Belomorkanal (cigarette)

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Belomorkanal (Cyrillic Беломорканал) is a Soviet brand of cigarettes that was introduced to commemorate the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, abbreviated as "Belomorkanal" in Russian.

Belomorkanal is a cigarette of specific design called papirosa (папироса) in Russian, to distinguish from usual cigarettes called sigareta (сигарета). Generally, the "papirosa" are without a filter. Belomorkanal is an example of one of the stages in the evolution of cigarettes: it is composed of a hollow cardboard tube extended by a thin cigarette paper tube with tobacco. The cardboard tube plays the role of a disposable cigarette holder. This method was abandoned by Western brands shortly after World War II. The Belomorkanal are still produced in various post-Soviet republics, most notably in Russia, Kamenets-Podolskiy, Ukraine and in Hrodna, Belarus.

The brand became popular in most of the Soviet Bloc countries due to their low price. They are famed as one of the strongest (if not the strongest) cigarettes available in Eastern Europe. They were also pictured in many works of art and literature. In a 1985 song by Jan Krzysztof Kelus the name of the cigarettes is compared to Auschwitz Filters due to the fact that over 200,000 Gulag prisoners had died during the construction of the Canal.

Belomorkanal cigarettes are also very popular as pre-rolled papers for marijuana joints, a fashion similar to the North American practice of creating blunts. As rolling paper is hard to find in much of the former Soviet Union, Belomorkanal cigarettes, along with other papiros style cigarettes (see for example, Druzhba cigarettes) are bought poshtuchno (individually) for pennies (in Kazakhstan, for example they cost around 2 US cents a piece), are rolled between the index finger and thumb to remove the tobacco, and refilled with marijuana.