Activities of "guild workers" during the heyday of the shadow economy. Tsekhoviki - who they are and why the shadow economy in the USSR was so developed

The fate of the author of this book and the fate of his family members turned out to be connected with one of the unique phenomena in the USSR - underground business and is inseparable from the history of the guild workers - nameless workers of the shadow economy. This book will tell about people who had no real opportunity to make money in principle. However, this did not stop them. Moreover, they literally risked their lives to achieve their goal. And everything worked out for them. For the first time, you and I have the opportunity to see the life of shop workers “from the inside,” to look at history through their eyes, and, perhaps, learn something.

From the series: Made in the USSR

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by liters company.

Who is who. Underground business in the USSR

I am a meticulous person and if I had not become what I have become, I would probably have chosen the profession of an accountant. For a writer, this quality of character, I think, is rather a flaw, but what has grown has grown. That is why I will not (although I really want to) immediately go directly to the story of my father and his acquaintances. Instead, let me remind you of the general picture of underground business in the USSR. Perhaps we should start with terminology (no matter how terrible this word may sound).

People who were involved sales any product of criminal origin, both criminals and employees law enforcement agencies called hucksters. By the way, this word smoothly migrated into modern times, only slightly changing its meaning. Since the early nineties, businessmen of any caliber, those who are engaged in the sale of goods, began to be called hucksters.

Shop workers in Soviet times called the people who organized the underground production goods. This label was awarded to any illegal manufacturer, regardless of the volume of “illegal” production. Just as in our time the title “businessman” can hide both the owner of three food stalls and the chairman of the board of directors of a large bank, so in the USSR the faceless definition of “guild worker” could mean a large schemer who produced production volumes comparable to the plan of a legal enterprise, on a par with with the owner of a sewing workshop with a capacity of three sewing machines. The fact that the addition “on an especially large scale” to the article “Theft of State Property” could have been obtained in any case deserves special mention.

At the top of the pyramid rested sacred cows - shadow cows. People who covered underground economic activities while within the walls government agencies different ranks. I don’t think it’s worth clarifying separately: the greater the volume of underground production, the higher the rank they were roofing his officials.

The only difference between this hierarchical ladder and modern realities was the impossibility of combining several hypostases in one person. Now, despite the strict ban on government officials engaging in entrepreneurial activities, every most seedy deputy at least owns a candle factory in middle lane vast Russia. And many product manufacturers independently market their products. In those times that we are talking about now we're talking about, it was impossible to even imagine such a situation. This taboo was explained very simply. Anyone who was engaged in an underground business had access to a very limited range of opportunities, because illegal activities required a completely legal cover. And the simple consideration that a business fragmented into small parts is more difficult to track and liquidate also played a role.

So, according to by and large, between the owner of a small sewing workshop and the manufacturer of “leftist” radio components at the facilities of a state workshop, there was only one real difference: the volume of goods produced.

As one of the French philosophers said, “the vices of a society are a mirror image of the virtues of that society.” Well said. Just as the legal economy in the USSR was subject to the dictates of planning, so the schemes for illegal production resembled a repeatedly scaled-up drawing of the same mechanism. Whatever product came out of the underground workshops, the entire process, from the supply of raw materials to the methods of selling the goods, was surprisingly the same.

Analogies can be traced in a broader sense. The role that trade union organizations played in socialist realism was played in the “through the looking glass” of the shadow economy by the criminal common fund, into which a certain share of profits was strictly allocated. A distorted reflection of party meetings could well be considered the constant gatherings at which the thieves’ authorities often debriefed the diligent and hardworking shop workers. And so on.

In fact, the shop workers had enrichment schemes - once, twice, and the number was gone. And any OBKhSS employee knew about this. Another thing is that it turned out to be much more difficult to collect the evidence base. For that matter, the real headache of the OBKhSS was not the workshop workers, the producers of “leftist” goods using stolen raw materials. The edge of the punishing sword of legality was sharpened to catch those plunderers of state property who limited themselves exclusively to the process of theft. As Porthos said: “I fight simply because I fight.” That is, they stole precisely in order to steal, overwhelmed by hoarding syndrome.

Theft in the USSR flourished on a catastrophic scale. “Bring every nail home from work - you are the master here, not a guest!” And they carried it. And the Vokhrovets grandfather (a man with a gun), and the foreman from the workshop, and the director of the plant, and the barmaid from the canteen. Garden houses they were built from products taken from their native production, and if the level of the position allowed, then brick “huts” were obtained. In this environment, exchange in kind (future barter) mainly flourished. You for me, I for you. Hand washed hand. But it was in the category of nonsense that there were the most random people. You don’t have to have any outstanding personal qualities to steal from your own office. It was enough to be in the right place at the right time - for example, by hook or by crook to get any leadership position, – and it’s in the bag. There is no need to think, strain or invent something; a person automatically took his place in the circuit. That is why the Nesuns practically dropped out of the criminal environment in the USSR. Well, perhaps only “on a particularly large scale”... It was impossible to control everyone else.

