Eh, liberal reforms. Perhaps in any other country in the world such innovations would bring positive changes, but not in our country. Unfortunately, the noble-sounding slogans “For democracy!”, “For fair elections!”, “For human rights,” which we have heard more than once in our history, are in fact accompanied by, in fact, total robbery and geopolitical weakening of Russia. The wind of change is blowing away everything in its path: the army, navy, public order, industry and state sovereignty. The values of the defeated power immediately become the object of all sorts of scams and speculation. This can be confirmed by the “despicable metal” - gold. And, to be more precise, the gold reserves of Russia, which in the 20th century twice left the country’s national territory forever due to the massive betrayal of the power elite.
The famous blogger, writer and publicist Nikolai Starikov, in his article entitled “Where did the gold of the USSR disappear?” published an interesting letter from one of his readers, in which the author describes how and by what routes the gold reserves of the USSR were exported at the end of Gorbachev’s perestroika. You can read this message.
Nikolai Viktorovich ends his post with these words: “This is the story. Maybe some of you, dear readers, have encountered, by the will of fate, that same “mysteriously disappeared gold?”.
In answer to this question, I will say that I have encountered it. Not in reality, of course, but when reading journalistic literature. Now the author of these lines is finishing reading the book “Crisis”, written by State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein back in 2009. I would like to make my small contribution to conveying truthful information about the dashing 90s to the maximum possible number of my compatriots. In this regard, let me give an excerpt from this work, which describes in sufficient detail the procedure for the treacherous export of the USSR’s gold reserves to the West. We read:
“Former Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government Mikhail Poltoranin, who studied in detail the closed archives of the Politburo, devoted many years to unraveling this tangle.
Poltoranin saw with his own eyes documents confirming that in the late 1980s gold reserves were actively exported from the USSR.
All these decisions of the Politburo were, of course, not just secret, but were labeled “Of Special Importance.” Accordingly, operations to export gold also took place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy.
It was transported by Vnesheconombank couriers with certificates from the KGB and the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee; Among them is, by the way, Gusinsky’s trusted man Igor Malashenko (later general director of the NTV television company). No one inspected gold-bearing couriers at the border - the customs service was instructed to let them through Sheremetyevo-2 without hindrance.
According to the papers, the export of gold was formalized as a foreign trade operation, supposedly it was used to pay for imported goods, mainly food. In fact, it was pure fiction. In return, almost nothing was returned to the country.
Poltoranin managed to trace in detail the fate of one of these shipments: 50 tons of gold of the highest standard, sent abroad in 1990 by secret order of the USSR Council of Ministers to pay for food for the needs of the population.
The route was as follows: gold was delivered from Gokhran to Vnesheklonombank, from there it was transported by couriers to the vaults of Soviet foreign banks (Paris, London, Geneva, Singapore), the banks sold it to jewelry companies, and the resulting currency went into the anonymous accounts of mysterious people from Moscow.
All. As one movie character said, an oil painting.
What about the products? - you ask. But there is no problem with the products. There were no products abroad; there, too, apparently, there was a raging shortage. Instead, toilet soap was brought to the USSR. True, in several small batches. But it’s imported.
According to this scheme, from 1989 to 1991, more than 2 thousand 300 tons of pure gold were transported abroad from the Union. (In 1990 alone, a record amount was exported: 478.1 tons.)
No one kept any records of the gold tranches, as testified by former KGB active reserve officer Viktor Menshov (he worked under the “roof” of the assistant to the chairman of the board of Vnesheconombank of the USSR). There was so much gold, recalls the first deputy chairman of the board of the same Vnesheconombank, Thomas Alibekov, that the bars were loaded onto planes directly from the runway.
This would not be the only way to privatize the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the USSR, invented by the combinators of that time.
Secret orders of the State Bank and the Council of Ministers, for example, established a brisk trade in the country's foreign exchange reserves. Officially, dollars were sold at the rate of 6 rubles 26 kopecks; for “their” structures, controlled by the managers of the CPSU Central Committee, a special preferential rate was established - 62 kopecks.
The purchased currency immediately went abroad, and wooden rubles piled up like dead weight in the Gokhran vaults.
How do you like this detective story, waiting for its Nestor the Chronicler?
