It was a great joy for a fighter to receive a parcel from home. Often the parcels came from complete strangers. Inside these parcels were mostly food or warm things. There could be an embroidered tobacco pouch for makhorka. This tobacco pouch was embroidered by the pupil of Nizhne-Chirsky specialized orphanage. Faya Kopylova made this item as a gift to Colonel V.V. Denisenko.

During the war a tobacco pouch was an attribute of a Red Army fighter. Tobacco pouch is a pouch for storing ordinary tobacco and flypaper. Cigarettes during the war were a great luxury. As a ration, tobacco was given in packs and then poured by soldiers into a tobacco pouch.

Smokers had a hard time. When there was not enough tobacco, they smoked horse dung. Self-twist cigarettes without filter were made of heavily crushed cheap tobacco, which was called “makhorka”, wrapping it in any available paper (often newspaper). Lighters were made from bullet casings.

Officers smoked cigarettes, which were kept in cigarette cases. The cigarette cases were engraved with their name.