Gold went to pay contributions on separate peace of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, which allowed Soviet Russia to withdraw from World War I, for "gifts" under peace treaties of the 1920s to neighbors - Baltic states, Poland, Turkey. Huge amounts of money were spent in the 1920s on inciting the world revolution and the creation of a Soviet spy network in the West. AT 1925 commission Senate The United States investigated the question of the Soviet export precious metals to the West. According to her, in 1920-1922 the Bolsheviks sold more than 500 tons of pure gold abroad. The reality of this assessment was confirmed both by secret documents of the Soviet government and by the meager cash in vaults. State Bank USSR. According to the "Report on the gold fund", compiled by government commission, which according to the instructions Lenina V.I. surveyed the financial situation of the country, 1 FV 1922 the Soviet state had gold for only 217.9 million gold rubles, and of these funds it was necessary to send 103 million gold rubles to pay off the state debt.
In addition, tons of gold and jewels, expropriated from the "possessing classes", went to cover the deficit of the Soviet foreign trade. Those who gave the gold were released on the condition that personally write a statement about their "voluntary donation" of gold to the Industrialization Fund Soviet Republic. With complete collapse economy, lack of exports and income from it, as well as difficulties with loans for capitalist Western Soviet Russia had to pay for import vital goods to national gold reserve. In the Soviet Union, the gold rush of the turn of the 1920s and 1930s was a state enterprise whose goal was to finance industrialization and create a national gold reserve. The methods by which it was carried out gave rise to a massive famine, Gulag, property looting churches, national museums and libraries, as well as personal savings and family heirlooms of their own citizens.
Extracting gold and currency, Stalin I.V. didn't skimp on anything. In the late 1920s, criminal investigation and militia handed over all the cases of "foreign exchangers" and "holders of valuables". economic management OGPU. under the slogan fight with currency speculation, "scrofulous campaigns" followed one after another - the withdrawal of currency and values the population, including household items. In the course were persuasion, deceit and terror. Part of the clergy, represented by the Renovation Church, supported the seizure of church valuables. In his appeal from 1922 leaders This church was declared: “And now, before our eyes, such a difficult thing has happened with the conversion of church values for bread for the hungry. This should have been a joyful feat of love for a dying brother, but it turned into an organized uprising against state power.
This caused blood. Blood was shed in order not to help Christ - the starving. By refusing to help the hungry, church people tried to create a coup d'état. Appeal of the Patriarch Tikhon became the banner around which the counter-revolutionaries rallied, dressed in church clothes and moods. But the broad masses of the people and the majority of the rank-and-file clergy did not follow their call. The people's conscience has condemned the perpetrators of the shedding of blood, and the death of those dying of hunger falls as a heavy reproach on those who want to use the people's calamity for their political purposes.
We, the undersigned clergymen of the Orthodox Church, who are spokesmen for broad church circles, condemn the actions of those hierarchs and those pastors who are guilty of organizing opposition to the state authorities to help the starving and in its other undertakings for the benefit of the working people. "In the 1920s, the OGPU persuaded the Jews - Nepmen turn in valuables with the help of their own melodies, which were performed by a guest musician. The OGPU also had frankly bloody methods. For example, "dollar steam room" or "golden cells": "foreigners" were kept in prison until they told where the valuables were hidden, or relatives from abroad they will not send a ransom - "salvation money". Demonstrative executions of "currency and gold hiders", sanctioned by the Politburo, were also in the arsenal of methods of the OGPU.
In 1930 alone, the OGPU handed over to the State Bank valuables worth more than 10 million gold rubles (the equivalent of almost 8 tons of pure gold). AT MJ 1932 Deputy Chairman of the OGPU Yagoda G.G.. I.V. in gold terms). By the time of death dictator The gold reserves of the USSR grew at least 14 times. As a legacy to subsequent Soviet leaders Stalin I.V. left, according to various estimates, from 2051 to 2804 tons of gold. Stalin's gold box turned out to be larger than the gold treasury of tsarist Russia. Far from Stalin I.V. was his main rival - Hitler. In n. During the Second World War, Germany's gold resources were estimated at $192 million - the equivalent of 170 tons of pure gold, to which approx. 500 tons of gold looted by the Nazis in Europe.
