65 years ago in our country they exchanged cash and canceled commodity cards. In the feature film "Money Changers" directed by Georgy Shengelia, the action takes place on the eve of the "Khrushchev" financial reform of 1961. Since then, with the denomination of cash by 10 times, their previous value was preserved for small coins, the heroes of the film decided to derive a decent benefit from the reform for themselves by exchanging paper banknotes for copper coins.
Like snow on your head
But the "Stalinist" monetary reform of 1947, unlike the "Khrushchev" one, was prepared in deep secrecy. As for the dealers who then tried to keep their underground capital intact, many of them ended up receiving considerable prison sentences.
New paper money was introduced into circulation in 1947 simultaneously with the abolition of the wartime rationing system, according to which the population received almost all food and industrial goods. Today's economists assess this reform as openly confiscatory, which was not surprising at the time. During the years of wartime in conditions of an acute commodity deficit in the country, the volume of the cash money supply has quadrupled. In June 1941, there were about 20 billion rubles in circulation in the Soviet Union, and in January 1946, almost 80 billion rubles.
In this situation, if the card system was abolished without any financial transformations, the country would have faced inevitable hyperinflation, and the Stalinist leadership understood this well. In 1946, the reform failed, primarily due to drought and poor harvests, which affected the most fertile regions. And only on December 14, 1947, a joint decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the implementation of monetary reform and the abolition of cards for food and industrial goods" was published.
Its main purpose was the withdrawal of excess cash from circulation, a significant part of which was acquired either semi-legal or completely criminal. In addition, during the war, Germany, in order to undermine our economy, repeatedly threw large lots of counterfeit Soviet banknotes of very high quality into the territory of the USSR, which sometimes even experts could not distinguish from genuine ones.
The exchange of cash was carried out within a week, and in remote areas of the Far North - in 14 days. In relation to the true workers, the reform was rather mild. At that time, the average salaries of factory workers ranged from 700 to 1000 rubles per month, and employees - from 400 to 600 rubles. Moreover, after the reform, the level of salaries remained the same. The non-cash amounts of up to 3 thousand rubles in Sberbank accounts also remained unchanged. But at the same time, all deposits in the amount of 3 to 10 thousand rubles were reduced by one third. The state withdrew two thirds of the deposits exceeding the agreed limit.
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The end of underground millionaires
In the course of the reform, only those citizens of the USSR who kept their money, as they say, "in stockings" were burned out. As it turned out later, most of the owners of such funds were among the inhabitants of the republics of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus, which were almost not affected by the war. During the subsequent exchange of bills, they received only one new ruble in exchange for ten old ones.
As for the rest of the citizens, there were not so many among them who were really affected by the financial transformations. In the difficult post-war period, about 95% of the country's population lived "from paycheck to paycheck." There were no large sums of money in the hands of a simple worker, they spent their salaries mainly on food and small purchases. And in order to buy, say, a coat or a radio, people saved up money in a savings bank. But for the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens, these contributions then did not exceed the same 3 thousand rubles, so that ordinary hard workers and office workers suffered practically no damage from the 1947 reform.
Together with the abolition of the rationing system in December 1947, the prices of basic foodstuffs and industrial products also underwent major changes. Before that, in addition to ordinary stores, there were also commercial ones in the country, where everything was much more expensive - sometimes ten times. After the 1947 reform, state prices for bread, flour, cereals, pasta and beer were reduced by 10-15%, while the cost of meat, fish, fats, sugar, salt, vegetables, matches, tobacco and alcoholic products remained the same. But the prices of milk, eggs, tea, fruits, as well as many manufactured goods were set at an average level, between ration and commercial. Already on December 16, all of the above appeared in stores in sufficient quantities, but these goods could only be bought for new money. Thus, the authorities managed to immediately knock the ground out from under the feet of all kinds of businessmen and speculators.
A resident of post-war Moscow, Lydia Krylova, said in this regard: “I was still a child at that time, but I remember well how thick bundles of old money were thrown into the trash heap that New Year. In total, there was lying there, maybe a hundred or two hundred thousand rubles, and the wind carried them all over the street. My grandmother later said that these were the capital of the speculators Froska and Klava from the neighboring yard, who during the war traded at exorbitant prices in bread, sugar, butter and other deficits. They never contributed this money to the book, and after the reform they were afraid to show up with such amounts for exchange, so as not to ring in the police."
The boss is always right
If the Soviet underground millionaires in the December days of 1947, the authorities left no chances to preserve their secret savings, then employees of financial institutions, and primarily savings banks, then tried to find at least some opportunities to save cash from an unprofitable exchange. In those days, their numerous relatives and acquaintances, as well as high authorities, were also looking for salvation in savings banks.
In the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara), soon after the reform, a loud scandal erupted, which became widely known, despite even the veil of secrecy. Still: a criminal case was opened against the deputy head of the regional financial department Ivan Teselkin, the head of the Kuibyshev regional department of savings banks Georgy Krasnov, as well as a group of other leading employees of these two departments.
As follows from the materials of the investigation, in the afternoon of December 14, the listed leaders appeared in the office of the head of the savings bank of the Molotovsky district, Fyodor Vorobyov. The visitors brought with them cash collected from relatives and acquaintances, as well as an impressive list of persons in whose names fictitious bank accounts should have been urgently opened retroactively. In total, more than 217 thousand rubles were illegally deposited into the cashier of this institution during the period of December 14-15. Of these, over 14 thousand belonged personally to Krasnov and his entourage, more than 9 thousand - to Teselkin and 3200 rubles - to Vorobyov.
In total, during the first half of 1948, the Kuibyshev Regional Court considered more than 30 criminal cases against former officials of regional, city and district ranks. All of them were charged with the same charge - embezzlement of state property on a large and especially large scale. The sentences in these cases were very harsh even by the standards of the time. So, the above-mentioned heads of financial structures received from 15 to 20 years in prison, and ordinary employees of savings banks, who issued fictitious documents for them, received from 10 to 12 years.
The glitter and poverty of monetary reforms
Even from the Egyptian papyri and cuneiform tablets of Babylonia, we now know that in these ancient states, the monetary systems were repeatedly transformed. Similar reforms were carried out by the Roman Caesars, the Chinese emperors, the Baghdad caliphs, and the rulers of many other nations at all times.
During its thousand-year history, the Russian state also changed its monetary system more than once, and this did not always happen peacefully. For example, the Copper Riot of 1662 is known, when the mass production of copper coins led to the depreciation of money and a sharp rise in prices. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was then able to extinguish the fire of popular indignation only by canceling the issue of copper cash and returning to the minting of silver coins. But the "Pavlovsk" monetary reform, announced on the evening of January 22, 1991, when the population was forced to exchange 50- and 100-ruble bills for the same, but already a new sample in just three days, we will remember for a very long time as an example of a blatant disregard of the state in relation to its own people. Against the background of these financial and historical cataclysms, the "Stalinist" monetary reform of 1947 looks almost like a Christmas fairy tale. In any case, none of today's old people remember it with malice, because, as already mentioned, ordinary people hardly suffered from those changes, but the prices of basic goods dropped noticeably. Caviar? You're welcome!
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №14. Author: Valery Erofeev