At the rise of Soviet power, the KGB learned that Israeli intelligence services were preparing to seize the Lebanese People's Bank, where the so-called valuables of Yasser Arafat were kept with a total value of $5 billion.
The raid on the bank actually took place. Only it was not organized by the Israelis. The robbers calmly transported the Arab treasures next door, to the Beirut branch of the Moscow People's Bank, one of the subsidiaries of Vnesheconombank of the USSR. And just a day later, the Beirut branch closed its operations. Further traces of Palestinian gold are lost in the stuffiness of the Middle East...
The country was sliding into the abyss, the people were impoverished, even the simplest products - milk, meat, eggs - disappeared from the shelves. Meanwhile, a small group of people who were in the right place at the right time amassed fabulous fortunes.
Let's compare just two numbers. Over the last three years of perestroika, no less than $30 billion worth of gold was taken out of the country, and in fact stolen.
And exactly at the same time - from 1989 to 1991 - the external debt of the USSR increased by 44 billion dollars. When Gorbachev read out his last address to the nation in December 1991, he (in the sense of debt) had already reached 70.2 billion dollars.
For decades to come, this debt will weigh heavily on the national economy. Under Yeltsin, it also doubled. (Putin will inherit liabilities worth 158 billion.)
With such unaffordable debts, Russia not only fell into foreign bondage, it also lost the opportunity to develop normally. The threat of bankruptcy has constantly hovered over the country all these years. A step to the right, a step to the left - and the creditors immediately pulled on the leash. Annual interest payments alone amounted to up to $15 billion.
Numbers, however, are stubborn things. The USSR did not need loans at all. If the gold reserves had not been plundered, the country could well have escaped the debt trap. True, it is not clear on what basis the newly-minted masters of life would rise?
Who exactly the party's gold went to remains a mystery to this day, despite the fact that in the fall of 1991 a criminal case was even opened regarding the theft of currency funds of the CPSU Central Committee. But both the official and unofficial investigation, carried out by order of the Russian government by the Kroll detective agency, did not find any remnants of former luxury...
The treasurers of the party could certainly shed light on this mystery, but someone preferred that they remain silent forever. Not even a week had passed since the failure of the State Emergency Committee, when Nikolai Kruchina, the manager of the affairs of the CPSU Central Committee, fell out of the window of his apartment. A month and a half later, the same thing happened to his predecessor Georgy Pavlov.
Despite the strange circumstances of these deaths, they were officially declared a banal suicide. "
In the late 1920s, the Soviet Union was close to bankruptcy. Where were the funds for industrialization found?
By the end of the 1920s - the time of the establishment of Stalin's sole power - 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. Insignificant compared to the pre-war gold reserves of the Russian Empire, which reached almost 1.8 billion gold rubles in value (the equivalent of more than 1,400 tons of pure gold). In addition, the USSR accumulated 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 USSR's gold reserves had increased at least 14 times. According to various estimates, Stalin left as a legacy to subsequent Soviet leaders, from 2051 to 2804 tons of gold. Stalin's gold box turned out to be larger than the golden treasury of Tsarist Russia. His main rival, Hitler, was far from Stalin. At the beginning of World War II, Germany's gold resources were valued at $192 million—the equivalent of 170 tons of pure gold, to which must be added about 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 wasted 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 to pay for 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 worth about 240 million gold rubles.
But the “tsarist” gold reserves melted especially quickly in the first years of Soviet power. Gold was used to pay indemnities for the separate Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany, which allowed Soviet Russia to withdraw from the First World War, and for “gifts” under the peace treaties of the 1920s to its neighbors - the Baltic states, Poland, and Turkey. Huge amounts of money were spent in the 1920s to incite a world revolution and create a Soviet spy network in the West. In addition, tons of gold and jewelry expropriated from the “property classes” were used to cover the Soviet foreign trade deficit. With the complete collapse of the economy, the lack of exports and income from them, as well as difficulties in obtaining loans in the capitalist West, Soviet Russia had to pay for the import of vital goods with national gold reserves.