Balts Bank Central (Bank of Russia)
This material is presented as a hypothesis.Although the former manager of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Kruchina, fell out of the window of the 5th floor in 1991, not hypothetically, but quite reliably.
After 1977, the Cainites greatly weakened the military and economic potential of the USSR.
Andropov in September 1983, on the orders of Kaganovich, gave the command to take out more than half of the USSR bank gold from the Krasnoyarsk gold depository - under the mythical program: "Bipolar world, the creation of joint troops with the United States to fight world terrorism." As a result, more than 7,000 thousand tons were transported to Vladivostok.
From there, dry cargo ships, guarded by warships of the Pacific Fleet, delivered bank gold to the Indian Ocean and reloaded onto US ships.
The remaining 7 thousand tons of banking gold of the USSR were squandered until the end of 1991.
Under the "supervision" of the Jewish king Kaganovich for 1988 - 1989. formed cooperatives took out of the USSR half of the products produced in the country consumer goods and existing assets. The domestic market collapsed, an artificially created period of absence of industrial and food products began in the country.
It was at the beginning of 1989, on the orders of Kaganovich, that the active phase of the export from our country - the USSR - of gold began, the main, lion's share of which was mined through the Ministry of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy, although practical accounting of this gold was not kept properly and, by the most voluminous direction of the theft of gold , there was production at unaccounted deposits.
A clear accounting of the gold mined in the country at that time was not carried out as a result of chaos, uncertainty and corruption in this industry, and documents with orders for the export of various parties of gold, after its practical export, were destroyed.
The Central Committee did not report on gold either to the Central Bank or to the USSR Ministry of Finance, and these bodies, in turn, did not report to the Central Committee.
At the beginning of 1989, on a secret order of the Council of Ministers, 50 tons of pure gold was first transferred from Gokhran to the State Bank of the USSR, and then this gold was transferred to Vnesheconombank.
To hide this fact, three days after sending the secret order, the Council of Ministers withdrew it, when the gold had already been transferred to Vnesheconombank.
Then couriers from the KGB took the gold from Vnesheconombank abroad and put it in vaults created by Vnesheconombank in London, Paris, Geneva and Singapore.
All this passed under the guise of buying food for the miners, who at that time were on strike due to non-payment of wages and hunger riots, and only a few small batches with toilet soap and washing powder returned to the country.
The exported gold was transferred to foreign jewelry firms, and cash from him put on the accounts of the Cainites, members of the criminal community.
The gold was taken out by Aeroflot scheduled flights in wooden boxes, which were equipped under the passenger seats.
These shipments of gold were managed by the Cainite Ulyanov, who acted as the head of the "gold" department located on the Kuznetsky bridge. He also later fled to the United States with a shipment of gold and became the owner of the largest financial company there.
In the late 80s, gold mining in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia was, at first glance, very insignificant. But this was only formal, because only the Almalyk mining and smelting (copper) plant produced up to a ton of associated gold during the processing of copper ores at several small deposits.
In Uzbekistan, not far from the city of Zarovshan, in the desert, at least a third of all Soviet gold was mined, which was an associated metal at the deposit, and uranium was the main object of extraction. This is known from the materials of the Uzbek criminal case, which was investigated by Investigators for Particularly Important Cases Gdlyan and Ivanov .
But the most significant flow of gold came into the shadow circulation from non-state, private mining.
It was carried out not only in Siberia and the Urals, but also on a huge scale in Central Asia, where there were dozens of clandestine mines, which were supervised by the Karaite Cainites by agreement with the king of the Jews in the USSR - Kaganovich.
On December 28, 1989, the Ministry of Finance abolished the surcharges to the ruble from the exchange rate ratio, thereby finally the ruble was driven into a corner and lost all value for enterprises, and agriculture began to collapse.
Political aim: to make the market of raw materials and goods of the USSR a strong rear of Western TNCs in the conditions of the inconvertibility of the Soviet ruble, artificially emasculating its value.
By government decrees, by order of N.I. Ryzhkov, the gold reserves of the USSR and banking gold were thrown into the purchase of food abroad - they deliberately flowed abroad, and under the guise of receiving "foreign" food, "domestic" food was often issued .
In 1989, 2,750 kg of gold was exported from Magadan to Tatarstan for the purchase of corn seeds from the United States and Canada, and then this gold, with the assistance of KGB officers, together with diamonds worth $ 28 million, were sent to Israel.
