Today we will talk about such a strategically significant and important product as mahorka
tobacco.
At the end of the video, I will tell you how the Russian soldiers responded about the mahorka,
and also show how they rolled cigarettes and which of the soldiers tried not to smoke at
all.
Mahorka and ordinary tobacco are two different types of plants of the same genus and family.
From ordinary tobacco, mahorka differs in a thicker and heavier smoke, a much richer
taste due to the increased concentration of resins and nicotine in the plant.
Two different tobacco plants also have different tastes in smoke.
In mahorka, it is much sharper and denser.
It was not so easy to supply the front with tobacco without interruption.
Very often, in the fields where tobacco grew, in addition to women and teenagers, very young
children worked.
A lot of Mahorka was required for the soldiers, so all collective farmers were given plots
of land for growing tobacco plants.
The hardest time was when tobacco was blooming.
Every day, women and children, tying canvas bags to themselves, took a row and walked
from one end of the field to the other, picking flowers and putting them in bags under the
scorching sun.
By the middle of the day, from the unusual smell and thick tobacco dust clogging the
nose and throat, the head began to spin, there was a pain in the eyes, nausea.
From the outside, it was a funny sight when small figures moved around the field and constantly
sneezed.
After work, everyone was in a kind of half-drunk state.
As former employees of tobacco factories recalled, teenagers and women worked in the workshops
at that time, they had to work for 12, and sometimes for 18 hours.
They slept right there, in the workshop, on a heater or on a pile of Mahorka - it gave
off heat, somehow warming people in an unheated workshop.
The finished products were loaded onto carts, sent to the station and then to the front.
Soviet fighters smoked mainly Mahorka from all sorts of Central Asian varieties of cheap
tobacco.
Mahorka was given out in packs as a ration, and then poured by soldiers into a pouch or
cigarette case.
The officers were given cigarettes.
During the Great Patriotic War, such a pouch was a bag made of fabric with ties, in which
tobacco was stored.
The fighters received them together with parcels from relatives and friends.
Initials were written on the pouch, patterns and words were embroidered.
Кстати на канале есть видео где рассказывается как
разозлились советские солдаты когда кисеты, письма
и другие подарки попали в лапы немцев под Тихвином.
By the way, there is a video on my channel where it is told how angry Soviet soldiers
were when pouches, letters and other gifts fell into the clutches of the Germans near
Tikhvin and what they did on Christmas Eve with Germans.
However, there were also such craftsmen who made cigarette cases not for cigarettes, but
for tobacco.
Such metal boxes were made a lot, usually using aluminum from downed aircraft.
Officers most often had factory-made cigarette cases at the front.
The cigarette cases were engraved with their name, drawings and inscriptions were also
often added.
If a fighter had neither a cigarette case nor a tobacco pouch, then the makhorka was
carried right in his pocket.
Tobacco has always been at the front of all wars.
It was believed that it reduces hunger and a soldier with it can travel long distances.
Tobacco became an important attribute of a soldier, and sometimes the last thing he could
enjoy.
Tobacco was truly a strategic product that the Red Army soldiers were waiting for.
Years after the war , an ordinary supplier Elena Inevskaya recalled:
- We will get tobacco, cigarettes, flints at the base - everything that a fighter cannot
do without on the front line, and we will go on the road, where by cars, where by carts,
and more often with one or two soldiers, we pull on our hump.
You can't ride horses to the trench, the Germans will hear a creak.
All on yourself.
And in those very trenches, we were not just impatiently awaited, we could be said to be
prayed for, since tobacco (like alcohol) allowed us to somehow relieve the terrible nervous
tension constantly experienced by everyone who had to stay at the forefront for a long
time.
In general, by who smokes what, it was possible to judge a lot - about military rank, belonging
to one or another kind of troops, personal connections.
By the smell of tobacco smoke, it even became clear how things were on the fronts.
If the soldiers' trenches smelled of Morshanskaya or Biysk shag, and the smoke of "Kazbek" and
"Belomor" was drawn from the officers' dugouts - this was a sign of well-being.
