After the revolution, the gold reserves of the Russian Empire were plundered, and this put the country on the brink of ruin. Then gold began to be mined in three ways: the workers of the OGPU knocked it out of the population, the workers of Soyuzstroy restored the destroyed gold mining, and the famous Dalstroy organized its production in Kolyma. Gold mined by the hands of convicts turned out to be the cheapest.
By 1930, Soviet Russia was on the verge of bankruptcy. There was no money for the industrialization proclaimed by Joseph Stalin. The gold reserves were almost completely plundered and wasted. Of the 1,101 tons of pure gold (or 1.8 billion gold rubles) that remained with the Russian Empire at the time of the 1917 coup, 150 tons (200 million gold rubles) remained in the Bolsheviks' bins.
Hand over your currency
A huge debt hung on the country, which by the end of 1931 reached 1.4 billion Soviet gold rubles. Since the revolution, the Bolsheviks have distributed gold with a generous hand: they paid indemnities to Germany, gifted the Baltics and Poland, paid for the activities of the Comintern (and very generously), paid the United States to leave the Far East and Chukotka alone. When the gold ran out, they had to borrow from everyone who gave loans: from Germany, which was driving an impoverished rival into debt, from the US bankers.
There was no money in the Land of the Soviets, but they were desperately needed.
Initially, Stalin's calculation was on foreign exchange earnings from the sale of grain abroad. Their own peasants were dying of hunger, but echelons with bread regularly left for the West. This did not give the desired effect - an economic crisis broke out in Europe, and the Great Depression began in the United States, food prices fell three times. I had to look for another way out. And then the USSR was engulfed in a real gold rush.
It is to her that the Soviet people owe the appearance of the GULAG and the repressions to which currency speculators and yesterday's nobles, merchants and kulaks were primarily subjected. Cases on them were conducted by the economic department of the OGPU, which conducted the inquiry by its own methods. The speculators were kept in jail until they gave out cache of currency, and the “former” ones were kept in the family gold. Already in 1930, the workers of the OGPU brought the authorities an income of ten million gold rubles, which was equal to eight tons of pure gold. In 1934, this amount was already 15.1 million gold rubles, or 12 tons of precious metal. Money from the pockets of the population poured into the bins of the state in a stream.
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In 1930, a system for buying gold from the population - Torgsin - was opened in the USSR. At first, this apparatus was called the "All-Union Association for Trade with Foreigners on the Territory of the USSR," and only foreigners could buy goods in it for foreign currency.
But soon the doors of Torgsin were thrown open for the Soviet people. Its shelves were full of goods, but they could only be bought for gold. What was left in the hands of the impoverished population after the First World War and the Civil War that followed? Little. Gold pectoral crosses, spoons presented to babies in the days of well-being, wedding rings, gold earrings for women. All this was carried into the greedy networks of Torgsin, who covered the whole country: people wanted to survive.
Over the six years of its existence, Torgsin brought Stalin a profit in the form of 222 tons of gold, which was equal to 287.3 million gold rubles. Gold did not stay in the country - they were paid for industrial equipment purchased for the giants of the Soviet industry, among which were Magnitka, DneproGES and the Stalingrad Tractor Plant.
Search and catch up
Simultaneously with the withdrawal of gold from the pockets of the Soviet people, the revival of the gold mining industry began, which collapsed after the coup and did not recover even during the NEP. In 1927, only 20 tons of gold per year were mined in the USSR from the Urals to Chukotka. For comparison: in the Transvaal - the African colony of Great Britain - 300 tons of precious metal were mined per year.
To extract this valuable resource, the All-Union Gold Mining Joint Stock Company Soyuzzoloto was created in 1927, headed by a fiery revolutionary, mechanical engineer Alexander Serebrovsky. The task that was set before him would be considered impossible abroad - to raise gold production over 300 tons per year and "overtake" the Transvaal. But the USSR did not consider the costs.
In the same year, Serebrovsky went to the United States to learn from his experience in gold mining and hire specialists; their own engineers either fled the country or were killed. Search parties were sent to all parts of the USSR, which had to find new gold-bearing regions by all means.
Serebrovsky's fate ended tragically: he was arrested and shot in February 1938. The gratitude was generous.
In 1930, the Siberian Mining Institute for Gold and Platinum appeared in the USSR, and the Irkutsk Heavy Machine Building Plant began to produce equipment for the gold mining industry. In the same year, Soyuzzlooloto was reorganized into Tsvetmet-Zoloto, and the private mining of precious metals in Siberia and the Far East was liquidated. These measures brought results - gold mining in the USSR was restored at the pre-revolutionary level.
But that was not enough.
Gulag miners
In 1931, the Dalstroy trust was organized to extract gold in the harshest conditions of the north, which was responsible for the development of newly discovered gold deposits in Kolyma and Indigirka. According to the assumptions of geologists, the valleys of these rivers contained up to 20% of the world's gold reserves.
The decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) already in 1931 obliged Dalstroy to extract two tons of gold, and by 1933 production should have increased to 25 tons. Therefore, on February 4, 1932, the first steamer, Sakhalin, arrived at the Nagaev Bay in the Magadan Region, with the Dalstroy management, specialists and security guards on board. The first prisoners were also brought here.
From 1932 to 1941, Dalstroy brought 400 tons of the purest gold to the Treasury. Stalin did not care about the price. According to some estimates, Tsvetmet-Zoloto brought in another 800 tons.
Soon, the USSR became the leader in the extraction of precious metals, yielding the palm only to South Africa. During the war, gold mining did not stop. The country paid them for the supply of food and weapons under Lend-Lease. Few knew what the price of this gold was, and these were tens of thousands of ruined lives of “enemies of the people”.
Immediately after the war, the sale of gold abroad was stopped, the country began to accumulate reserves. Not only the gold of the Far East was poured into the bins of the USSR, but also the indemnity from the countries that lost the Second World War. Until Stalin's death, gold production in the Soviet Union did not fall below 100 thousand tons per year. By March 1953, the gold reserves of the Land of the Soviets ranged from 2051 to 2804 tons.
To break is not to build
After Stalin's death, everything changed. Nikita Khrushchev, who came to power, quickly brought the country to such a state that food for the population had to be purchased abroad. You had to pay for everything - from fruits to grain - with precious metals. In addition, with Soviet gold, Khrushchev began to support the third world countries, to which in the future he hoped not only to spread the influence of the USSR, but also, if possible, to transfer them to the rails of "socialist development." Ignite, so to speak, the "world fire" of socialism.
Spending Stalin's gold was continued by Leonid Brezhnev, who spent almost a thousand tons of precious metal from the country's gold reserves on the purchase of "food and imported clothes".
The communist system has finally outlived its usefulness and "ate" the last gold reserves under Mikhail Gorbachev. By 1991, the USSR had only 240 tons of precious metal. From what they left, they came to that. The main enemy of the USSR in the Cold War, the United States, had accumulated 8 thousand tons of gold by this time. The economic war has been lost.
After the collapse of the USSR, Russia's leaders had to re-create the country's gold reserves. Until 1998, the accumulation was slow and only doubled, reaching a result of 506.88 tons of gold. But after Yeltsin left, things took off. In 2018, Russia ranked fifth in terms of gold and foreign exchange reserves.
As of January 1, 2020, the country's gold reserve is 2,271.31 tons of gold, which gives Russia a chance to take third place in the world in 2021. Our country has become rich again, and numerous "partners" are looking at our gold again with lust. And here, as they say, "if only there was no war" …