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Neuburger Mary C. . Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria . Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 2013. x + 307 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-5084-6 , $39.95 (cloth).
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During the Cold War, Bulgaria emerged as the world's largest exporter of cigarettes. The growth of its tobacco industry was spurred by its ability to supply the Soviet Union, the world's largest importer. Mary Neuburger's monograph traces the evolution of Bulgaria's industry from the country's independence from Ottoman rule in the nineteenth century until its postwar peak years. Although the Bulgarian tobacco ascendancy in Eastern Europe was linked to Cold War political alignments, the modernization of the industry resembles Western mass production processes in ways that might be unexpected.
Neuburger's book is divided into three sections: Bulgaria's independence in the 1870s until World War I; the interwar era; and the Cold War. For each period, she offers two chapters. The first focuses on cultural developments associated with changing consumption practices and the second focuses on the development of the tobacco industry, which documents the rise of Bulgartabak, its tobacco monopoly. The book can almost be read as two studies. The consumption chapters relate the emergence of modernity in Bulgaria as the country found its way out from Ottoman rule. This "modernity" is rooted in cultural practices, beginning in a location--the coffeehouse--and moving into other aspects of mass consumption. The industry chapters relate a straightforward history of...