DOI 10.51255/2311–603X_2025_1_213

E. D. Tverdyukova. “Becoming not only tobacco workers, but also ammunition manufacturers”: the letter from the director of the Leningrad Tobacco Factory named after Uritskiy V. N. Rumyantsev to the V. P. Zotov (7.7.1942) // Petersburg historical journal, no. 1, 2025, pp. 213–226

Abstract:

The published document is a primary source on the history of the 1st Leningrad Tobacco Factory
named after Uritsky. It was the largest enterprise in the USSR to operate during the siege of Leningrad, supplying the city’s population and its defenders with cigarettes and tobacco. In the challenging conditions of war and blockade, smoking frequently served as means of coping with psycho-emotional distress, alleviating hunger, and acquiring a certain ritualistic significance. The factory’s activities in the initial year of the Great Patriotic War are discussed by the factory director, V. N. Rumyantsev, in a letter to V. P. Zotov, A. I. Mikoyan’s commissioner on food issues. The factory’s staff, in their efforts to substitute scarce raw materials, not only produced tobacco products but also successfully mastered the production of ammunition and medicines. The author of the letter goes on to describe his efforts to maintain the factory’s operational capacity during the first blockade winter, and characterizes the domestic characteristics of the workers.

Key words: Great Patriotic War, Leningrad, blockade, food industry, Tobacco Factory named after
Uritsky, tobacco, ammunition.


Author:

Tverdyukova, Elena Dmitrievna — Dr. in History, Professor, Institute of History, St. Petersburg
State University (St. Petersburg, Russia).
E-mail: e.tverdyukova@spbu.ru
ORCID: 0000-0003-4415-2279

References:

BONDAROVICH M. YA. Tabachnaia pyl’ kak insektitsid [Tobacco Dust as an Insecticide. In Russ.].
Kharkiv, 1929.

PAVLOV D. V. Stoikost’ [Persistence. In Russ.]. Мoscow, 1983.

TVERDYUKOVA E. D. Rabota lechebno-pitatel’nykh statsionarov v Leningrade (ianvar’ — aprel’ 1942) [Work of Medical and Nutritional Hospitals in Leningrad (January — April 1941). In Russ.]. In Genesis. 2020. No. 11, pp. 116–126.

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