From the inconspicuous resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of January 10, 1990 on raising the price of gold, the ruble immediately fell in price. It was 100 rubles for 1 year, and it became 200 rubles.
A golden basis for the depreciation of the ruble was created. But most importantly, the ground was created for the economic instability of Soviet enterprises.
Sergey Zhelenkov
***
The first post-war monetary reform was carried out from December 16 to 29, 1947. Its preparation was kept secret from the population, although formally - "so that speculators would not know about it." Allegedly during the war, speculators greatly enriched themselves by trading on the black market, so the confiscation of funds was needed. This was partly true, but the main reason was, of course, another withdrawal of money from the population in favor of the state.
The new ruble was exchanged for 10 old ones, but when recalculating salaries, one new ruble counted as one old. This was the means of confiscating the free cash accumulated by the "speculators". It was believed that the right Soviet people keep money in savings banks, but even there the terms of exchange were not equivalent. Deposits up to 3 thousand rubles were recalculated one to one, but deposits from 3 to 10 thousand rubles were reduced by one third, and deposits over 10 thousand rubles were reduced by two thirds. Thus, the largest deposits were confiscated by the state.
The currency reform of 1961 looked like a simple denomination: ten old rubles were exchanged for one new one, in cash or in deposits, and all prices were recalculated in the same way 10:1. But it also contained a trick. The official content of gold in the ruble and official exchange rate ruble rose only 4.44 times against the dollar. There was no free conversion of the ruble then, and this did not affect the mass of the population. But this now had a small effect in setting Soviet retail prices for imported goods(Which, by the way, were still few in those days.)
The last confiscatory monetary reform, which some consider "the last coffin driven into the lid of the USSR", was carried out by the USSR Cabinet of Ministers headed by V. Pavlov on January 23-25, 1991. The new head of the then all-Union government believed that such a measure would reduce the number money supply in the hands of the population (of course, in the first place, the "speculators") and thus solve the problem of shortages, which at that time were especially dissatisfied with people. The reform was prepared as a military operation against the population: it was announced suddenly. People had the opportunity to exchange old large banknotes of 50- and 100-rouble samples for new ones only within three days. The volume of exchange in one hand was limited to 1000 rubles. The tension in the country because of this, there was incredible, economical effect turned out to be zero. The deposits were not touched.
Well, what belongs to history newest Russia- this is the largest confiscation of deposits by the state from its citizens in the history of our country. It was carried out under the guise of hyperinflation. However, that's another story.
By the end of the 1920s - the time when Stalin's sole power was established - the country of the Soviets was on the verge of financial bankruptcy. The gold and foreign exchange reserves of the USSR did not exceed 200 million gold rubles, which was the equivalent of 150 tons of pure gold. Negligible compared to the pre-war gold reserves Russian Empire, which in value reached almost 1.8 billion gold rubles (the equivalent of more than 1,400 tons of pure gold). In addition, the USSR had an impressive external debt, and the country had to spend astronomical funds on an industrial breakthrough.
By the time of the dictator's death in March 1953, the gold reserves of the USSR had grown at least 14 times. As a legacy to subsequent Soviet leaders, Stalin left, according to various estimates, from 2051 to 2804 tons of gold. Stalin's gold box turned out to be larger than the gold treasury of tsarist Russia. Far from Stalin was his main rival - Hitler. At the beginning of World War II, Germany's gold resources were estimated at $192 million, the equivalent of 170 tons of pure gold, to which must be added another 500 tons of gold looted by the Nazis in Europe.
What price was paid for the creation of Stalin's "stabilization fund"?
The royal gold treasury was thrown into the wind in just a few years. Even before the Bolsheviks came to power, more than 640 million gold rubles were exported abroad by the tsarist and Provisional governments in payment of war loans. In the ups and downs of the Civil War, with the participation of both whites and reds, they spent, stole and lost gold in the amount of about 240 million gold rubles.