So I come to the first question, which, it seems, none of those journalists who nowadays shake off the dust from the archives of the workshop workers asked themselves. Why, in fact, did people who had access to stolen raw materials not limit themselves to selling these same raw materials left, right, wherever, as the majority did? If they were driven solely by a passion for profit and enrichment, then why not limit themselves to a worthy place in the circulation of non-suns? Why give yourself an additional headache in the form of ensuring further processing of raw materials into a sold product? And also establish contacts with distributors (also an additional risk). Not to mention the close ties with criminal structures and shadow businesses.

What motivated people if not just the thirst for money? “I won’t tell you for all of Odessa, all of Odessa is very great...” So, I by no means pretend to become the spokesman for the general opinion of these mysterious businessmen of the past, but at least I will try to answer this question the way My father and his “colleagues in the shop” answered it to themselves. Of course, not every person is a guild worker, but every guild worker is a person, so the motives in each case are different, because there are so many people, so many stories. There are (I’m sure) stories about the thirst for power, there are (most likely) stories about ideological incompatibility with the existing system, probably someone’s story tells about brilliant business abilities, not to realize which would mean becoming an alcoholic or ending up in a ditch from the meaninglessness of life. But I can only guess about this. It’s more logical to talk about what I know for sure. So I come to the beginning of my story. Better late than never.

The USSR is a forge of personnel

Although it has recently become common to criticize socialism in every possible way, one cannot ignore several positive aspects present in the USSR, the importance of which is difficult to underestimate. The country of equal opportunities may have limped in all other points of the meaning of the word “equality,” but in the matter of free education the Soviet people were definitely ahead of the rest. And indeed, they taught everyone: both capable and completely unsuited to the learning process. Such a voluntary-compulsory approach to acquiring knowledge could not make a Lomonosov out of every village boy, but it gave the opportunity to reach a decent scientific level for everyone who really wanted it, regardless of origin.

In this sense, my father belonged precisely to that half of the Soviet people who benefited from the acquired knowledge. He was born into an ordinary working-class family, which until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War could be considered quite wealthy. My grandfather worked at a factory and was considered (and in fact was) an excellent master of his craft - I won’t say which one. Over the years, I somehow forgot about it. My grandmother worked at the same factory, only in the accounting department. My father said that my grandfather had a terrible complex about this. Of course, his wife has an education, and he has a school for working youth and that’s all. As I understand it, in those days the profession of an accountant was equated in the public consciousness with at least an academic degree. But it wasn’t just Grandma’s ability to keep factory records in perfect order. Grandfather terribly regretted that at one time he could not study to become an engineer - there was no opportunity. But he was still young, only twenty-eight years old, and did not lose hope of catching up.

Didn't have time. When the war began, he went to the front, from where he returned in 1943, disabled, missing one leg. There was no time for studying here. I had to somehow feed the family, which a year later increased by one more member - my father’s sister, my aunt, was born. Our ancestors were desperate people. Now, for less than 250,000 promised by the president for a second child, potential parents will not even try. And then... There was war, a breadwinner without one leg, and they had a second child and are living a difficult, but happy life.

Considering the zigzags of fate, my grandfather was never able to achieve the coveted education, but he managed to instill his longing for what had not come true in his son (that is, my father). Throughout his life, he remained with the desire for knowledge, which seemed to him a pass into some unprecedented, brilliant world, different from the harsh post-war reality.

That’s why my father went to school as if it were a holiday. And so on for ten years. To be honest, I just can’t imagine what reserves of enthusiasm are needed for this. Bottomless, probably. My father sincerely believed that if he studied properly, all the doors in the country would be open for him. They were all a little like that back then - not of this world. The sixties... “Naive snowdrops,” as the matured father sarcastically characterized himself and his friends, referring to Khrushchev’s “thaw.” After graduating from school, my father, who after ten years of study had already finally decided on his future specialty, entered the prestigious physics and mathematics department at the University without any problems (at that time in Leningrad universities were not yet located on every corner). Which further strengthened his confidence in accessibility scientific career Union significance for every Soviet person, if he has the ability for this case.

The quickly passing years of study at the University would not be worth special mention if not for one significant circumstance. It was within the walls of my alma mater that my father first showed extraordinary abilities, not so much scientific as organizational. With all due respect to the able-bodied young man that my father once was, I cannot help but admit (based on his own comments) that he did not perform physical and mathematical exercises as brilliantly as he conducted (for example) cultural events. Over the course of several years spent within purely academic walls, he managed to “pollinate” with his presence all the more or less significant formal and informal events taking place at the University. Moreover, the young student managed to successively be a cult organizer, a trade union organizer and a Komsomol organizer of the course. And this does not take into account the fact that throughout his studies, my father held a respectable position in charge of the political sector. That is, all the political information carried out over six years was on his conscience. To my repeated perplexed questions: “Why the hell did you need this trouble?” – my father religiously began to lecture me on the importance of not only having fruitful contact with people around me, but also being able to direct their purely human, and therefore chaotic impulses into a strictly defined framework of useful activity.

But with age, he learned to formulate this so beautifully, and then (as I strongly suspect) physics and mathematics student Grishka the Lecturer, as his politically informed classmates caustically called him, thought little about why he was itching so much along the social line. After all, in those days organizational talent was reluctantly recognized in people. But it was precisely these abilities - to direct people into the framework of useful activities - that fertilized the subsequent harvest of events in his life, like guano. Several times, in all seriousness, my father asserted that Komsomol and social work in Soviet institutions was nothing more than a second higher education, classical school management and management, only in the Soviet style.

