Smoke and Mirrors: From the Soviet Union to Russia, the Pipedream Meets Reality

Smoke and Mirrors is about a world which is no more. There is already no such country on the map - the Soviet Union. On the site where the famous throughout the "Soviet empire" tobacco factory "Java", which was founded before the 1917 Revolution, stood in Moscow, there is a luxury residential complex. Tobacco companies all over the world are experiencing a crisis unprecedented in the history of the tobacco industry and are struggling to stay on the market despite the strongest anti-tobacco campaigns.

Leonid Yakovlevich Sinelnikov is the last director of the Java factory, the first and last CEO of the Russian company BAT-Java, as part of the British-American Tobacco international tobacco company. In Smoke and Mirrors he talks about himself and about the time that has gone forever, when the tobacco industry was one of the most important state sectors, and the people, in the face of hard life and unprecedented labour enthusiasm, could find consolation only in the famous "smoke breaks".