Spekulanti: gear-decked fat cats of trade organisations

Press, 12 July 1988, Page 13

Spekulanti: gear-decked fat cats of trade organisations

IN MOSCOW

Patricia Legras

Any businessman, who has dealings with Moscow, generally finds that sooner or later he has to pass through the hands of some strangely named organisation ending with the suffix “torg” — meaning "trade.” “Mashpriboraintorg” controls import and export of communications equipment and machines; "mebelintorg” handles furniture (mebel); “prodintorg” deals with food products. However, none of the official lists includes the most lucrative organisation of all: "spekultorg.” “Moskovski Komsomolets,” the newspaper for young communists, recently announced sarcastically that the black market operations of the capital should be christened with this name.

“Spekultorg,” writes the newspaper, is a non-official organisation with long traditions. It deals with the buying and selling of articles which cannot normally be found on the market — at speculative prices. Its profits are enormous.

Its headquarters are situated near the second-hand shop on Shabolovka Street, which sells ordinary radios and television sets. But getting to the shop is not easy since the pavement outside is crowded with hundreds of salesmen and clients dealing in sophisticated foreign electronic equipment.

"Moskovski Komsomolets” describes the black marketeers (spekulanti) as wearing shirts priced at 200 roubles ($600), shoes at 500 ($1500), and denim outfits at 700 ($2100) when the average salary is 200 roubles ($600) per month. Their cars are parked nearby, and used to carry their goods, or to make a quick getaway when the police appear. The profiteers take on parttime jobs, which keeps them within the law but allows plenty of leisure for commerce.

“Prices range from 7000 roubles for a Japanese Toshiba television to 500 for an Olympus dictaphone. There are watches of various makes: Orient, Seiko, Omega. Compared to these, Chinese fountain pens, French perfume, Italian boots at 270 roubles, chewing gum at 5 roubles, strangely shaped foreign condoms, chocolates and shiny gadgets for cars are sold for peanuts.” Although the newspaper points out that most of these items are brought into the Soviet Union by foreigners, particularly students,

it does not follow the usual habit of blaming them — apart from a North Korean music student detained with 190 Orient watches on him and a Vietnamese with 30.

It also notes that other sources are the “beriozka” shops where foreigners can buy attractive goods for hard currency, in unlimited quantities, and then resell them for large amounts of roubles. Instead, “Moskovski Komsomolets” emphasises that the only way of stopping this black market is a reform of the economic mechanism of the country. But so far, Gorbachev’s changes have made little difference to the standards or supplies of Russianmade goods. The local mafias, operating through middlemen, cannot even be touched by the law, since what they sell is non-existent in any Russian shop and therefore has no official price. Toshiba., television sets cannot be counted as “defitsitni” since they do not figure in everyday commerce.

So what can be done to avoid such enormous prices, asks the daily paper. It is impossible for the state to import everything that cannot be found in Russia.

Perhaps second-hand shops should be opened, it suggests, where the prices are not officially fixed as they are now, but set by the seller himself. Then no-one would be outside the law. An obvious demand for electronic equipment would be partly satisfied — and as a Anal advantage, the State would receive a percentage of the transactions in the form of sales tax. A good example of “if you can’t beat them, join them.”