After graduating from the University, my father was very fortunate. He somehow, although not without taking into account his merits in the social Komsomol, avoided the fate of most young specialists and did not end up in some run-of-the-mill research institute, lost in the vast expanses of Russia. Instead, he got a place at a scientific institute that was quite progressive for those times, and in addition to ephemeral benefits in the form of a constant opportunity to raise his scientific level, he got the opportunity to walk to work. And again, work in this worthy institution has almost nothing to do with the topic being described, if not for two events that happened to my father during this particular period. First, in the newly found friendly team, he met a man who determined almost all of his later life– Yakov Denisovich, then just Yashka (due to his youth). From the point of view of Soviet reality, Yakov had one obvious drawback and one dubious advantage. He came from a catastrophically poor large family and at the same time was smart with that same practical mind that his superiors did not like so much in his subordinates - this is not America!.. And the second event - as a young and promising specialist as part of a small group of Soviet scientists he got on scientific conference“over the hill”, or rather, to France.

The capitalist way of life completely defeated my father. And not with an abundance of sparkling shop windows, although there were some mouth-watering moments in sporting goods stores and in the supermarket at the sight of the products. The most important thing is that my father finally realized: there is no perfection in the world. The coveted education, which he saw as the golden key to happiness, opened the wrong door. On the other hand, he would not have been able to obtain a similar education in France with the same ease as in his native Fatherland. And it was then, according to him, that for the first time a seditious thought crept into the young head of a Soviet specialist: “But if only we could combine...” At the same time, my father was not at all a clinical idiot and understood that it was impossible to implement this on a political scale. But in one particular case? After all, he already had an education. But this was not even a test shot yet, but just a look at the world through the sight. The shot was still a long way off.

However, when upon arrival, about six months later, my father had a huge quarrel with his boss, who without hesitation tried to appropriate the scientific work of his subordinate, he did not restore justice, but instead listened to the persistent advice of Yakov Denisovich and left (slamming the door) for production. By the time such an unfortunate episode occurred, the father had already fully realized his romantic naivety about the value of education and scientific knowledge in the USSR. And even more so, he realized that his average scientific abilities were unlikely to be enough to devote his entire life to science and at the same time remain happy and poor.

This is an individual story of “training a puppy to become a captain.” However, as my father later told me, among large underground guild entrepreneurs, higher education was considered something like a compulsory school minimum. And even if we met people with specialized secondary education, then we had experience working in public organizations(according to the Komsomol, or even the party line) was certainly present with them. Remembering the French philosopher and his mirror images, it seems that there is nothing surprising in the fact that OBKhSS employees had a reputation in law enforcement agencies as “white collar workers,” intellectuals and generally troublemakers. Everything is correct. Equal opportunity in action. Some students enjoyed the benefits of free and therefore accessible education for several years in order to subsequently use it to create underground industries, while others at the same time raised their intellectual level to successfully fight them. Everything is in order.

The patient is most likely dead

According to the latest sociological surveys, stability occupies the leading place in the charts of factors coveted by the majority of Russian residents. And in any of its manifestations. Business people dream of stability in the economy and even (it’s scary to say) the geopolitics of the state. Young families want stability in real estate prices (no one even dreams of lowering the cost per square meter; it would be nice if the price did not rise further!). And the majority of the population, without using such a term as “stability,” simply wants to take a break from the frantic pace of life and live at least for some time without visible shocks. Which is a completely understandable, predictable and humanly explainable desire. It’s not for nothing that one of the ornate Chinese curses sounds something like this: “May you live in an era of change!”

But here's the weird thing. On the one hand, the desire for stability in any of its manifestations, and on the other, a disdainful attitude towards the years that seem to be able to claim to be a symbol of the immutability of society, I mean the years of so-called stagnation, which stretched from the early seventies to the mid-eighties. Only the lazy did not go so far as to ridicule this period in the history of the USSR.

Ask any person who either lived through these years in a conscious adult state, or who, due to childhood, has only vague memories: what “anchors” were cast in the quiet waters of memories during these fifteen years? We begin to bend our fingers: a shortage of EVERYTHING, endless tedious meetings, free trips to the south and to children's camps in the summer, monstrous medical care, queues. All. If someone thinks that this is a lot, try to count the memories that the nineties left behind. In my opinion, we can safely say that the period of “stagnation,” no matter how it may seem from a distance of twenty years, was really characterized by immutability, consistency and predictability. It’s a pity, of course, that constancy extended to empty shelves and the general rudeness of those who are now beautifully called “service personnel,” but this coin of stability had another side. A murder, for example, was considered a real emergency, and the best of the best operatives, and not just district detectives, but bison from the headquarters, were sent to solve it. Women could marry for love, and not for convenience, and the male half of Soviet citizens was not yet confused to death by the question of where to get money. So if you try to impartially indulge in the memories of those years, you can easily find reasons for nostalgia.