And if instead the smoke of the "filichev" rose, made from industrial waste, scraps and
inflorescences of tobacco or some other ersatz, then things were really bad.
The makhorka looked like very much crushed tobacco.
"Hand-rolled cigarettes" were made from this tobacco dust: a piece of paper (usually a
newspaper) was taken, a tube was twisted and stuffed with tobacco.
They were called hand-rolled cigarettes or "goat legs".
With smoking paper, fighters and junior commanders often had a bad time.
As newspaper strips for self-rolled cigarettes, according to experts, the paper of the newspaper
"Krasnaya Zvezda" was most suitable.
It was thinner and seemed to smoke better than Pravda or Izvestia.
The paper of German leaflets dropped from airplanes was also used.
However, such leaflets in the pocket of a Red Army soldier could lead to a penal battalion.
With matches, fighters and junior commanders often had a bad time.
And they were not practical in front-line conditions.
As lighters, in addition to captured German ones, a simple device was most often used.
Here 's how it looked in the description of one of the veterans:
Front-line lighters consist of four parts: a tinder wick made of tightly twisted thick
threads, a metal tube into which tinder is drawn, carefully protected from dampness,
flint or other stone capable of giving sparks when struck, and, finally, a fragment of a
file with a large notch or other suitable piece of iron.
Matches and lighters are nothing compared to this front-line invention of resourceful
soldiers.
Matches are quickly consumed and glow brightly at night, and besides, they easily get wet.
Gasoline lighters require refueling.
It is worth noting that the German army was supplied with cigarettes: officers received
better cigarettes, and soldiers — of poor quality.
Our fighters didn't like German cigarettes — they were too light.
The Germans, on the contrary, felt sick after trying our makhorka.
The Red Army soldiers even gave the prisoners a cigarette for the sake of interest, and
then marveled at how they started coughing and sneezing.
From the stories of the front-line soldiers, one can judge with what love and trepidation
they treated makhorka.
Biysk tobacco from Altai was especially respected in the trenches, and for Siberians it also
acted as a kind of greeting from their native lands, and therefore was doubly valued.
- I didn't smoke before the war, - recalled a resident of Pavlovsk, a former artilleryman
Fyodor Streltsov, - but at the front this is what happened: they brought Biysk makhorka.
All the guys said: "Oh, Biysk shag!"
And I lit it.
That shag was like a native!
At war a lot of damn things, someone will be killed or injured: oh, I think I'll smoke.
It was somehow comforting.
"I learned to smoke in the army," artillery officer Dmitry Nebolsin recalled.
- I smoked godlessly: a lot and often.
They say smoking is harmful.
Perhaps.
I agree with that.
But in that front-line time, a smoke break was of particular importance.
I smoked a cigarette - my soul felt better, as if an elixir was breathed into every cell
of your body, without which it is unthinkable to relieve tension, fatigue and calm down.
After lunch, you need to smoke, otherwise lunch will seem incomplete.
And a halt without a smoke break is not a halt.
I really wanted to smoke.
When there were no cigarettes or shag, they searched their pockets for tobacco dust, picked
up cigarette butts.
And it happened that they smoked dry leaves of plants, broke down in a cough and still
smoked."
Soviet soldiers highly appreciated the hard working woman and teenagers on tobacco factories.
- Allow me to thank all your engineering and technical staff, workers and female workers
on behalf of our guards unit for the high-quality products of your factory - shag.
It's no secret to you that shag in front-line life is an inseparable friend with whom you
can talk and calm down," Captain Shestopalov, foreman Khmylev and junior sergeant Kopylov
wrote to the Biysk Tobacco Factory.
Tobacco factory workers received hundreds of similar letters during the war.
Their smoky products helped to fight.
The taste of shag is still remembered by many veterans of the Great Patriotic War.
The most non-smokers of the soldiers and officers of the Red Army were, perhaps, scouts, and
for the life reasons.
The cough of a smoker, heard at the enemy trenches, very often threatened imminent death.
Dear friends, that's all for today.
It was Tim and the Eastern Front channel.
And what about you?
Do you have such a bad habit?
And do you ever try makhorka?
I wish you peace and health.
See you.