In 1925, a US Senate commission investigated the issue of Soviet exports of precious metals to the West. According to her data, in 1920-1922 the Bolsheviks sold more than 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 a government commission that, on Lenin’s instructions, examined the financial situation of the country, as of February 1, 1922, the Soviet state had gold worth only 217.9 million gold rubles, and of these funds it was necessary to allocate 103 million gold rubles to pay off the national 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 country's industrial development did not come true: in the context of the global crisis that broke out 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 before the crisis. The USSR sold grain at half or even a third of the pre-crisis world price, while millions of its 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 being the main creditor. The country's external debt since the fall of 1926 increased 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 country's meager gold and foreign exchange reserves 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 free gold and foreign exchange reserves of the country 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 exports resulted in the loss for Russia of masterpieces from the Hermitage, the palaces of the Russian aristocracy and private collections. But the costs of the 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 Stalin’s leadership only about 13 million gold rubles (the equivalent of less than 10 tons of gold).
Gold from the State Bank was delivered by steamship 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 to the end of April 1934, gold worth more than 360 million gold rubles (more than 260 tons) was exported from the USSR through Riga. However, it was impossible to solve the problem of external debt and financing of industrialization using the gold and foreign exchange reserves available in the State Bank.
What to do? At the turn of the 1920s-1930s, the country's leadership was gripped by a gold rush.
Stalin respected America's economic achievements. According to eyewitness accounts, he read Bret Harte and was inspired by the gold rush in California in the mid-19th century. But the Soviet gold rush was strikingly different from free Californian entrepreneurship.
There it was the business and 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 of agriculture and industry in the Western United States. California's 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-owned enterprise whose purpose was to finance industrialization and create a national gold reserve. The methods by which it was carried out gave rise to mass famine, the prisoners' Gulag, the plunder of church property, national museums and libraries, as well as personal savings and family heirlooms of their own citizens.
When extracting gold and currency, Stalin did not disdain anything. At the end of the 1920s, the criminal investigation department and the police transferred all cases of “currency traders” and “value holders” to the Economic Directorate of the OGPU. Under the slogan of fighting currency speculation, “scrofulous campaigns” followed one after another—the confiscation of currency and valuables from the population, including household items. Persuasion, deception and terror were used. Nikanor Ivanovich’s dream 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 the writer’s idle fantasy. In the 1920s, the OGPU convinced Jewish Nepmen to hand over their valuables using native melodies performed by a guest musician.
But jokes aside, the OGPU also had frankly bloody methods. For example, the “dollar steam room” or “golden cells”: “currency traders” were kept in prison until they told where the valuables were hidden, or relatives from abroad sent a ransom - “salvation money”. Demonstration executions of “currency and gold concealers”, sanctioned by the Politburo, were also in the arsenal of OGPU methods.
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). In May 1932, the deputy chairman of the OGPU, Yagoda, reported to Stalin that the OGPU cash desk contained valuables worth 2.4 million gold rubles and that, together with the valuables that “were previously handed over to the State Bank,” the OGPU had extracted 15.1 million gold rubles (almost 12 tons purity in gold equivalent).
The methods of the OGPU at the very least made it possible to obtain large treasures and savings, but there were values of a different kind in the country. They were not hidden in hiding places or underground, ventilation pipes or mattresses. For everyone to see, they glittered with a wedding ring on their finger, an earring in their earlobe, a gold cross on their body, a silver spoon in the chest of drawers. Multiplied by the country's 160 million population, these simple things, scattered among boxes and sideboards, could turn into enormous wealth. As the gold reserves of the State Bank depleted and the foreign exchange appetites of industrialization grew, the leadership of the USSR grew stronger in their desire to take these savings from the population. There was also a way. During the hungry years of the first five-year plans, the population’s valuables were bought up by the stores of Torgsin, the “All-Union Association for Trade with Foreigners on the Territory of the USSR.”
Torgsin 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 needs of industrialization forced the Stalinist leadership in 1931 - the apogee of the madness of industrial imports - to open the doors of torgsin to Soviet citizens. In exchange for cash currency, royal gold coinage, and then household gold, silver and precious stones, Soviet people received Torgsin's money, which they used to pay in his stores. With the admission of the hungry Soviet consumer to Torgsin, the sleepy life of elite stores ended. Torgsin stores shining with mirrors in large cities and unsightly little shops in godforsaken villages—Torgsin’s network has covered the entire country.
The terrible year 1933 was the sad triumph of Torgsin. 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, 25,000 tons of sugar. In 1933, food products 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. Mirrored delicatessen stores were lost among Torgsinov's flour warehouses and sackcloth bags of flour. Torgsin's price analysis 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 produced 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 Plant and other enterprises. The savings of Soviet citizens amounted to more than 70% of Torgsinov's purchases. The name Torgsin - trade with foreigners - is false. It would be more honest to call this enterprise “Torgsovlyud”, i.e. trade with Soviet people.