So, in the mid-seventies, the majority of the respectable population of the USSR could enjoy stability way of life, accompanied by rudeness, and the almost complete eradication of street crime. But the years called “stagnation” were characterized not only by these touches. There were some other stagnation phenomena that were not so well known. In particular, it was during these years that the underground business in the USSR flourished. The emergence of small and large “leftist” production workshops literally out of nowhere was provoked precisely by the passivity and helplessness of the socialist system at that stage of development. Until the early seventies, the Soviet government was quite active in establishing on one sixth of the land mass globe communist system and (typically) the country's leadership at the highest level seemed to be convinced of the reality of its plans. Until this moment, even despite the Second World War, and perhaps to a sufficient extent thanks to it, the USSR looked quite solid as a member of the world community. And not only in connection with military power. Constantly increasing the pace of production of everything in the world, fulfilling and exceeding plans, universal literacy, free medical care for the population and, of course, unprecedented production capacity of a huge number of factories.

On the store shelves there was, if not abundance, then at least a sufficient amount of goods to maintain a decent standard of living (for those who missed those times, I recommend looking through the famous cookbook published in 1953). And although such a concept as a “market economy” did not exist in nature at that time in the USSR, its laws, the same ones that just a few years later would contribute to the flourishing of underground production in the country, did not imply the need to produce in large quantities “ left" product. If a person could earn or save money in some legal way, he could easily spend this money in accordance with his tastes. Scarcity as a phenomenon was not yet familiar to Soviet people. The post-war shortage of essentials lasted surprisingly not long, only about five years, and none of those who survived the dire need of the war years had the slightest complaint about this: they were alive, healthy - and thank God. The ideological intensity became so significant that the heads of Soviet people were already ringing with pride in their country and the desire to make it even better and “be ahead of the rest.” In addition to everything, many Soviet citizens have not yet faded from their memory the feeling of fear and total control over every single person and every work collective. In relation to the topic under discussion, it should be noted that during the years of the ideological “thaw”, when the “Prometheans of public consciousness” and future dissidents felt relatively at ease (1963–1964), all underground entrepreneurs had a very hard time. The best detectives from law enforcement agencies participated in the elimination of any illegal economic activity. The very possibility of private entrepreneurship was recognized as ideologically harmful, and the people involved in it were called a new type of enemy of the Soviet people. Obviously, it was strategically important for the country’s leadership to eradicate from people’s consciousness even the very memory of the possibility of non-state production and trading activities. According to some reports, during the mentioned years, about 3,000 people were put under execution. The fight against “private shops” has become uncompromising and aimed at complete liquidation potential ideological enemies.

Perhaps sociologists, economists, political scientists and other broad-based analysts would throw stones at me if they read the following lines, but I sincerely hope that such respectable people will not even pick up this book. When my father explained to me how it happened that a huge, rapidly developing country, after such a powerful breakthrough, went into hibernation for a decade and a half, losing all its achievements, he used an image that was understandable to me, then not a very intelligent teenager:

Imagine a person who is forced to perform some complex action. All his efforts are aimed at achieving results. He strains not only his brain, but also his nervous system and muscles with all his might. At first, there will be progress in his actions (especially for an outside observer). But a person is physically unable to live for a long time at the limit of his capabilities. He'll just get upset. And when this happens, and this will certainly happen, sooner or later, he will not only lie flat, unable to move, but, poor fellow, he will not even be able to adequately respond to the surrounding reality and fight the ailments of his own body. Immunity will be at zero, or, to put it simply, he will have nothing to do with the lantern. So, my son, the USSR (like that man) - he just went crazy.

And this moment occurred exactly after the maximum point of intensity of passions and possibilities of Soviet ideology - the Cuban Missile Crisis. That is, for some time the huge organism of the USSR continued to reflexively twitch, but progress was already doomed. Thus, it was by the beginning of the seventies, to use the formulation fashionable at that time, that “all the prerequisites were in place” for the flourishing of not only the activities of the guild workers, but also for the appearance in incredible numbers of “plunderers of socialist property” of various formats. The total shortage caused the need to produce and sell a huge range of goods from under the counter. From, sorry, toilet paper before winter clothes. Ignored laws market economy gradually gained strength. A DEMAND has arisen. The next factor was a sharp weakening in the activity of regulatory and inspection organizations. That is, in fact, they continued to exist, but rather their existence was “fictitious.” Quarrels, squabbles and intrigues over even more privileges took away so much energy from people in power that there was no left to carry out their immediate duties. The result is a complete lack of control of people who have access to material values. But at the same time, the giant flywheel of industry still continued its, albeit meaningless, forward movement. That is, a colossal amount of somehow taken into account high-quality and low-quality raw materials is still produced in the vast expanses of the country.

Career guidance lessons

Agree, one cannot assume that, for example, being a swindler is a profession. It's more of a way of life. In the same way, it is difficult to imagine that someone would come up with the following phrase: “I work as a scammer.” But the word “tsehovik” is similar in consonance to, for example, “carpenter”, “installer” and the name of other honorable professions. These are not quirks of linguistics or phonetic accidents. The great and powerful Russian language, especially if new words are expelled directly from the masses, is surprisingly accurate and apt. “What is the accuracy?” – you ask. Here's the thing. A tsehovik, even of the mid-seventies type, that is, the time of shameless theft of state raw materials, was first and foremost a professional and only secondarily a criminal element. Exactly in this sequence. What exactly was the professionalism of the shop workers?

