That it was Peter the Great who introduced tobacco into Russia on a large scale is well known, but the details of this early commerce in what the Russians called “nicotine” are less familiar — for instance, that the tobacco imported was American, that the initiative in opening the trade came largely from America, and that the fulfillment of the contracts became involved in complications that at times approached the burlesque.
There was of course a considerable amount of tobacco consumed in Russia long before the time of Peter. It is true that the use of the “abomination to God” was forbidden by the Orthodox Church on the Biblical grounds that it is not that which entereth into a man that defileth him, but that which proceedeth from him. However, among the foreigners, especially the Germans and the Dutch, and to some extent even among court officials, tobacco was openly smoked in the early sixteen hundreds to such a degree that under Michael Romanov it became necessary to forbid both Russians and foreigners to possess or to “drink” tobacco, or to buy or sell it under pain of death and confiscation of property, a decree to this effect being issued in 1634. Michael's heir, Alexei, was a staunch conservative who frowned upon foreign ways, repeated Michael's anti-tobacco legislation in his Ulozhenie or law code, and even after his quarrel with the Patriarch Nikon continued to uphold the conduct prescribed by the Church.