The savings of Soviet citizens are a finite value. The OGPU, with the help of violence, and Torgsin, with the help of famine, almost completely emptied the people's money-boxes. But there was gold in the depths 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, and manual labor predominated in it. 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 NEP, gold mining began to revive through private miners and foreign concessionaires. It is paradoxical that, given the state’s dire need for gold, Soviet leaders treated the gold mining industry as a tertiary industry. They spent a lot of gold, but cared little about its extraction, living like temporary workers through 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 the oil industry, and appointed him chairman of the newly created Soyuzzoloto. In Soviet Russia that year, only about 20 tons of pure gold were mined, but Stalin set the task boldly in a Bolshevik way: to catch up and overtake Transvaal, the world leader, which produced more than 300 tons of pure gold per year!
As a professor at the Moscow Mining Academy, Serebrovsky twice traveled to the United States to learn from American experience. He studied technologies and equipment in the mines of Alaska, Colorado, California, Nevada, South Dakota, Arizona, Utah, bank financing of gold mining in Boston and Washington, and 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 State Bank vaults began to increase. Since 1932, the “civilian” gold mining, which was under the authority 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 production 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 job was done - the gold mining industry was created in the USSR.
In the second half of the 1930s, the USSR took second place in the world in gold mining, overtaking the United States and Canada and second, 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), prisoners' Dalstroy brought Stalin's leadership almost 400 tons of pure gold. 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 monetary independence of the USSR will increase by another 800 tons. Gold in the USSR continued to be mined both during the war and after it. In the last years of Stalin's life, annual gold production in the USSR exceeded the 100-ton mark.
Having created a gold mining industry, the country overcame the gold and foreign exchange crisis. As a result of victory in World War II, the USSR's gold reserves were replenished through confiscations and reparations. After the war, Stalin stopped selling gold abroad. Stalin's moneybox was opened by Khrushchev, 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 reign, Stalin's gold reserves had dwindled by more than a thousand tons. Under Gorbachev, the process of liquidating Stalin's treasury was completed. In October 1991, Grigory Yavlinsky, who was responsible for negotiating economic assistance with the G7, announced that the country's gold reserves had dropped to approximately 240 tons. The USSR's main adversary in the Cold War, the United States, had by that time accumulated more than 8,000 tons.
By stockpiling gold in every possible, and often criminal and reckless way, Stalin accumulated funds that ensured the influence of the USSR in the world for several decades to come. However, this was a disservice to Russia. Stalin's gold reserves extended the life of the inefficient planned economy. The Soviet era ended along with Stalin's golden treasury. The leaders of the new post-Soviet Russia had to create the national gold and foreign exchange reserves anew.
Some “interesting” facts about the activities of the CPSU have become known. One of the high-profile incidents was the disappearance of the party's gold reserves. In the early nineties, a variety of versions appeared in the media. The more publications there were, the more rumors spread about the mysterious disappearance of CPSU values.
Gold in Tsarist Russia
One of the main factors determining stability in the country is the availability and size of the state gold reserve. By 1923, the USSR had 400 tons of state gold, and by 1928 - 150 tons. For comparison: when Nicholas II ascended the throne, the gold reserves were estimated at 800 million rubles, and by 1987 - at 1095 million. Then a monetary reform was carried out, filling the ruble with gold content.
From the beginning of the twentieth century, supplies began to deplete: Russia prepared for the Russo-Japanese War, was defeated in it, and then the revolution occurred. By 1914, gold reserves had been restored. During the First World War and after it, gold was sold (and at dumping prices), pledged to creditors, moving to their territory.
Stock restoration
The Soyuzzoloto trust was created in 1927. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin personally led gold mining in the USSR. Industry rose, but the young state did not become a leader in the extraction of valuable metals. True, by 1941 the USSR's gold reserves amounted to 2,800 tons, twice as much as the Tsar's. The government stockpile has reached an all-time high. It was this gold that made it possible to win the Great Patriotic War and restore the destroyed economy.
