Stalin's Quest for Gold : : The Torgsin Hard-Currency Shops and Soviet Industrialization / / Elena Osokina.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Osokina, Elena,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (348 p.) :; 29 b&w halftones

Stalin's Quest for Gold tells the story of Torgsin, a chain of retail shops established in 1930 with the aim of raising the hard currency needed to finance the USSR's ambitious industrialization program. At a time of desperate scarcity, Torgsin had access to the country's best foodstuffs and goods. Initially only foreigners were allowed to shop in Torgsin but the acute demand for hard-currency revenues forced Stalin to open Torgsin to Soviet citizens, who could exchange tsarist gold coins, and objects made of precious metals and gemstones, as well as foreign monies for foods and goods in its shops. Through her analysis of the state's large-scale entrepreneurship represented by Torgsin, Elena Osokina highlights the complexity and contradictions of Stalinism. Driven by the state's hunger for gold and the people's starvation, Torgsin rejected Marxist postulates of the socialist political economy: the notorious class approach and the state hard-currency monopoly. In its pursuit for gold Torgsin advertised in the capitalist West encouraging foreigners to purchase goods for their relatives in the USSR; and its seaport shops and restaurants operated semi-legally as brothels making foreign sailors spend hard currency for Soviet industrialization. Examining Torgsin from multiple perspectives—economic expediency, state and police surveillance, consumerism, even interior design and personnel—Stalin's Quest for Gold radically transforms the stereotypical view of the Soviet economy and enriches our understanding of everyday life in Stalin's Russia.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: An Accidental Finding -- Part I. Small Bureau to Trade Empire -- 1. The Birth of Torgsin -- 2. A Golden Idea -- 3. The Torgsin Empire -- 4. The Red Directors of Torgsin: The Political Commissar -- 5. Why Did Stalin Need Torgsin? -- Part II People’s Treasures -- 6. Gold -- 7. The Red Directors of Torgsin: The Intelligence Agent -- 8. Silver -- 9. Diamonds and Platinum -- 10. Send Dollars to Torgsin! -- Part III. Everyday Life in Torgsin -- 11. What’s for Sale? -- 12. The Patrons -- 13. Prices -- 14. Soviet Brothels -- 15. Torgsin and the Political Police -- 16. The Seller Is Always Right -- Part IV. Torgsin’s Swan Song -- 17. The Red Directors of Torgsin: The Socialist Revolutionary -- 18. Twilight -- 19. The Sorcerer’s Stone: The Alchemy of Soviet Industrialization -- Instead of a Conclusion: The Paradoxes of Torgsin -- Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index