“Some researchers compare the black market of Stalin's times with a cancerous tumor on the body of socialism, whose pernicious metastases revived the illegal infection again and again, when it would seem that it was done away with. Others - with plaster, making the walls of the young state, speckled with the rough picket fence of the party lines, befitting. Solution
"Robingodes" at exorbitant prices
Despite the fact that in the pre-war years the old Leninist guard had already retired, the renewed nomenklatura, led by the bold idea and firm hand of Joseph Stalin, still retained a positive attitude. Then the Party sincerely believed: the building of communism in the coming decades is possible! On such an ideological foundation, the command-administrative economy was built - the mother of the famous shock "five-year plans" and Stakhanov's exploits. But in practice, the scheme "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" revealed significant shortcomings. If with the first point everything was according to the first category, they went, so to speak, with overfulfillment, then somehow it did not grow together with the retribution according to needs. What was initially perceived as "temporary difficulties" became an insurmountable barrier.
In the 1930s-1940s, the illegal "shadow" economy became an integral part of the country's economic life. The planned system was simply unable to meet all the needs of Soviet citizens, which is why those, gritting their teeth and heart, were forced to extract a deficit from speculators at inflated prices. It was then that the concept of "deficit" firmly entered the consciousness of the population, becoming a permanent companion of the distribution system. Consumer goods were categorically in short supply, and their quality left much to be desired. Complaints about the meager assortment in such a situation sounded like a mockery. The situation was further aggravated by the almost complete absence of legitimate private entrepreneurship. People had no choice but to seek salvation in unofficial sources. They swore good obscenities, bite their elbows,but they went to "flea markets" and "flea markets" to speculators, where they collected what was not given by the state. Overpriced, of course. According to historians, in the pre-war years, even in prosperous Leningrad and Moscow, about 60% of the fish consumed, 70% of cheese, 80% of meat and half of the shoes, clothing and fabrics were bought from farmers. Already in the mid-30s, illegal trade had grown so much that it could easily compete with the state and cooperative. It could and did compete: the black markets were pulling huge amounts of money, which the state, to be honest, desperately needed. Probably, in the eyes of the servants of law and order, the shadow traders all as one seemed to be a kind of self-proclaimed "robinguds" - the doers of justice who emerged from class-hostile layers (former kulaks or Nepmen). Just not disinterested, as it should be,and those who expose for the coveted deficit are quite a biting price tag. In reality, everything was different. Of course, it was not without hardened criminal dealers - everything rested on them, but there were such a minority. The bulk of the speculators were ordinary workers, employees, housewives, the disabled and the unemployed. That is, those for whom the shortage of essential goods hit the hardest.
Nesuns, predators and artisans
Where did the goods come from? It's simple: some made their own products (or bought them out of illegal private producers), while others, without embellishment, stole the deficit from the state. Unsightly "thugs" - those who gradually took out products from factories - were the lesser of evils. They usually worked only for themselves and were not involved in criminal conspiracy. Much more concern was caused by the fact that the illegal economy was closely rubbing its sides with corruption networks. Both of them had “their own” reliable person in a managerial position, who either artificially created surpluses that were resold to speculators after writing off, or through their own channels bought everything they needed with private money, while according to the documents, the purchases went to the needs of the enterprise. And this is a real crime. They were called "predators". They made full-fledged shadow distributorssupplying illegal private traders.
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Another camp of the black market tycoons was considered artisans. The only form of private entrepreneurship permitted in the USSR was only small craft, but even this was strictly controlled by a mass of prohibitions. For example, tailors could sew custom-made clothes, but simply did not have the right to sew and sell. But who would it stop? Under the cover of a legitimate patent, artisans tirelessly fueled the black market with consumer goods. They reacted with lightning speed: as soon as some product disappeared from the shelves, it immediately appeared at the merchants. According to the police, the monthly income of private underground workshops was measured at 90-150 thousand rubles.
It took very little time for artisans and predators to realize all the delights of mutual cooperation. In the early 1940s, organized groups of underground artisans, mimicking formally authorized cooperatives and artels, together with plunders of state property, organized a powerful underground supply network. All attempts by the authorities to suppress their activities with administrative bans and arrests have led nowhere. The mythical black market hydra grew two instead of one severed head, while simultaneously adapting to the rapidly changing legal environment. No matter how much you cut off the shoots …
… the root remains in the ground
On March 16, 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov issued an order to create a Department to combat theft of socialist property and speculation. The famous OBKHSS, which any sane Soviet citizen feared like fire. Massive repression ensued on any suspicion. According to the Central Statistical Committee of the USSR, the employees of the Department have identified cases of theft of almost 50 billion rubles. But, apparently, those who believed in their impunity and lost the remnants of fear, the tycoons of the shadow market did not belong to the "sane", because the tough initiative of the NKVD did not have any special effect on them. Moreover, often the most valuable informants of the OBKhSS were themselves deeply tainted in illegal business and corruption schemes. Hiding in plain sight, pigs in sheep's clothing.
The leapfrog of mutual attacks by the authorities and the underground has led to a steady increase in responsibility for any kind of speculation and encroachment on public good. The punishments became more severe with each passing year.
For the first time, the concept of "theft of socialist property" was introduced into domestic criminal law on August 7, 1932 by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. For encroachment on state property, 10 years' imprisonment or capital punishment was imposed. Almost simultaneously, the responsibility for speculation was tightened up to 5-10 years. That is, according to the norm of responsibility, trading from under the floor with felt bots, sausage or needles for gramophone was actually equated with an encroachment on the fundamental foundations of the state and the people. Due to the extreme discontent of many justice officials, the interpretation was revised, and from 1935 only group speculations on an especially large scale (over 50 thousand rubles) began to fall under the article on theft of socialist property.
But, alas, this did not add humanity to the legal system. On July 4, 1947, the Decree "On Criminal Responsibility for theft of State Property", developed by Stalin personally, came into force, which implied a punishment of 6 to 25 years in prison. Many investigators classified as theft any financial violations that are inevitable (!) In a planned economy. The judges, to whom they intelligibly conveyed the possible consequences of the manifestation of "criminal liberalism" in relation to the economic enemies of the state, began to impute this article to the right and to the left, without even thinking about the use of punishments not related to imprisonment (previously there was such an opportunity).
So sentences of 8-9 years in prison for "malicious" theft from a factory of a defective dessert plate, light bulb or bottle of mineral water have become commonplace. The people, to put it mildly, were upset. But speculators are not. "Combinations can be built, but more conspiratorially than before, trying to have as few accomplices and accomplices as possible," - sarcastically sounds from the pages of the reports of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of those years through the lips of hardened businessmen.
So, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet Union did not just function a complex illegal trade system. It has become so firmly rooted in the everyday life of ordinary citizens, so strongly intertwined with official structures that it has become almost an alternative source of survival. Yes, the Stalinist government waged an unceasing uncompromising struggle against the shadow economy, but the repressions did not give any serious effect - the very existence of the command-administrative system provoked the resurrection of illegal trade over and over again.
Magazine: War and Fatherland # 3. Author: Ignat Volkhov