USSR gold reserves
Joseph Stalin left his successor about 2,500 tons of state gold. After Nikita Khrushchev, 1,600 tons remained, after Leonid Brezhnev - 437 tons. Yuri Andropov and slightly increased the gold reserves, the “stash” amounted to 719 tons. In October 1991, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation announced that 290 tons of valuable metal remained. This gold (along with debts) passed to the Russian Federation. Vladimir Putin accepted it in the amount of 384 tons.
Gold cost
Until 1970, the price of gold was one of the most stable parameters in the world. The US leadership regulated the price at $35 per troy ounce. From 1935 to 1970, America's gold reserves were rapidly declining, so it was decided that the nation's currency would no longer be backed by gold. After this (that is, since 1971), the price of gold began to rise rapidly. After the price surge, the value fell slightly, reaching $330 per ounce in 1985.
The price of gold in the Land of the Soviets was not determined by the world market. How much did a gram of gold cost in the USSR? The price was approximately 50-56 rubles per gram for 583 standard metal. Pure gold was bought at a price of up to 90 rubles per gram. On the black market, a dollar could be bought for 5-6 rubles, so the cost of one gram did not exceed $1.28 until the seventies. Thus, the cost of an ounce of gold in the USSR was a little more than 36 dollars.
The myth of party gold
Party gold refers to the hypothetical gold and currency funds of the CPSU, which allegedly disappeared after the collapse of the USSR and have not yet been found. The myth about the existence of the untold wealth of the leaders of the Union became popular in the media in the early nineties. The reasons for the increased interest in this issue was the participation of Communist Party leaders in privatization, while the majority of the country's population was below the poverty line.
The first publication devoted to this issue is the book “Corrupt Russia” by Andrei Konstantinov. The author gives the following possible scheme for the receipt of funds into the party’s “black treasury” using the example of a scheme that was revealed during an inspection of the Lenrybkholodflot party organization.
Thus, prosecutors established that high earnings resulted in significant contributions to the party treasury. In this case, double statements were used, and most of the funds were sent to higher authorities, that is, first to the regional committee, and then to Moscow. The incident was resolved with the participation of senior party officials.
Where did the USSR gold go? Many public and political figures dealt with this issue: Russian writer Alexander Bushkov, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Osipov, international observer Leonid Mlechin, chairman of the KGB of the USSR and close associate of Yuri Andropov Vladimir Kryuchkov, dissident historian Mikhail Geller and others. Experts have not come to a clear conclusion about the existence of party money and its location.
Three suicides in a row
At the end of August 1991, Nikolai Kruchina, the manager of the CPSU, fell out of a window. The party's chief treasurer was considered close to Mikhail Gorbachev. More than a month later, Georgy Pavlov, Brezhnev’s comrade-in-arms and Nikolai Kruchina’s predecessor in office, died in a similar manner. He held this position for eighteen years. Of course, these two people were aware of the party's affairs.
A few days later, Dmitry Lisovolik, the head of the Central Committee department that dealt with the American sector, fell out of the window of his own apartment. This department carried out communications with foreign parties. The death of three officials at once, who were well aware of the financial activities of the Communist Party, gave rise to the legend of the existence of USSR gold, which disappeared in the last year of the existence of the state of peasants and workers.
Was there gold?
The Communist Party ruled the state for 74 years. At first it was an elite organization consisting of a few thousand chosen ones, but towards the end of its existence the Communist Party grew thousands of times. In 1990, the number of officials was almost 20 million people. All of them regularly paid party dues, which made up the treasury of the CPSU.
Some of the funds went into the salary fund for nomenklatura workers, but how much money was actually in the treasury and how was it spent? This was known only to a select few, among whom were Dmitry Lisovolik, Nikolai Kruchina and Georgy Pavlov who died mysteriously. This important information was carefully hidden from the eyes of outsiders.
The Communist Party received considerable income from publishing. Literature was published in huge editions. The most minimal estimates indicate that monthly amounts amounting to hundreds of millions of rubles were received into the party treasury.
No less large sums of money were accumulated in the Peace Defense Fund. Ordinary citizens and the church made voluntary and forced contributions there. The fund was a non-profit organization, but was actually under the control of the same communist party. The Peace Fund did not publish any financial statements, but (according to rough estimates) its budget was 4.5 billion rubles.
