The cherished word "fartsa" in the late USSR was a password for rare foreign items: shoes, puser and other company. Fraudsters were illegal, but they were not typical criminals.
Who were they?
According to the canonical definition, a blacksmith is an illegal entrepreneur of the 1960s-1980s who buys / exchanges goods (mainly clothes, music records, cosmetics) from foreigners and resells them to their fellow citizens at a higher price.
The starting point for the development of such trade was the 1957 Festival of Youth and Students, which slightly opened the "iron curtain" and made it possible to see the bright world of European fashion through a tiny dormer window.
The Soviet press disdainfully called the black-marketeers "youths who traded schools for the GUM gateways."
Initially, red and black caviar, Armenian or Georgian cognac, Palekh painting, Khokhloma, commemorative coins and, of course, "Stolichnaya", which took the honorable first place, were used for chencha (exchange) with foreign citizens.
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The difference between ordinary speculators and black marketers was that the former did not communicate with foreigners, but only resold scarce products, had connections with store directors, were older in age and did not belong to the subculture of dudes and hippies.
They sincerely adored Western culture and were ready to give their last money for a bag with the Marlboro logo, not to mention the coveted Beatles disc or "semolina shoes".
Fartsa
The etymology of the very concept of "farts" has several mutually exclusive versions.
According to the first, it is nothing more than a distorted version of the English phrase "for sale" - "for sale" (as, for example, the writer Boris Timofeev believed).
According to the other, its roots go back to the South Russian word "foretz", which meant an eloquent gentleman who deftly knocks down the price on the Odessa market (researcher Dmitry Vasiliev is inclined to this version).
However, the farce themselves were far from always interested in etymology - in contrast to the visible material benefit. “The name did not bother him much, because Fima was a normal Soviet materialist and knew perfectly well that there would be a case, but he would always find a name,” wrote Mikhail Weller.
Forerunners of the farmers
The roots of the Fartsy somehow go back to the Odessa criminal world. The convenient location of the port city has always allowed citizens with an entrepreneurial streak to trade goods brought to Odessa on foreign ships.
Cuban cigars, rum, fashionable suits and dresses, albeit slightly shabby, were all presented in abundance in local bazaars.
Only then this process was called smuggling, and in the 10s of the XX century it was controlled by the notorious Mishka Yaponchik, who was also poeticized in one of the modern cinema sagas.
Chencha places of worship
The activities of the farmers were not limited only to port cities. Trade was equally turbulent in both capitals. In Moscow, the most famous places for gathering blacksmiths were the Melody and Berezka stores, the Intourist hotel and airports.
In Leningrad, “goods for dollars” were exchanged mainly at the “gallery” near Gostiny Dvor.
Oleg Tinkov, Sergei Mavrodi, Dmitry Nagiyev, Peter Listerman, Yuri Loza were involved in farts.
New language and rules of etiquette
Communication with foreigners, of course, left its imprint not only on the image of blackmail, but also on the language and even formed a special set of rules of behavior. Slang concerned foreigners, goods, and main urban topoi. Here are just a few of them:
Firm (all blacksmith items), shoes (shoes), cabbage, greens (currency), bundoshka (German marks), pusher (sweater, from Finnish pusero), shovel (from Finnish lompakko - wallet, wallet), self-string (fake for a company), paint (Red Square).
As you can see, some of these words subsequently smoothly migrated into the lexicon of the brothers from the 90s, while others became archaisms.
As for the rules of conduct, the farmers had their own clear hierarchy and ideological community, distributed products among trusted buyers and could sell low-quality or fake goods only to people outside their circle. A characteristic episode was described in Mark Gorobets's TV series "Odessa-Mom": there one of the werewolves in uniform got a self-string instead of branded jeans /
- What do you have? Like a Wrangler?
- He is dear, he is! From America itself.
-Oh, I can't! This is a Wrangler like me Yves Montand!
-Here, bachish, double ve on the pockets!
-So, just so you know, the Wrangler has a take with a double stitching and 7 harnesses on the belt!
However, such cases were really rare, since the badass code of honor did not allow this in relation to dudes or hippies, but throwing off the left goods to someone else's - there was nothing reprehensible in this.
Career decline and new wave of interest
With the collapse of the USSR and the beginning of the market economy, the history of the black-marketeers at first sight ended. For several decades racketeers became heroes of paperback books and action-packed soap operas, and the slogan of the 90s was invariably heard from the speakers: "Speculate, grandma, speculate, Lyubka, speculate you, my gray dove!"
However, in recent years, on the contrary, there has been a surge of interest in retro criminal themes, and not in crimson jackets from the recent past that set the teeth on edge.
This trend was set by Sergei Ursulyak with the sensational series "Liquidation", and other filmmakers eagerly picked up on it. The activities of the black-marketeers have already appeared in the series "Odessa-Mama" and "Hunters for Diamonds", and at the suggestion of Yegor Baranov, the series "Fartsa" of the same name was entirely dedicated to her. Here is such a peculiar connection between times: interest in them is still great.
