The Tobacco Monopoly: The World And Domestic Experience

The article analyses the historical and economic development of the tobacco market from its cultivation in America to the formation and operation of monopolies in European countries. The features of the tobacco market in Ukraine, from the time of origin until now, are studied. Researches testify to the fact that tobacco cultivation began in America, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tobacco production became common all throughout Europe. There were three main historical and economic ways that tobacco was brought to Ukraine: from China, Turkey and European countries. Major tobacco plantations were located in Poltava and Kherson regions, eastern Galicia and Podilia, etc. First tobacco factories as well as trading departments came into operation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As far as tobacco industry developed by leaps and bounds and brought substantial profit, tobacco production and sales volume of tobacco products were controlled on the state level by means of excise taxes and monopolies. In the first third of the twentieth century, there was a number of monopolies (among them Austrian, Polish, Hungarian, Russian and some other) that were quite successful. After the Second World War tobacco industry in Ukraine could develop on the basis of tobacco factories in Lviv, Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Zhmerynka, etc. and due to the import of tobacco products. In the twenty-first century, tobacco market in Ukraine has to undergo some major changes on both legislative and practical levels. The results of this study are important for understanding the history of tobacco industry on national and international levels.