vehicle to tell this story of modern Bulgaria but perhaps few countries have been such a vital chapter in the story of tobacco. Bulgaria was one of the first European and Ottoman regions where tobacco was cultivated on scale making it the origin of the 'oriental smoke' western Europe craved, it was a vital source of nicotine energy for the central European/axis powers in the world wars and during the cold war would easily become the biggest producer and exporter of cigarettes worldwide partially due to its role in the planned USSR economy as the tobacco producer and partially due to its long history of global branding as fine tobacco producer. Balkan smoke is more then discussing tobacco factories, merchants, works and growers; it is also a book on abstinence movements; having originated in protestant missionary converts and socialist circles it would be a resilient yet reviled sub-current in the haze of Bulgaria modern history. For even tough secular saint and supposed father of Bulgaria, Vasil Levski was a vocal abstainer of tobacco and the communist party since its early pre-forming had a strong abstinence wing, it still to this day is considered unbulgarian to be a vocal anti-smoker more so then in any other country which has had a history of mass smoking such as France.

The relevance of using tobacco as the focus for analysing Bulgaria's modern history comes to the fore in ways I had not imagined it would. Mainly the Bulgarisation of well Bulgaria, the modern history of Bulgaria is for a large part a story of the loss of much of Bulgaria's diversity. When it became an autonomous province, Bulgaria had a sizable Turkish population, greek communities, a vibrant Jewish culture and a significant population of Pomaks (to islam converted Bulgarians). The story of Tobacco in Bulgaria is a much a story of Bulgarians appropriating each of these cultures relationship with tobacco as it is pushing these people out of the country. The Turks had introduced tobacco and operated smoking houses, the Greeks owned small trading firms, a few Jewish investors made Balkantabac a world renowned tobacco firm that later became the communist state enterprise Bulkantabac while Pomak farmers had been the most proficient in growing the plant. The Turks mostly left in 1900, the Greeks were pushed out in the Balkan wars and first world war, the Jews were dispossed (yet not deported) and left after the second world war while the Pomaks got pushed out during the late communist period. All had been deemed not Bulgarian enough and their grasp on Tobacco, Bulgaria's trading gold a form of national interest that should have been in Bulgarians hand. Leaving Bulgaria culturally significantly poorer than it was 200 years ago.

It would be too much to go into detail on everything else in the book but I will briefly mention what there is to read; smoking as being both a symbol for eastern laziness and western decadence, public smoking as a sign of social emancipation for women, tobacco processing and cigarette production as a vehicle for industrialization and emergence of politicized cooperatives, growing economic importance of tobacco inspired tobacco workers to politically capitalize on their economic importance, smoking alternately a hindrance for meaningful productive life and a symbol of the socialist better life to come.

If I have to give some criticism, is that in some chapters or sub chapters the link with tobacco felt a bit to stretched; at these points did the story of tobacco and the story of modern Bulgaria not quite run alongside each other and one has to consider that even if a huge part of Bulgarian society smoked, a lot of them did not; so in what way has this book over-emphasized (un)intentionally the social and cultural dominance of smoking? Hard to say but all in all these are minor criticisms that should inspire further study and discussion.

[Lyuba]

Every Bulgarian should read this book (and others interested in the Balkans)! Growing up in a major tobacco-producing region of Bulgaria, I remember stringing tobacco leaves for drying in my grandmother's backyard. But I had no idea about the broader social, economic and political influence tobacco had.
This book is so well-researched and full of fascinating facts especially about:
1) the influence of tobacco on social life in the 19th and early 20th century- the coffeehouse "kafene" culture, smoking as a symbol of civilization and the West. And later after the wars - as the only solace for the unemployed Bulgarian "lost generation". "The well-worn trope of the poor starving artist who could scarcely afford his coffee or cigarettes is carved deep into the romance of interwar Bulgarian artistic life";

2) the savagery of the Balkan Wars that was never taught in schools in Bulgaria - 1/7th of the population was mobilized and 21% killed in the First Balkan War. The forced conversion of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims to Christianity and the barbarian killing of Turkish-speaking Muslims. Christians turning against Christians in the Second Balkan War аs an "economic ratheр than ethnic pogrom". Bulgaria becoming the main supplier of tobacco to Europe after the wars and the food shortages from the shift from grains to tobacco.

3) the political developments between the world wars- the history of the rise of the agrarian and communist parties and establishment of the cooperatives as a way to protect and elevate peasants was interesting. But by far the most valuable information for me were the details about IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Committee)- a party that is still very active in my native southwest region of Bulgaria. IMRO was practically a paramilitary organization that used tobacco revenue to fund its nine thousand men and local administration. The author suggests that IMRO-backing tobacco merchants were behind the fall of the agrarian regime and the assassination of the prime minister Stamboliiski - "After prolonged torture, IMRO thugs stabbed him sixty times, severed his head (never to be recovered) and his right hand that had signed the Treaty of Nis" (a commitment to control cross-border terrorism in the Balkans region).

[Vel]

must-read

[Yokusun Basi]

Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria by Mary C. Neuburger (2012)

[Monica Fuchs]

Best book I've read about something seemingly insignificant, yet fundamental in history, geography, social science, and economy - you name it.

[SweetCorn03]

this book cover had so much potential and yet it’s so ugly. the picture is so cool but it’s just cut off. they should have made the picture bigger so it would fill the cover. that would have made so much more sense. what were they thinking.

a more thorough search for available sources would have been nice. still a fun and well written book. it does what was supposed to be done and definitely makes everyone that reads it want a cigarette