The problem of transition to state ownership
It was from the funds listed above that the party’s gold was made up. How much gold did the USSR have? It is impossible to even approximately estimate the assets of the USSR. When Yeltsin, after the putsch, issued a decree on the transfer of party property to the state, it turned out that this was impossible. The court ruled that the uncertainty of ownership of property managed by the party does not allow the CPSU to be recognized as its owners.
Where did the gold go?
Where is the gold of the USSR? The search for the party fund was taken quite seriously. The existence of the Party's gold was more than just an urban legend or newspaper sensation. In the difficult conditions in which Russia found itself in 1991-1992 and beyond, there was an urgent need for party money.
The State Bank first published information on the amount of gold in 1991. It turned out that only 240 tons remained. This shocked Western experts, who estimated gold reserves from Soviet times at 1-3 thousand tons. But it turned out that even Venezuela has more valuable metal than the Land of the Soviets.
Simple explanation
Immediately after the official publication of data on the size of gold reserves, rumors spread that the party treasury had been secretly taken to Switzerland. This process was, of course, led by the top leaders of the Communist Party. Subsequently, a very simple explanation was found for the depletion of the valuable metal.
The fact is that in the last years of the USSR the government actively received loans secured by gold. The state was in dire need of currency, the flow of which was cut off due to a sharp drop in the cost of oil and the collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
Party - not state
In addition, the gold, of which 240 tons remained, was state-owned, not party-owned. Here we need to remember that at one time it borrowed funds from the state treasury, but the state treasury did not from the budget of the Communist Party. Both Western detectives and the Russian prosecutor's office were looking for the party stock. Small amounts were found in official accounts, but they were significantly less than expected. We had to be content only with real estate that was privatized.
Versions of Western experts
The search for mysterious party gold was also carried out in the West. The government used the services of the world-famous Kroll agency. The organization's staff included former intelligence officers, accountants who worked in well-known companies, and other experts. The company was looking for money from Saddam Hussein, dictator Duvalier (Haiti) and Marcos (Philippines).
Soon after the conclusion of the agreement, the Americans sent the Russian government materials that included high-ranking government officials from the Soviet era, but there were no specifics. Russian leaders decided to refuse Kroll's services. This was motivated by the significant monetary costs of paying for the agency's services. The Russian treasury would not have been able to withstand such spending in difficult years.
So where is the money
It is obvious that the Communist Party had an impressive treasury and managed the money of some organizations. But where It is unlikely that billions of rubles could have been transferred abroad, although part of the money could indeed have gone there.
The USSR had a sufficient number of banks abroad. Some were engaged in servicing foreign trade transactions, others operated as ordinary private banks. Branches were located in London, Paris, Singapore, Zurich and several other cities.
It was possible to withdraw money through these banks, but their employees were foreigners, so carrying out such operations was extremely risky. And it is these financial organizations that would be the first to be checked if they were seriously looking for the party’s money.
Plausible version
Most likely, the gold of the USSR remained in the USSR itself, that is, in circulation. The 1988 Cooperation Law allowed citizens to conduct commercial activities, but people did not have the initial capital for this. The Party paved the way by its example. The following year, the first private banks began to open. But where did the Soviet people get that kind of money? This is despite the fact that the authorized capital of the Soviet bank fund must have been at least 5 million rubles. Here, too, it could not have happened without the help of the Communist Party.
The main bonanza was, of course, international activity, which for a long time remained the monopoly of the CPSU. In the late eighties, private organizations entered this area. But foreign trade relations were supervised by the party and security forces. Rubles were exchanged at a reduced rate for foreign currency, and then inexpensive equipment was purchased with this money. Most often they imported computers, for which there was simply a huge demand.
So, the party's gold really existed. But these are underground gold vaults or planes loaded to the brim with banknotes. Some of the money could have been pocketed by government and public figures, but it is unlikely that these were truly significant sums. Most of the money simply turned into paper in 1992. But the real gold was the leverage that allowed leaders to form capital for themselves in the last years of the USSR.
By the end of the 1920s - the time of the establishment of Stalin's sole power - 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. Insignificant compared to the pre-war gold reserves of the Russian Empire, which reached almost 1.8 billion gold rubles in value (the equivalent of more than 1,400 tons of pure gold). In addition, the USSR accumulated 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 USSR's gold reserves had increased at least 14 times. According to various estimates, Stalin left as a legacy to subsequent Soviet leaders, from 2051 to 2804 tons of gold. Stalin's gold box turned out to be larger than the golden treasury of Tsarist Russia. His main rival, Hitler, was far from Stalin. 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 about 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 wasted 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 to pay for 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 worth about 240 million gold rubles.
