'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 cigarettes
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.
External links
★
Papierosy „Biełamory”