The Red Directors of Torgsin

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.