For a more clear explanation, let's draw parallels with modern business people who are engaged in the production of something. One small clarification. We will not talk now about the real owners of production facilities and factory floors. It’s better to keep in mind hired directors and managers (that is, actually production managers). To successfully run a business, they need to understand at least the basics of such professions as logistician, financier, manager, accountant, marketer, sociologist, psychologist. Now a good manager should have two higher education or in exchange for one diploma, a tremendous amount of work experience at similar enterprises. I dare to assure you that if the shop workers differed from modern hired directors or managers, it was only in the direction of greater professionalism, higher IQ and better quality nervous system. We now leave moral character behind the scenes. Although, perhaps, in this sense, the guild workers were also somewhat different from modern business heroes. About the same as a mongrel differs from a wolf.

The situation with the guild workers as part of the criminal world of the Land of the Soviets was quite difficult. On the one hand, these people clearly belonged to the criminal world of the USSR, and not only because of their close connection with criminal elements to whom tribute was regularly paid. According to the laws of the land, they were indeed criminals. But on the other hand, the craft workers really fell out of the criminal milieu. “A stranger among one’s own, one’s own among strangers” – remember? Something like this. For law enforcement agencies, the guild workers were unconditional criminals, seasoned and irreconcilable enemies of the Soviet people, and for criminals and thieves’ “authorities” they were “neither fish nor fowl”, a source of additional funds for the common fund, and that’s all. And indeed, for the majority of real criminals, guilds have become an alien substance, because among “serious” criminals, life’s priorities are extremely simple: “Stole - drank - go to prison. Stole, drank, went to jail. Romance". If you read detective stories written during the prosperity of Soviet reality, you will notice that if guild workers appear on the pages, it is only as passing characters. Why, it’s time for socialism to flourish! And to this day virtually nothing is known about these people. The personalities of the guild workers clearly do not attract seekers of sensational materials. And it’s right to write about them - people worked, they were engaged in production. Boredom…

But the profession of “guild worker” was not taught in institutes, technical schools and vocational schools. Where did the underground production specialists come from then? It’s very simple - the knowledge and skills of these people arose from a combination of legally obtained education, innate abilities for entrepreneurship and, last but not least, personal qualities, that is, organizational talent and the makings of a leader. At the same time, you need to understand that in order to obtain a practical meaning, it is also necessary to have certain circumstances, of which an important part was acquaintances of a certain kind. Because by definition, shop workers could not earn income without the help of other people. That is why the guild worker in the USSR is a “rare beast” - too many components are necessary for the emergence and formation of such a personality.

Routes

It is clear that a situation in which a person wakes up one fine morning and decides: “I want to be a shop worker,” clean water insanity. Everyone who came to generating income in such a radical way has their own path. And yet there were two more or less standard options.

Option one

Soviet to the core, a person got into production or trade and after a while clearly saw what was wrong and where. Yes, it doesn’t just lie there, but is thrown away, destroyed, spoiled. And it would be nice if there was a mismatch or a defect, but no! Often completely usable materials, raw materials or goods were sent for recycling. And this happened solely because of three “no” things: illiteracy, irresponsibility and indifference of legal production workers. In general, in production, in most cases, no one cared about anything. The workers worked from bell to bell, thinking little about the quality of the products, and the management often did not even see these very products, much less cared. The main thing is to write the paper up on time and cheerfully report on the work done and significant successes at endless meetings. Fortunately, no one will check anyway. Naturally, when an observant person got into production, after a very short time he began to sincerely regret the money, “man-hours” and efforts put in by the state system. For the most part, such “observers” after a while merged with the landscape and stopped regretting and generally thinking about this topic. But sometimes there were people who simply physically could not get past such blatant mismanagement. And certain thoughts began to creep into their heads. And if these thoughts also fell on the fertilized soil of preliminary thoughts about the imperfection of the state system or the thirst for certain material goods, then some moral hesitation - and such a person began to slowly make acquaintances in certain circles, reaching out to the right people without haste, but with the tenacity of an Everest conqueror.

Option two

This path was followed by people “doomed” to confront the existing political system. There were many people living in the USSR more people who sought to obtain purely material benefits than is commonly recognized. It was in cinema and literature that the Soviet people worked in unison not for fear and money, but exclusively for the communist conscience. But in fact, the Soviet people included many ordinary people, for whom their own shirt always turned out to be closer to their body than the entire communist ideology taken together. There were especially many such (as they would now call) representatives of the middle class in the Union republics, in particular in the almost European Baltic states, in the sultry Caucasus and in Asia with its still medieval way of life. But about national guild characteristics a little later. So, from childhood, these people were brought up on ideological values that are very different from the generally accepted ones: “money is not evil at all, the absence of it is evil”, “thanks won’t make a fur coat”, “you won’t be fed up with talking shops” and the like. Strong owners of their plots of land, fathers of families toiling away at hard piece work were, even then, people who knew the value of money earned by their labor. They tried unsuccessfully to eradicate this category of the population, replacing them with ideological fanatics capable of walking in rags and working exclusively for the common good. It didn't work out. Although they tried very hard, they denounced the “grabbers” in newspaper feuilletons, ridiculed them in the Krokodil magazine and filmed accusatory stories “on the topic of the day.” Trading vegetables from one's own garden was considered shameful and unworthy of a Soviet person. Remember: “I sell strawberries grown with my own hands"? Papanov tried in vain to play a negative character, it was not his fault, in the end, that he didn’t turn out very well. Among normal, sensible people who understood that material wealth is not as bad as they try to explain to them, future smart and capable business executives grew up who teenage years understood what exactly they wanted from this life. And they wanted, not least of all, ordinary material goods. But their innate common sense told them that it was impossible to obtain such benefits in the USSR in the standard way. Therefore, if the desire was sincere, strong and even dominated a realistic assessment of the situation, then from a young age such people began to slowly implement their plans: they acquired the necessary contacts, simultaneously receiving the education necessary to occupy a suitable position. And a suitable position meant access to material values, which, to their sincere regret, could only belong to the state.

