In Russia, the first reliable information about tobacco consumption dates back to the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Tobacco was imported by English and Dutch merchants. Subsequently, the custom of smoking tobacco came to Russian soil from Turkey and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Orthodox Church and the tsar opposed this harmful habit, however, despite strict prohibitions and punishments, tobacco kept on gaining new consumers. According to foreigners, tobacco smoking was already quite common in Moscow at the beginning of the 17th century.

Smokers were most severely persecuted under Alexei Mikhailovich. According to the decree issued in 1644, violators of the ban were punished by getting beaten with batog sticks, their nostrils were pulled out and they were sent to exile. This explains the absence of smoking accessories among archeological findings of the second half of the 17th century.

The next stage in the history of tobacco smoking in Russia is linked with the name of Peter the Great. In 1697, he sold a tobacco trade concession to the British. The scope of the new trend is indicated by the fact that tobacco manufacturers have appeared in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities. The well-known “Factory for the Production of Valuables and Tobacco Pipes” in Moscow belonged to Afanasy Grebenshchikov. In this factory, tobacco pipes were made according to European standards, and production was supervised by an expert hired from Holland.

Later Dutch pipes are quite often found on occupation earth of the first third of the 17th century in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They differ from the early Dutch pipes primarily in size — the volume of the bowl was now three times larger. This was achieved by increasing the diameter of the bowl to 4–5 centimeters and reducing the thickness of the walls to 1–2 millimeters. At the base, the bowl of the Dutch pipe had a protrusion, or “leg”, on which the brand was placed.

In Tula, a similar pipe was found during excavations on the site of 80 and 82 Sovetskaya Street. So far, this is the only pipe of this kind found in Tula. The pipe was found at the same occupational layer as the coins from the 1730s–1740s. Only a fragment of the bowl has been preserved, the stem is completely missing. On the “leg” there is a stamp with the Latin letters AB and an image of a crown. In the middle of the 18th century, sniffing and chewing tobacco became fashionable, and elegant snuffboxes eclipsed tobacco pipes for a long time.