Sergei Prokofiev started smoking at the age of 21. He enjoyed solitude and good tobacco.

When Prokofiev was neither composing nor rehearsing, he would often fill the intervals with smoking. On one occasion, he wrote in his diary, “The rehearsal lasted for five hours with small breaks, and the best thing of all was to be able when it was over to change my clothes, rub myself with eau de Cologne and lie down to drink tea and smoke cigarettes. When I was not engaged in composing, reading, astronomy and walking, I rested, smoked English and Egyptian cigarettes, ate chocolate and generally gave myself up to blissful indolence, and felt wonderful.”

Prokofiev was fond of English and Egyptian cigarettes. However, he also appreciated Russian products. He once wrote, “We smoked a lot of Russian cigarettes which I rather fancied after the foreign ones, although Russian connoisseurs have no time at all for modern tobacco.”

In 1930, Prokofiev visited a cigar factory in Cuba and described the trip in his diary, “We were taken to the world’s most famous cigar factory, Partagás. Machine methodology is unknown here; all cigars are made by hand just as they were fifty years ago, with wondrous dexterity. These cigars are smoked by the Kings of England and Spain, and ‘all the monarchs that are left’. Ordinary ‘Havanas’ are nothing by comparison. I sniffed them, the aroma was divine, but I had no desire to light up. The process begins with the tobacco leaves being dampened with water, and then left for a year or two to ferment. During this time, they give off such a powerful smell of ammonia that when I entered that part of the factory where they were I could hardly stop the tears flowing. Other people, I was told, are convulsed by ungovernable fits of sneezing.”

Prokofiev tried to give up smoking. In 1927, he wrote, “I really am ashamed of smoking; perhaps it is time I tried to give up?” At the end of that year, he reported, “I did not smoke, and did not seem to crave it unbearably, although from time to time it would have been nice. But the sensation of ‘see, I’ve broken the habit’ is even better.” However, in the last years of his life, Prokofiev relapsed into smoking.