But the "royal" gold reserves melted especially quickly in the first years of Soviet power. Gold went to pay indemnities for a separate Brest peace with Germany, which allowed Soviet Russia to withdraw from the First World War, for "gifts" under peace treaties of the 1920s to neighbors - the Baltic states, Poland, Turkey. Huge amounts of money were spent in the 1920s on fomenting a world revolution and creating a Soviet spy network in the West. In addition, tons of gold and jewelry expropriated from the "possessing classes" went to cover the deficit of Soviet foreign trade. With a complete collapse of the economy, the absence of exports and income from it, as well as difficulties in obtaining loans in the capitalist West, Soviet Russia had to pay for the import of vital goods with its national gold reserves.
In 1925, a US Senate commission investigated the question of Soviet exports of precious metals to the West. According to her, in 1920-1922, the Bolsheviks sold over 500 tons of pure gold abroad! The realism of this assessment was confirmed both by secret documents of the Soviet government and by the meager cash in the vaults of the State Bank of the USSR. According to the “Report on the Gold Fund”, compiled by the government commission, which, on the instructions of Lenin, examined the financial situation of the country, as of February 1, 1922, the Soviet state had gold for only 217.9 million gold rubles, and of these funds it was necessary to send 103 million gold rubles to pay off the public debt.
By the end of the 1920s, the situation had not improved. Russia's gold reserves had to be created anew.
In 1927, forced industrialization began in the USSR. Stalin's calculation that foreign exchange earnings from the export of agricultural products, food and raw materials would finance the industrial development of the country did not materialize: in the conditions of the global crisis that erupted in 1929 and the protracted depression in the West, prices for agricultural products fell hopelessly. In 1931-1933 - the decisive stage of Soviet industrialization - real export earnings annually were 600-700 million gold rubles less than expected, pre-crisis. The USSR sold grain at half or even a third of the pre-crisis world price, while millions of their own peasants who grew this grain were dying of hunger.
Stalin did not think about retreat. Having started industrialization with an empty wallet, the USSR took money from the West, Germany was the main creditor. Since the autumn of 1926, the country's external debt had grown by the end of 1931 from 420.3 million to 1.4 billion gold rubles. To pay off this debt, it was necessary to sell to the West not only grain, timber and oil, but also tons of gold! The meager gold and foreign exchange reserves of the country were melting before our eyes. According to the State Bank of the USSR, from October 1, 1927 to November 1, 1928, more than 120 tons of pure gold were exported abroad. In fact, this meant that all the country's free gold and foreign exchange reserves were used, plus all the gold industrially mined in that financial year. It was in 1928 that Stalin began selling off the country's museum collections. Artistic export turned into a loss for Russia of masterpieces from the Hermitage, the palaces of the Russian aristocracy and private collections. But the costs of an industrial breakthrough were astronomical, and the export of works of art could provide only a very small part of them. The largest "deal of the century" with US Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, as a result of which the Hermitage lost 21 masterpieces of painting, brought the Stalinist leadership only about 13 million gold rubles (the equivalent of less than 10 tons of gold).
Gold from the State Bank was delivered by steamships to Riga, and from there by land to Berlin, to the Reichsbank. In the early 1930s, gold cargo from the USSR arrived in Riga every two weeks. According to the American embassy in Latvia, which closely monitored Soviet gold exports, from 1931 until the end of April 1934, more than 360 million gold rubles (more than 260 tons) of gold were exported from the USSR through Riga. However, solve the problem external debt and financing of industrialization at the expense of the gold and foreign exchange reserves available in the State Bank was impossible.
What to do? At the turn of the 1920s-1930s, the country's leadership was seized by a gold rush.
Stalin respected the economic achievements of America. According to eyewitnesses, he read Bret Hart and was inspired by the gold rush in mid-19th century California. But the Soviet-style gold rush was strikingly different from California free enterprise.
There she was the business and the risk of free people who wanted to get rich. The discovery of gold in California breathed life into the region, giving impetus to the development Agriculture and industry in the Western United States. California gold contributed to the victory of the industrial North over the slave-owning South.
In the Soviet Union, the gold rush of the turn of the 1920s and 1930s was a state enterprise whose goal was to finance industrialization and create a national gold reserve. The methods by which it was carried out gave rise to mass starvation, the zek's Gulag, the looting of church property, national museums and libraries, as well as personal savings and family heirlooms of their own citizens.
