{"title":"The Patrons","authors":"E. Osokina","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter illustrates the experiences of the patrons in Torgsin. Even in Torgsin's best stores in the capital, as inspections attested, the glossy facade often concealed Soviet trade's habitual lack of culture, neglect of customers, inefficiency, and mismanagement. The further one went from Moscow, the worse the situation became: small dirty shops with fights in long queues, widespread rudeness, and boorishness; low-quality goods and unsanitary conditions. As an embodiment of Soviet trade, Torgsin was full of contradictions: the pretentious mirrored doors and dirt were only one of them. An acute shortage of goods did not prevent overstocking, and not just because hungry people had little interest in expensive luxuries and delicacies. The state-planned distribution did not take into account seasons, specific demands, and ethnic peculiarities. Acute shortages coexisted in Torgsin with enormous waste. Supply breakdowns — the scourge of Soviet trade — affected Torgsin as well, as numerous regional complaints show.","PeriodicalId":315711,"journal":{"name":"Stalin's Quest for Gold","volume":"170 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132217038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Golden Idea","authors":"E. Osokina","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines how the currency interventions of the New Economic Policy (NEP) are important for Torgsin's story because they allowed Soviet people to enhance their gold and foreign currency savings significantly, and some of these valuables ended up in Torgsin. In 1930, when Torgsin was born, the Soviet population already lived on scarce rations, and mass famine was looming. On June 14, 1931, Narkomfin finally allowed Torgsin to accept tsarist gold coins in payment for its goods. The government needed hard currency and gold, but driven by hunger, it was the people who took the initiative. In this respect, Torgsin, the enterprise to drain people of their wealth, was no less the brainchild of the people who fought to survive than it was a product of resolutions of the country's leadership seeking for currency valuables. However, the true currency revolution happened when the government allowed Torgsin to accept personal and household items made of gold. The chapter then provides a comparison between Torgsin and the state rationing system of the same period.","PeriodicalId":315711,"journal":{"name":"Stalin's Quest for Gold","volume":"87 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116418560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Seller Is Always Right","authors":"E. Osokina","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0017","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines Torgsin's employees. The quality of staff was Torgsin's big problem. The government had to choose between political loyalty and professional qualifications. These two somehow did not go together: as a rule, a faithful party member had neither education nor experience in commerce, while an educated professional usually belonged to the “former exploiters” of tsarist Russia. Torgsin's leaders found a compromise solution to the dilemma. The administrative apparatus consisted of party members with some elementary education who served as political commissars in Soviet trade. Representing a minority of Torgsin's staff, they held power. Specialists, sales clerks, and cashiers, as a rule, had education and experience but were not party members. All the Torgsin chairmen were professional revolutionaries with considerable party experience.","PeriodicalId":315711,"journal":{"name":"Stalin's Quest for Gold","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133657809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Red Directors of Torgsin","authors":"E. Osokina","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on Artur Karlovich Stashevskii, the man who led Torgsin through its triumphant years. Contemporaries remembered him as a “firm Bolshevik” and “a rock-ribbed Stalinist” but also, and quite paradoxically, as a businessman. A Soviet intelligence agent, Stalin's commissar in the Spanish Civil War and, in sharp contrast, a founder of the Soviet fur industry and head of Torgsin: Stashevskii's appointments may look random and even contradictory, but all of them share one invariable — Stashevskii provided gold for the USSR. Under Stashevskii, Torgsin began to accept silver, platinum, diamonds, and other precious stones to supplement hard currency and gold. In terms of hard-currency earnings, in 1933 Torgsin occupied first place among Soviet export organizations, overtaking grain, timber, and oil exports. Under Stashevskii, Torgsin fulfilled its currency mission spectacularly: the valuables that it procured in 1933–1934 paid for almost a third of industrial import costs.","PeriodicalId":315711,"journal":{"name":"Stalin's Quest for Gold","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129496771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Birth of Torgsin","authors":"E. Osokina","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501758515.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses how the Special Bureau for Trade with Foreigners on the Territory of the USSR, Torgsin for short, was created on July 18, 1930. The emergence of Torgsin was part of a sweeping process of centralization and monopolization conducted by the Soviet state at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. By opening Torgsin's stores for foreigners, the Soviet government aimed to concentrate the entire domestic hard-currency trade in the hands of a single organization. The service required from Torgsin was clear — to prevent foreign visitors from taking their currency back home. Although foreigners, unlike Soviet citizens, were allowed to have hard currency in their possession, the People's Commissariat of Finance (Narkomfin), a passionate advocate of the monopoly, tried to minimize the use of foreign currency as a means of purchase within the Soviet Union. This was true even for Torgsin. However, the acute needs of industrialization forced the leadership to loosen the state's currency monopoly.","PeriodicalId":315711,"journal":{"name":"Stalin's Quest for Gold","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124835907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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