But no matter how a person came to the idea and practical implementation of underground production, in both cases strong and lasting connections were needed in the world of “shadow”, hidden from the scorching sun of socialist legality. And oddly enough, acquiring such connections was much easier than it seems.

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The given introductory fragment of the book Workshop workers. The birth of the shadow economy. Notes of an Underground Millionaire (Alexander Nilov, 2006) provided by our book partner -

TSEKHOVIKI

The biggest money in Leningrad was earned not by the center workers, but by the so-called shop workers.

In the USSR, there was a local light industry, which included artels and district industrial plants, which were subordinate not to ministries, but to regional authorities. For example, the Tosnensky District Industrial Plant produced rubber boots. At these same plants, due to the fact that it was possible to negotiate with local authorities (everyone lives in the same city and knows each other), in addition to the plan, left-wing parties were also produced, which were not taken into account in any way in the documents.

The only way to cash out money in the USSR is to sell unpaid goods at retail. Therefore, these boots or stockings were brought to the store after the official batch was sold out. The chances of getting caught in such an operation were not very many - the danger existed only immediately at the moment when the goods were delivered to the store. The event was called “the hour of fear.” After this, the checks were no longer scary. This was called “on-the-spot” trading.

The activities of the guilds, in contrast to the official industry, were forced to follow the market principle: since storing goods was dangerous, it was possible to produce only what was in high demand and could be sold quickly, that is, there was a shortage. Thus, workshop products partly filled the gaps of the planned economy.

There were also small workshops - those who, purchasing some of the necessary components from the same factories where they were stolen or produced above plan, manufactured their products at home. Some of the clothes were made from what came to the port through smuggling schemes from Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Such underground productions were usually located in private apartments. It was this insignificant share of the turnover of workshop goods that was purchased by the black marketeers from Nevsky. Most of them were sold in ordinary Soviet stores or sent to Central Asia.

Andrey Berlin, born in 1952

I was involved in organized crime.

I was involved in the same case with Malyshev, today he is an entrepreneur.

In the late 80s I was in the thick of organized crime. I was born in Leningrad. Since childhood, he has been involved in wrestling and studied at the university in mathematics and mechanics. By the early 70s, I had the prospect of receiving 85 rubles a month, and I didn’t like it. In 1972, I created the first legal workshop in Leningrad, and maybe in the USSR. Based on Everything Russian society We produced knitwear for the deaf, and I was officially in charge of sales. I earned about 12 thousand rubles a month. It just so happened that our knitwear was sold in Gostiny Dvor, but this knitwear was not available in the Blue Hall, a hall for the party elite of the same Dvor. This is what ruined us. Our products were considered contraband. I was arrested on charges of theft of state property on an especially large scale. The crime was then punishable by execution. I was against it, and they didn’t prove anything to me.

In 1977, in the Smolensk prison, I met Brick, who once again served for his pocket. By the way, he was already known and was involved in the case together with the thief in law Japanese, who for some reason everyone later dubbed Yaponchik.

Brick was already listening attentively to my conversations about business.

Federal Agency for Education

South Ural State University

Aerospace Faculty

Department of Hydraulics

Shadow entrepreneurship in the USSR. Workshop workers.

Coursework

Chelyabinsk

Introduction........................................................ ........................................................ ....... 3

Shadow economy. General information. ......................................................... 5

The concept of the shadow economy. Structure................................................. .... 5

Elements of the shadow economy................................................................... ....................... 6

Reasons for the growth of the shadow economy……………………………………………………...7

Forms of “Shadowization” of the economy………………………………………………………8

Shadow entrepreneurship in the USSR................................................................. ........ 9

Shop workers........................................................ ........................................................ .... 12

The concept of “Workshop worker”................................................................. ........................................................ ........ 12

Portrait of a shop worker……………………………………………………………..13

How soviet man went to work in the workshops?................................................... .....14

Rules of shop workers......................................................... ...........................................15

Schemes of workshop production……………………………..16

High-profile cases…………………………………………………………………………………..18

The case of the Lviv knitwear workers…………………………………………......23

Historical and statistical information…………………………………………...22

Conclusion................................................. ........................................................ ..8

List of sources........................................................ ....................................... 9

Applications........................................................ ................................................... 10

Appendix 1................................................... ........................................... 11