Extracting gold and currency, Stalin did not disdain anything. In the late 1920s, the criminal investigation department and the police transferred all the cases of "currency traders" and "holders of valuables" to the Economic Directorate of the OGPU. Under the slogan of combating currency speculation, “scrofulous campaigns” followed one after another - the seizure of currency and valuables from the population, including household items. In the course were persuasion, deceit and terror. The dream of Nikanor Ivanovich from Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita about the theatrical forced surrender of currency is one of the echoes of the "scrofula" of those years. The torture concert for currency traders was not an idle fantasy of the writer. In the 1920s, the OGPU persuaded Nepmen Jews to turn in their valuables with the help of their own melodies, which were performed by a guest musician.
But jokes aside, the OGPU also had frankly bloody methods. For example, the “dollar steam room” or “golden cells”: “foreigners” were kept in prison until they told where the valuables were hidden, or relatives from abroad sent a ransom - “salvation money”. Demonstrative executions of "currency and gold hiders" sanctioned by the Politburo were also in the arsenal of methods of the OGPU.
In 1930 alone, the OGPU handed over more than 10 million gold rubles worth of valuables to the State Bank (the equivalent of almost 8 tons of pure gold). In May 1932, the deputy chairman of the OGPU, Yagoda, reported to Stalin that there were valuables worth 2.4 million gold rubles in the OGPU cash desk and that, together with the valuables that “were previously handed over to the State Bank”, the OGPU extracted 15.1 million gold rubles (almost 12 tons purity in gold equivalent).
At the very least, the methods of the OGPU made it possible to get large treasures and savings, but there were other kinds of values in the country. They were not hidden in hiding places or underground, ventilation pipes or mattresses. In front of everyone, they shone with a wedding ring on their finger, an earring in their earlobe, a golden cross, a silver spoon in a chest of drawers. Multiplied by the 160 million population of the country, these simple little things, scattered in caskets and sideboards, could turn into huge wealth. With the depletion of the gold reserves of the State Bank and the growth of foreign exchange appetites for industrialization, the leadership of the USSR grew stronger desire to take these savings from the population as well. I also found a way. The values of the population in the famine years of the first five-year plans were bought up by the shops of Torgsin - the "All-Union Association for Trade with Foreigners on the Territory of the USSR."
Torgsin was opened in July 1930, but at first it served only foreign tourists and sailors in Soviet ports. The depletion of gold and foreign exchange reserves and the need for industrialization forced the Stalinist leadership in 1931 - the climax of the madness of industrial imports - to open the doors of torgsins to Soviet citizens. In exchange for cash currency, gold royal coinage, and then household gold, silver and precious stones, Soviet people received Torgsin's money, which they paid in his stores. With the admission of a hungry Soviet consumer to Torgsin, the sleepy life of elite stores ended. Torgsins shining with mirrors in large cities and unsightly little shops in godforsaken villages - Torgsin's network covered the whole country.
Torgsin's sad triumph was the terrible year 1933. Happy was the one who had something to hand over to Torgsin. In 1933, people brought 45 tons of pure gold and almost 2 tons of silver to Torgsin. With these funds, they purchased, according to incomplete data, 235,000 tons of flour, 65,000 tons of cereals and rice, and 25,000 tons of sugar. In 1933, food accounted for 80% of all goods sold in Torgsin, with cheap rye flour accounting for almost half of all sales. Those dying of hunger exchanged their meager savings for bread. Mirror shops of delicacies were lost among Torgsin's flour storehouses and sackcloth bags of flour. Torgsin's analysis of prices shows that during the famine, the Soviet state sold food to its citizens, on average, three times more expensive than abroad.
During its short existence (1931 - February 1936), Torgsin mined 287.3 million gold rubles for the needs of industrialization - the equivalent of 222 tons of pure gold. This was enough to pay for the import of industrial equipment for ten giants of Soviet industry - Magnitogorsk, Kuznetsk, DneproGES, Stalingrad Tractor and other enterprises. The savings of Soviet citizens amounted to more than 70% of Torgsin's buying. The name Torgsin - trade with foreigners - is false. It would be more honest to call this enterprise "Torgsovlyud", that is, trade with the Soviet people.
The savings of Soviet citizens are the ultimate value. The OGPU, with the help of violence, and Torgsin, through hunger, almost completely devastated the people's money-boxes. But the gold was in the bowels of the earth.
