Send Dollars to Torgsin!

This chapter explores how, in the early 1930s, the Soviet government faced a dilemma of how to increase hard-currency transfers from abroad while not paying even a cent in foreign money to recipients in the USSR. The mass famine and Torgsin prompted a solution: pleas for help from the starving forced their relatives abroad to send money to the USSR, but instead of foreign currency, the recipients received Torgsin rubles and were forced to buy goods in its stores at high prices. All hard currency from foreign remittances went to the state. Torgsin became a truly ingenious solution to the crisis of foreign-currency transfers. Eventually, Soviet trade missions abroad started advertising these hard-currency transfer operations. The call “Send dollars to Torgsin!” was not so much a line from an ad as a cry for help. Due to rumors of raging famine, Torgsin's fame abroad grew quickly.