Appendix 2................................................... ........................................... 12

Introduction

The problem of the shadow economy has existed for a long time and in all countries of the world. In the transition economies of all countries, the shadow sector plays an ambiguous role. On the one hand, its secrecy from taxation increases the competitive advantages of enterprises that practice shadow activities, allows employees employed in them to receive additional income, and reduces the level of real unemployment. On the other hand, the functioning of the shadow sector causes damage to the state budget, the market economy loses its activity, real incomes and living standards of the population decrease, reproductive potential decreases, an investment decline occurs, and people disappear. internal sources accumulation, disorganization of the financial and monetary system occurs, also with rampant economic crime and in a corrupt state there cannot be a viable social system, a crisis comes in the sphere of socio-economic management. The Shadow Economy, along with many other social phenomena, negatively affects the social stability of Russian society and affects the future economic, social and political order.

The reputation of a country with a large-scale Shadow Economy is not only a political, but also an important economic factor that influences the terms of loans, the scale of foreign investment, etc., and, like any reputation, it is difficult to restore.

In different countries, the scale of development of the shadow sector is different, and the degree of its study also differs. This phenomenon is probably the least studied in Russia, and the scale of its manifestation is quite large.

The shadow economy experienced a special period during the USSR period. After all, people employed in the shadow sector had no opportunity to make money in principle, and besides, they risked their lives for the sake of their business. Their position forced them to “share” with both government agencies and criminal elements.

Most shining example shadow entrepreneurs Soviet period- these are shop workers. They and their activities form the basis of my course work and are the object of study.

The purpose of the course work is:

1) Find out the concept of the shadow economy and its features.

2) Determine the features of shadow entrepreneurship in the USSR and the reasons for its occurrence.

3) Consider workshop production as the main activity in the shadow sector

a) Find out: who went into workshop production?

b) Explain: why soviet people for this dangerous business?

c) Determine: features of “shop” life and work.

4) Determine the influence of the shadow sector on society and the state.

5) Understand: what remains from the shadow entrepreneurship of the USSR to the entrepreneurship of modern Russia.

The subject of the course work is the shadow economy and guild workers, including not only their entrepreneurial activities, but also their personal lives.

When writing the course work, the following scientific research methods were used:

Study of scientific articles and monographic publications

Description

The course work is based on the book of A. Nilov, a man whose fate was connected with the guild workers. And Radaev’s work, as the main scientific work on shadow entrepreneurship. As well as materials from the project “Tsekhoviki. Experience of collective research" on the website http://www.cehowiki.com.

Shadow economy. General information.

The concept of the shadow economy. Structure.

Currently, there are several points of view that define the concept of the shadow economy:

1. Shadow economy - economic activity, contrary to this legislation, i.e. it represents a set of illegal economic activities that fuel criminal offenses of varying degrees of severity.

2. Shadow economy - production, consumption, exchange and distribution of material goods not taken into account by official statistics and uncontrolled by society.

3. Shadow economy - all types of activities aimed at creating or satisfying needs that cultivate various vices in a person.

The shadow economy should be distinguished from the informal and criminal. The shadow economy is also not reflected in official reporting and formal contracts, and also conflicts with existing legislative provisions. An important part of the shadow economy is completely legal in its goals and content, but is associated with periodic violations of the law regarding the choice of means to achieve goals.

Elements of the shadow economy

There are several basic elements of the shadow economy, namely:

Concealment of the enterprise (carrying out regular organized economic activity without registration);

Concealment of business transactions (not reflecting them in contracts and reporting);

Concealing the hiring of labor (hiring without execution of employment contracts);

Hiding income (tax evasion).

Most often, these elements are closely interrelated, but this is not necessary. In principle, you can not register a business and still pay relatively fairly income tax. Or hide the operations of a registered enterprise.

Reasons for the growth of the shadow economy

Vadim Radaev identifies a number of “classical” reasons for the growth of the shadow economy 1, namely:

1. The emergence of a structural and economic crisis, complicating the situation on the labor market, which, in turn, gives rise to surges in small business and self-employment and becomes a breeding ground for the rapid growth of shadow relations;

2. Mass immigration from “third world” countries, supplemented by internal migration from villages to large cities and forced internal migration from depressed regions and “hot spots”.

3. The nature of government intervention in the economy. It is assumed that the relative share of the informal economy is directly dependent on three parameters: the degree of regulatory intervention, the level of taxation and the scale of corruption 1 ;

4. Opening of foreign markets and intensification of competition, primarily with producers from third world countries, encouraging reduction of costs by all legal and illegal means;

1. Radaev V. Shadow economy in the USSR / Russia: main segments and dynamics. – Vostok, 2000, No. 1

5. Evolution labor relations towards their greater informality and flexibility as a reaction to their significant institutionalization and regulation in previous decades, which is primarily characteristic of developed Western countries.

Forms of "shadowization" of the economy.

There are at least three forms of “shadowization” of the economy:

- passive form - when previously unregulated areas of activity are prohibited;

- competitive form - when business agents themselves avoid regulation in order to save transaction costs for registration, licensing, etc. and increase profitability through tax avoidance;

- form of obtaining privileges - when economic agents, without bypassing formal rules, provide themselves with special preferential conditions in the markets (for example, by bribing corrupt officials) 1.