On the eve of the First World War, in 1913, 60.8 tons of gold were mined in Russia. The industry was in the hands of foreigners, it was overwhelmingly dominated by manual labor. In the Civil War, the Bolsheviks defended all the known gold-bearing lands of the Russian Empire, but wars and revolutions destroyed the gold mining industry. Under the New Economic Policy, private miners and foreign concessionaires began to revive gold mining. It is paradoxical that, given the state's acute need for gold, Soviet leaders treated the gold mining industry as a third-rate industry. They spent a lot of gold, but cared little about its extraction, living like a temporary worker at the expense of confiscations and buying up valuables.
Stalin paid attention to gold mining only with the beginning of the industrial breakthrough. At the end of 1927, he summoned the old Bolshevik Alexander Pavlovich Serebrovsky, who by that time had already distinguished himself in the restoration of oil industry, and appointed him chairman of the newly created Soyuzoloto. In Soviet Russia, only about 20 tons of pure gold was mined that year, but Stalin set the task in a bold Bolshevik way: to catch up and overtake the Transvaal, the world leader that produced more than 300 tons of pure gold per year!
As a professor at the Moscow Mining Academy, Serebrovsky twice went to the United States to take over American experience. He studied technologies and equipment at mines and mines in Alaska, Colorado, California, Nevada, South Dakota, Arizona, Utah, bank financing of gold mining in Boston and Washington, the operation of factories in Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia and St. Louis. He recruited American engineers to work in the USSR. Due to health problems, the second trip ended in the hospital. But the selfless work of Serebrovsky and his associates brought results. The flow of gold into the vaults of the State Bank began to grow. Since 1932, the "civilian" gold mining, which was under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry, was supplemented by Dalstroy - the gold mining of Kolyma prisoners.
The astronomical figures of the plans were not fulfilled, but gold mining in the USSR grew steadily from year to year. The fate of Serebrovsky was sad. He was appointed to the post of people's commissar, and the next day he was arrested. They carried him out on a stretcher straight from the hospital, where Serebrovsky was treating his health, which had been undermined in the service of the Soviet state. In February 1938 he was shot. But the deed was done - a gold mining industry was created in the USSR.
In the second half of the 1930s, the USSR came in second in the world in gold mining, overtaking the United States and Canada and yielding, albeit by a huge margin, only to South Africa, whose annual production approached the 400-ton mark by the end of the decade. The West was frightened by the loud statements of the Soviet leaders and seriously feared that the USSR would flood the world market with cheap gold.
In the pre-war period (1932–1941), the convicts' Dalstroy brought almost 400 tons of pure gold to the Stalinist leadership. Non-Gulag "civilian" gold mining for the period 1927/28-1935 produced another 300 tons. There is no data on the work of "civilian" free gold mining in the second half of the 1930s, but if we assume that development proceeded at least at the same pace as and in the mid-1930s (an annual increase of 15 tons on average), then its pre-war contribution to the achievement of the currency independence of the USSR will increase by another 800 tons. Gold in the USSR continued to be mined both during the war years and after it. AT last years Stalin's life, the annual gold production in the USSR exceeded the 100-ton mark.
Having created a gold mining industry, the country overcame the gold and currency crisis. As a result of the victory in World War II, the gold reserves of the USSR were replenished due to confiscations and reparations. After the war, Stalin stopped selling gold abroad. Khrushchev unsealed Stalin's moneybox, who spent gold mainly on the purchase of grain. Brezhnev also actively spent "Stalin's gold", mainly to support third world countries. By the end of Brezhnev's rule, Stalin's gold reserves had melted by more than a thousand tons. Under Gorbachev, the process of liquidating the Stalinist treasury was completed. In October 1991, Grigory Yavlinsky, who was in charge of economic aid negotiations with the G7, announced that the country's gold reserves had been reduced to about 240 tons. The USSR's main opponent in the Cold War, the United States, had accumulated more than 8,000 tons by that time.
By hoarding gold in all possible, and often criminal and reckless ways, Stalin accumulated funds that ensured the influence of the USSR in the world for several decades to come. However, it was a disservice to Russia. Stalin's gold reserves extended the life of an inefficient planned economy. The Soviet era ended with Stalin's gold treasury. The leaders of the new post-Soviet Russia had to create a new national gold and foreign exchange reserves.
