1 February 1936 year
Torgsin, the All-Union Association for Trade with Foreigners (the acronym was also known as "trade syndicate"), was liquidated in the USSR. The state organization served foreigners and Soviet citizens with "currency assets," offering them the exchange of foreign currency, gold, silver, and jewelry for food and manufactured goods.
Gold-buying shops, the so-called "Torgsin" stores, are overflowing. You can buy everything here; it's a little more expensive than abroad, but there's everything. This is how the last vestiges of gold, silver, and currency are squeezed out of the population. These gold pumps are located all over the country.
(Rudolf Wolters, 1933)
Torgsin was founded in 1930 and initially consisted of a chain of several stores in major cities, primarily selling antiques to foreign tourists. With the onset of industrialization, the USSR desperately needed foreign currency, while the ruble's purchasing power was steadily declining.
Since 1931, Soviet citizens were also allowed to shop at Torgsin, but only with precious metals and foreign currency. By 1934, nearly 1500 such stores were operating across the country.
The everyday goods at Torgsin were both Soviet and foreign-made, including some from the humanitarian aid sent to the USSR by Western countries free of charge (the fact that it was supposed to be distributed free of charge was kept quiet).
Valuables from the population were accepted "by weight"—gold medals from the time of Catherine the Great were valued like dental crowns, and silver coins from antiquity were valued like Soviet fifty-ruble coins from the 1920s. After the appraisal, the citizen was given a "commodity order."
Soviet citizens were prohibited from possessing foreign currency; it was considered a criminal offense, and it had to be exchanged for checks. This practice remained until the end of Soviet power, only Torgsin was replaced by "Beryozka" stores. But back then, what difference did it make to us whether we had checks or dollars? The main thing was that you could buy groceries at Torgsin with checks.
(Valery Kadzhaya)
For many, deciding to go to Torgsin was akin to a heroic act—one could become the target of the OGPU's attention, be detained, and subject to subsequent arrest and confiscation.
"Where did you get the currency?" they asked Nikanor Ivanovich heartily.
"God, the true God, the Almighty," Nikanor Ivanovich began, "sees everything, and that's where I belong. I've never held currency in my hands, never even suspected it! I took it, but I took it in our Soviet currency! I registered people for money, I don't argue, sometimes... Let's face it, everyone in the housing office is a thief. But I never took any currency!"
(The Master and Margarita)
During the famine in the USSR in 1932-1933, people handed over their valuables and exchanged their savings for food. Food products accounted for 80% of all goods sold at Torgsin stores: half of these sales were rye flour. Torgsin prices were several times higher than export prices.
In 1933, our village was crushed by famine. The songs died down, the weddings and parties died down, the dogs grew quiet, the pigeons disappeared… the cattle in the yards bellowed under the knife, horses began to fall in the streets. <> That year, precisely that year, horseless and hungry, men and women appeared on the winter road with knapsacks, carrying their belongings and gold, whoever had it, to the Torgsin store for barter.
(Victor Astafyev)
I was born during the Great Ukrainian Famine. To save my child, my grandmother took her wedding rings to the Bakhmut store and used them to buy semolina: "That's why you're alive."
(Galina Shcherbakova, author of the story "You Never Dreamed of It")
In 1933, Torgsin received 45 tons of pure gold and almost 2 tons of silver from the population. In just five years of its existence, the organization mined the equivalent of 222 tons of pure gold and earned the state approximately 280 million gold rubles (art exports earned 14 times less during these years).
After the food situation improved, the number of Torgsin outlets began to decline, and at the beginning of 1936 the organization was liquidated.
Another chain of branded stores operating in foreign currency, "Beryozka," was founded in 1961 and existed until 1988, when it was closed as part of the perestroika "fight against privileges."