Shadow entrepreneurship in the USSR.

In the early seventies, the underground business flourished in the USSR. At that stage of development of the socialist system, when it was helpless and passive, small and large “leftist” production workshops began to emerge.

The essence of the phenomenon

The underground phenomenon was that it was officially impossible to either organize an enterprise or sell the products produced. Therefore, the shop workers found a way out - official government agency clandestine products were produced and these products were sold by an unofficial shadow structure. Or vice versa - the products were produced by a shadow structure, but were sold through state trade organizations. The option in which everything was completely illegal was less common, since it was more difficult to implement in practice, and it was too easily detected by the OBHSS authorities.

It was usually impossible to obtain raw materials for underground production legally. Therefore, as a rule, this problem was solved in the following way: state property, through the unjustified write-off of material assets for production, provided surpluses for the production of unaccounted products. This was done by drawing up fake acts on the write-off and destruction of actually usable materials and raw materials, as well as in other ways. Additional products, as a rule, were made by workers of the same enterprise. In most cases, they did not know that their labor was being used for selfish purposes by the “guild workers.”

The activities of shop workers were often intertwined with such a concept as “pusher” (as in Soviet slang the suppliers of enterprises forced to operate in a planned economy were called), since the enterprise could not always officially purchase the necessary raw materials and officially sell the manufactured product.

Story

Subsequently, guilds became widely known during the years of stagnation, in the 70s, producing hard-to-find consumer goods (clothing, shoes, spare parts for cars) from production waste or “communized” materials, almost completely legalizing their activities in the late 80s.

Notes

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Synonyms:

See what “Tsekhovik” is in other dictionaries:

Noun, number of synonyms: 3 criminal (52) production worker (1) black marketeer (6) ... Dictionary of synonyms

shop worker- TSEKHOVIK, a, m. 1. Committed a crime consisting of exceeding official powers. 2. When Soviet power: convicted of maintaining secret private production, “underground workshops.” Poss. from ug... Dictionary of Russian argot

"Assa", a legendary film of the perestroika period: snow-covered Crimea, a passing era, love triangle. Underground millionaire Krymov (Stanislav Govorukhin) is educated, influential, rich and absolutely confident that he can buy everyone and everything with his money. At first, viewers take him for a bandit or a thief in law, and only at the very end it turns out that Krymov is an illegal businessman, a guild worker.

Movie 1

This is what the USSR called underground producers of highly scarce fashionable and high-quality goods: shoes, clothing, furniture, food and other things. It was still possible to have your own million in an indestructible union of free republics, but it’s just... illegal. Under pain of the death penalty, an alternative market for consumer goods was created in the country of victorious socialism, operating according to a gray scheme. The primary reason for the emergence of guild workers was the planned economy and shortages. In the Soviet Union, the State Planning Committee clearly regulated what should be produced and in what quantities. So, willy-nilly, an ordinary person had to wear a pea-colored coat with batting (and certainly with a plush collar), trousers with creases, and boots with eight holes for laces. The shortage became a sad reality of the Soviet era, but at the same time, the caste of underground producers owes its existence to it. Fashionable raincoats and turtlenecks, bags and scarves, linen and tablecloths, comfortable beautiful shoes - the production and distribution of all these goods could be put into production in a matter of months. Each Soviet “underground worker,” as one of the participants in the film “Tsekhoviki. A Dangerous Business,” Dmitry Dibrov, says, has his own history and biography.

The popular TV presenter, who was originally from Rostov-on-Don, had relatives who were shop workers. How did it all start for them? One day his uncle Grisha was asked how long his singing would continue and when he would finally get down to business. The family’s verdict was harsh: “Go make shoes!” And already eight years later, Nakhichevan had its own Don Corleone. Another, the “Cossack” uncle of the host of the program with the self-explanatory title “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” briefly sold woolen socks at the entrance to a local hotel. An influential relative, having learned about the family shame, with all his guild soul decided on the fate of his brother. A hundred rubles in compensation, and the socks went into the trash bin. Their new business was typical of the era. Somewhere on the state farm there was a completely legal knitting production, which had several fictitious employees. The real members of the close-knit team, without raising their heads, scribbled in the latest Japanese sewing machines coveted jeans of the brands Levi's, Wrangler and other shortages.

Film 2

The fight against the guild workers became tougher and then subsided, but never stopped, as, indeed, did their underground entrepreneurial activity. The authorities of the criminal world “oversaw” this criminal business in different ways. Some forced entrepreneurs to share, leaving them alone with their problems, while others, more loyal, protected them for a certain bribe, ensuring the safety of transactions. It was at this time that relationships began to develop, which later developed into an open racket in the early 90s of the last century. It was impossible to report attacks and threats to the police: this meant exposing yourself to arrest. By the way, the term “roof” comes from the professional slang of intelligence officers, for whom it meant the organization covering them. In the USSR, criminal “roofs” appeared with the emergence of the shadow economy. Already during perestroika in Russia, the history of American Chicago in the 30s of the last century was repeated, when former criminals became financial, industrial and even political elite. During the elections in the first State Duma OBKhSS workers experienced a real shock when they saw their old acquaintances on the TV screen.