Remember the Soviet meme "Keep your money in a savings bank!"? With a characteristic satirical film addition: “If you have them, of course!”? Of course, remember. Remember also that among the strategic key objects that any armed uprising had to take possession of, Lenin always named banks. He considered the greatest mistake of the Paris Commune that it did not take over the banks. The Bolsheviks were not going to allow such and such a mistake.
The first confiscation of deposits from the population began by the Soviet government in the first days of its existence. So, in early November 1917, the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee issued an order that sharply limited the issuance of cash. These were local initiatives so far. On December 14 (27), 1917, the Bolsheviks captured National Bank and issued a decree according to which banking was henceforth declared a state monopoly. Savings banks in Russia have always been a state monopoly. By the way, they were used mainly by the poor. It is clear that due to hyperinflation and the "needs of the revolution" they could no longer use their labor contributions made before the revolution, they were not compensated for them.
Another thing is that since 1921, the Bolsheviks again returned to the monetary economy and the usual forms financial institutions(leaving this matter in the hands of the state). But the population did not trust them much, preferring to keep their savings in valuable valuables: in gold items, antiques, foreign currency. The people still circulated a lot of royal gold chervonets, which the state recognized by setting a floating (of course, non-equivalent) exchange rate for Soviet banknotes. Starting industrialization, the Soviet government was in dire need of money. And resorted to forced buying, and even confiscation of valuables from the population.
Holders foreign exchange submitted to criminal court. When these funds were exhausted, they found another. In July 1930, the shops of Torgsin were opened to trade with foreigners. In 1931, they decided to admit their citizens there. There they could “mortgage” (actually sell without a real opportunity to redeem) for a pittance in the form of “solid Soviet banknotes” (apparently, then the bitterly ironic expression “wooden ruble” appeared) royal gold coins and gold objects. In conditions of general poverty and inflation caused by Stalin's "big push" policy, people even carried wedding rings there. No usurer in the history of the world has hardly squeezed gold from ordinary people with such manic and stubborn greed, as did the "state of workers and peasants." But for the state it was “effective management”. During 1931-1936, Torgsin mined 222 tons of pure gold. This was enough to pay for the import of industrial equipment for the ten largest giants of the new Soviet industry.
The first post-war monetary reform was carried out from December 16 to 29, 1947. Its preparation was kept secret from the population, although formally - "so that speculators do not know about it." Allegedly during the war, speculators greatly enriched themselves by trading on the black market, so the confiscation of funds was needed. This was partly true, but the main reason was, of course, another withdrawal of money from the population in favor of the state.
The new ruble was exchanged for 10 old ones, but when recalculating salaries, one new ruble was considered as one old one. This was the means of confiscating the free cash accumulated by the "speculators". It was believed that the right Soviet people keep money in savings banks, but even there the terms of exchange were not equivalent. Deposits up to 3 thousand rubles were recalculated one to one, but the contribution from 3 to 10 thousand rubles was reduced by one third, and the deposit over 10 thousand rubles - by two thirds. Thus, the largest deposits were confiscated by the state.
The currency reform of 1961 looked like a simple denomination: ten old rubles were exchanged for one new one, in cash or in deposits, and all prices were recalculated in the same way 10:1. But it also contained a trick. The official content of gold in the ruble and the official exchange rate of the ruble against the dollar rose only 4.44 times. There was no free conversion of the ruble then, and this did not affect the mass of the population. But this now had a small effect in setting Soviet retail prices for imported goods (which, by the way, were also few then).
The last confiscatory monetary reform, which some consider "the last coffin driven into the lid of the USSR", was carried out by the USSR Cabinet of Ministers headed by V. Pavlov on January 23-25, 1991. The new head of the then all-union government believed that such a measure would be able to reduce the amount of money in the hands of the population (of course, first of all, from "speculators") and thus solve the problem of deficit, which people were especially dissatisfied with at that time. The reform was prepared as a military operation against the population: it was announced suddenly. People had the opportunity to exchange old large banknotes of 50- and 100-rouble samples for new ones only within three days. The volume of exchange in one hand was limited to 1000 rubles. Because of this, the tension in the country was incredible, the economic effect turned out to be zero. The deposits were not touched.
Well, what is already related to the history of modern Russia is the largest confiscation of deposits from its citizens by the state in terms of its scale in the history of our country. It was carried out under the guise of hyperinflation. However, that's another story.