But the “tsarist” gold reserves melted especially quickly in the first years of Soviet power. The gold was used to pay indemnities for the separate Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany, which allowed Soviet Russia to withdraw from the First World War, and for “gifts” under the peace treaties of the 1920s to its neighbors - the Baltic states, Poland, and Turkey. Huge amounts of money were spent in the 1920s to incite a world revolution and create a Soviet spy network in the West. In addition, tons of gold and jewelry expropriated from the “property classes” were used to cover the Soviet foreign trade deficit. With the complete collapse of the economy, the lack of exports and income from them, as well as difficulties in obtaining loans in the capitalist West, Soviet Russia had to pay for the import of vital goods with national gold reserves.
In 1925, a US Senate commission investigated the issue of Soviet exports of precious metals to the West. According to her data, in 1920–1922 the Bolsheviks sold more than 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 a government commission that, on Lenin’s instructions, examined the financial situation of the country, as of February 1, 1922, the Soviet state had gold worth only 217.9 million gold rubles, and of these funds it was necessary to allocate 103 million gold rubles to pay off the national 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 country's industrial development did not come true: in the context of the global crisis that broke out 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 before the crisis. The USSR sold grain at half or even a third of the pre-crisis world price, while millions of its 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 being the main creditor. The country's external debt since the fall of 1926 increased 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 country's meager gold and foreign exchange reserves 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 free gold and foreign exchange reserves of the country 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 exports resulted in the loss for Russia of masterpieces from the Hermitage, the palaces of the Russian aristocracy and private collections. But the costs of the 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 Stalin’s leadership only about 13 million gold rubles (the equivalent of less than 10 tons of gold).
Gold from the State Bank was delivered by steamship 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 to the end of April 1934, gold worth more than 360 million gold rubles (more than 260 tons) was exported from the USSR through Riga. However, it was impossible to solve the problem of external debt and financing of industrialization using the gold and foreign exchange reserves available in the State Bank.
What to do? At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, the country's leadership was gripped by a gold rush.
Stalin respected America's economic achievements. According to eyewitness accounts, he read Bret Harte and was inspired by the gold rush in California in the mid-19th century. But the Soviet gold rush was strikingly different from free Californian entrepreneurship.
There it was the business and 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 of agriculture and industry in the Western United States. California's 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-owned enterprise whose purpose was to finance industrialization and create a national gold reserve. The methods by which it was carried out gave rise to mass famine, the prisoners' Gulag, the plunder of church property, national museums and libraries, as well as personal savings and family heirlooms of their own citizens.
When extracting gold and currency, Stalin did not disdain anything. At the end of the 1920s, the criminal investigation department and the police transferred all cases of “currency traders” and “value holders” to the Economic Directorate of the OGPU. Under the slogan of fighting currency speculation, “scrofulous campaigns” followed one after another - the confiscation of currency and valuables from the population, including household items. Persuasion, deception and terror were used. Nikanor Ivanovich’s dream 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 the writer’s idle fantasy. In the 1920s, the OGPU convinced Jewish Nepmen to hand over their valuables using native melodies performed by a guest musician.
But jokes aside, the OGPU also had frankly bloody methods. For example, the “dollar steam room” or “golden chambers”: “currency traders” were kept in prison until they told where the valuables were hidden, or relatives from abroad sent a ransom - “salvation money”. Demonstration executions of “currency and gold concealers”, sanctioned by the Politburo, were also in the arsenal of OGPU methods.
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). In May 1932, the deputy chairman of the OGPU, Yagoda, reported to Stalin that the OGPU cash desk contained valuables worth 2.4 million gold rubles and that, together with the valuables that “were previously handed over to the State Bank,” the OGPU had extracted 15.1 million gold rubles (almost 12 tons purity in gold equivalent).
