---
title: Дым, в котором мы живём (The Smoke in Which We Live)
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dym-v-kotorom-my-zhivyom-1988/
description: An apartment tower rendered as an open cigarette pack, with cigarettes rising from it, stands among city blocks and factory chimneys venting white smoke.
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Дым, в котором мы живём (The Smoke in Which We Live)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/dym-v-kotorom-my-zhivyom-1988.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/dym-v-kotorom-my-zhivyom-1988.jpg)

# Дым, в котором мы живём (The Smoke in Which We Live)

An apartment tower rendered as an open cigarette pack, with cigarettes rising from it, stands among city blocks and factory chimneys venting white smoke. The title equates the smoke of tobacco with the smoke the city already breathes. Fear-appeal and transfer tell: industrial-pollution imagery is used to stigmatise smoking, with no data cited.

- **Date:** 1988
- **Period:** [Cold War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=cold-war)
- **Made by:** Izdatel'stvo 'Reklama', Kiev, Ukrainian SSR (state publishing house; design by I. V. Tomash)
- **Region:** [Eastern Europe and Eurasia](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=eastern-europe-eurasia)
- **Country:** [Soviet Union](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=soviet-union)
- **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster)
- **Issuer type:** [State](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=state)
- **Regime:** [Soviet Union](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=soviet-union)
- **Leader:** [Mikhail Gorbachev](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=mikhail-gorbachev)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Warn or inform](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=warn-inform)
- **Theme:** [Health](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=health)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [Wellcome Collection (London), work b1660216x, reference 660216i](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/k34eymcf), retrieved September 29, 2026
- **Rights:** CC BY 4.0 as stated by Wellcome Collection (1988 Soviet work; underlying rights unverified) Wellcome Collection

## Text on the object

Original (Russian) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
дым,
в котором
мы живём

[Small print, lower left:] Художник И. В. Томаш. Редактор Н. Н. Бойко. Художественный редактор А. П. Верёша. Технический редактор Л. И. Аленина. © Издательство «Реклама», 1988
[Lower centre:] Киев «Реклама» 1988
[Small print, lower right:] Подписано в печать 15.07.88 [...] Тираж 30 000 экз. [...] Цена 15 к. Киевская нотная фабрика, 252653, Киев, ГСП, Фрунзе, 51а. [rest illegible]
```

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

```
The smoke in which we live. [Small print:] Artist I. V. Tomash. Editor N. N. Boiko. Art editor A. P. Veresha. Technical editor L. I. Alenina. (c) Publishing house 'Reklama', 1988. Kiev, 'Reklama', 1988. Signed for printing 15.07.88 [...] Print run 30,000 copies [...] Price 15 kop. Kiev Music-Printing Works, 252653, Kiev, GSP, Frunze 51a.
```

Title read from the committed image; the small print was read from a higher-resolution crop of the bottom margin and is partly illegible (catalogue numbers and paper/format lines omitted as [...]).

[← Nancy Reagan holds up a 'Just Say No' sign for press photographers](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/just-say-no-sign-ranch-1986/) [President Bush holds up a bag of crack in the Oval Office →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/bush-crack-bag-address-1989/)

## Using the same techniques

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- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)