It is difficult to explain to the current generation of Russians why the Soviet state, which had enormous potential, conquered space and built the world's largest industrial giants, could not provide the people with consumer goods: jeans, books and records. After all, there was nothing particularly difficult about it.
The main problem of the USSR - deficit - can be explained for a long time by distortions in the planned economy, which kept light industry in the corral, but it would be more honest to explain it by distortions in the heads of the country's leaders on the basis of ideology. For such, the slightest deviation from dogma should be punished, if not by death, then certainly by prison bunks.
When the Cheka is powerless
The deficit became an integral part of the Soviet regime from the first years of its existence. And speculation has become an equally integral part of it. It is no coincidence that the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Vladimir Lenin, on October 21, 1919 entrusted the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission with the functions of combating speculation and gave it special powers.
Under her, a Special Revolutionary Tribunal for speculation was established.
This tribunal was supposed to be "guided exclusively by the interests of the revolution" and not be bound by any form of legal proceedings. His sentences were considered final and not subject to appeal. However, alas, the repressions failed to provide the people with essential goods, or to overcome speculation. Due to its wide scope, the functions of combating it were shifted to the shoulders of the police.
On March 16, 1937, as part of the Main Police Department of the NKVD of the USSR, a department was formed to combat theft of socialist property and speculation - OBKHSS GUM of the NKVD of the USSR. The small subdivisions of the OBKhSS obviously could not defeat speculation, but they held back its development. The powerful state repressive machine showed its real powerlessness when a completely new phenomenon appeared - blackmail. Conditionally, it can be separated from ordinary speculation by the fact that this direction specialized not in essential goods, but in fashion items that made Soviet people "cool". True, the range of such things was very wide, ranging from chewing gum and plastic bags with pictures to expensive electrical equipment. But ordinary trousers - jeans - became a kind of symbol of Soviet fartsovka. They were not produced industrially and were not imported into the USSR, but in the 1970s they became very fashionable among Soviet youth. There was a huge demand for them, it formed a shadow price for them, which was one and a half or two salaries of a young Soviet engineer. And since normal fashionable shoes, jackets, hats, perfume, records, books and much more could also be purchased only on the black market and at exorbitant prices, it turned out that young people earned money in research institutes and in factories in order to give them to the black market.books and much more could also be purchased only on the black market and at exorbitant prices, it turned out that young people earned money in research institutes and factories in order to give them to the black market.books and much more could also be purchased only on the black market and at exorbitant prices, it turned out that young people earned money in research institutes and factories in order to give them to the black market.
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Abroad will help us
It is believed that the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957 became the cradle of fartsovka in the USSR. Before that, an outwardly gray mass of people in monotonous clothes of dark colors and similar cut flowed through the streets of Soviet cities. It was normal for that time. We didn't think much about clothes. And the representatives of the authorities set an example for the people, sitting in the presidiums in monotonous baggy suits.
Young people who came from all over the world to the Moscow festival shocked the Soviet people with their unusual and colorful clothes. It turned out that the whole world dresses freely and brightly. And the Soviet youth also wanted to dress like that. However, the light industry in the USSR was rebuilt very slowly. And you could get hold of fashionable clothes only by buying it from a foreigner or a reseller.
They say that the jargonism "blacksmith" originated from the distorted standard question with which dealers in English addressed foreigners: "Have you anything for sale?" (pronounced "forsail") - that is, "Do you have anything to sell?"
At first, dudes were the main consumer of the merchants' goods, but in the 1980s, almost a third of the population of the USSR began to dress.
It is difficult to respect the authorities, which could neither properly feed nor dress their people. A banal situation with the same jeans. The Soviet light industry was never able to organize the production of ordinary pants. For example, in the 1980s, heeding the aspirations of the people, they bought a large batch of branded denim from Holland. Jeans were sewn from it at one of the factories in the Sverdlovsk region. But what kind! They were made according to Soviet patterns, and they turned out to be no better than the pants of a working uniform, and they were also stitched with red threads. The people spat, cursed, but bought and then altered at home.
So the source of supply of normal jeans in the USSR was only abroad. Those who had the opportunity to travel there bought jeans, which, in terms of Soviet money, cost a couple of dozen. In the 1970s, on the black market in the USSR, they cost from 80 to 150 rubles. In the 1980s - already from 120 to 250 rubles. But few went abroad.
Therefore, port cities and Western Ukraine, which had a connection with Poland, became the main channels for the supply of "cowboy" pants to the USSR.
It is said that sailors returning from foreign flights put on five jeans at a time, and pulled on uniform sailor trousers from above and in this form passed through customs. Officially, only two pairs of jeans could be imported. As a result, the sluggishness of the Soviet light industry made up for smuggling, and the black market traders competed with the state trading network.
"Clouds" under the city have risen …
The only thing the authorities were worthy of was setting aside wastelands for fleets, which the people dubbed "clouds." One of the largest was located in the vicinity of Sverdlovsk near the Shuvakish railway station. It was something! Tens of thousands of people came to Shuvakish every Saturday. Kilometer ranks of salespeople, standing with jeans, shoes, blouses and cosmetics in their hands. And rivers of buyers flowed past them in an endless succession.
You can talk for a long time about ways to deceive customers. The most famous were sales of one leg from jeans and phonograph records with re-glued "dimes". And this sometimes turned into a real tragedy for people who, for example, put off a year from their salary for the coveted "layer" of a Western rock group, and instead received a disc with Lyudmila Zykina's songs.
The lack of fiction looked especially sad. In the most reading country in the world, even children's fairy tales had to be bought on the "cloud" and spread a week's salary for a book. Huge money was flowing into the pockets of the black-marketeers, and the authorities tried not to notice this, so as not to focus on their own miscalculations.
The Soviet system was simply saturated with deceit. From the stands they said one thing, but everyone understood that everything in life is completely different. But the cunning of the system was especially evident in relation to the black market. The country had Article 154 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, which provided for severe penalties for speculation. However, for example, every Saturday on Shuvakish one could see how thousands of people quite openly violate this article.
It was clear to everyone that they were banal speculation. But the line was thin between guilt and innocence. If a person lies and says: “For what I bought, I sell for that,” he is innocent. To be honest, he says, “I bought it for 100, I sell it for 200,” he is guilty. But there were very few honest fools. Although there were. Especially among those who worked under a contract abroad and slightly detached from the Soviet reality. They spent their salaries on clothes and cosmetics, hoping to resell it in the USSR at exorbitant prices, and at home they quickly came across with their wholesale parties.
The OBKhSS employees, who fought against speculation, had a kind of "code of honor" - do not take small speculators. The guy with one pair of jeans was not detained. Organized criminal groups of black marketeers knew this very well. Therefore, they hid the consignments of goods, for example, in the car, and gave the sellers a pair of jeans in their hands for sale.
And fartsovka as a phenomenon, meanwhile, marched with leaps and bounds across the country. And to some extent it destroyed this country, undermining the people's confidence in the state system.
Oleg LOGINOV