The methods of the OGPU at the very least made it possible to obtain large treasures and savings, but there were values of a different kind in the country. They were not hidden in hiding places or underground, ventilation pipes or mattresses. For everyone to see, they glittered with a wedding ring on their finger, an earring in their earlobe, a gold cross on their body, a silver spoon in the chest of drawers. Multiplied by the country's 160 million population, these simple things, scattered among boxes and sideboards, could turn into enormous wealth. As the gold reserves of the State Bank depleted and the foreign exchange appetites of industrialization grew, the leadership of the USSR grew stronger in their desire to take these savings from the population. There was also a way. During the hungry years of the first five-year plans, the population's valuables were bought up by the stores of Torgsin - the "All-Union Association for Trade with Foreigners on the Territory of the USSR."
Torgsin 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 needs of industrialization forced the Stalinist leadership in 1931 - the apogee of the madness of industrial imports - to open the doors of torgsin to Soviet citizens. In exchange for cash currency, royal gold coinage, and then household gold, silver and precious stones, Soviet people received Torgsin's money, which they used to pay in his stores. With the admission of the 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 has covered the entire country.
The terrible year 1933 was the sad triumph of Torgsin. 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, 25,000 tons of sugar. In 1933, food products 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. Mirrored delicatessen stores were lost among Torgsinov's flour warehouses and sackcloth bags of flour. Torgsin's price analysis 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 produced 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 Plant and other enterprises. The savings of Soviet citizens amounted to more than 70% of Torgsinov's purchases. The name Torgsin - trade with foreigners - is false. It would be more honest to call this enterprise “Torgsovlyud”, i.e. trade with Soviet people.
The savings of Soviet citizens are a finite value. The OGPU, with the help of violence, and Torgsin, with the help of famine, almost completely emptied the people's money-boxes. But there was gold in the depths 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, and manual labor predominated in it. 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 NEP, gold mining began to revive through private miners and foreign concessionaires. It is paradoxical that, given the state’s dire need for gold, Soviet leaders treated the gold mining industry as a tertiary industry. They spent a lot of gold, but cared little about its extraction, living like temporary workers through 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 the oil industry, and appointed him chairman of the newly created Soyuzzoloto. In Soviet Russia that year, only about 20 tons of pure gold were mined, but Stalin set the task boldly in a Bolshevik way: to catch up and overtake Transvaal - the world leader, which produced more than 300 tons of pure gold per year!
As a professor at the Moscow Mining Academy, Serebrovsky twice traveled to the United States to learn from American experience. He studied technologies and equipment in the mines of Alaska, Colorado, California, Nevada, South Dakota, Arizona, Utah, bank financing of gold mining in Boston and Washington, and 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 State Bank vaults began to increase. Since 1932, the “civilian” gold mining, which was under the authority 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 production 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 job was done - the gold mining industry was created in the USSR.
In the second half of the 1930s, the USSR took second place in the world in gold mining, overtaking the United States and Canada and second, 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 prisoner's Dalstroy brought Stalin's leadership almost 400 tons of pure gold. 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 monetary independence of the USSR will increase by another 800 tons. Gold in the USSR continued to be mined both during the war and after it. In the last years of Stalin's life, annual gold production in the USSR exceeded the 100-ton mark.
Having created a gold mining industry, the country overcame the gold and foreign exchange crisis. As a result of victory in World War II, the USSR's gold reserves were replenished through confiscations and reparations. After the war, Stalin stopped selling gold abroad. Stalin's moneybox was opened by Khrushchev, 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 reign, Stalin's gold reserves had dwindled by more than a thousand tons. Under Gorbachev, the process of liquidating Stalin's treasury was completed. In October 1991, Grigory Yavlinsky, who was responsible for negotiating economic assistance with the G7, announced that the country's gold reserves had dropped to approximately 240 tons. The USSR's main adversary in the Cold War, the United States, had by that time accumulated more than 8,000 tons.
By stockpiling gold in every possible, and often criminal and reckless way, Stalin accumulated funds that ensured the influence of the USSR in the world for several decades to come. However, this was a disservice to Russia. Stalin's gold reserves extended the life of the inefficient planned economy. The Soviet era ended along with Stalin's golden treasury. The leaders of the new post-Soviet Russia had to create the national gold and foreign exchange reserves anew.
The “gold fund of the nation,” which has partially survived to this day, is the gold reserve of the USSR. The amount of precious metal plays a major role in the state’s economy, opportunities and potential of the country. Often, the supply of precious metal became a cause for pride and a way to prove the power of the state; it determined and showed the extent of the extravagance of a particular ruler. The size of the reserve changed, sometimes decreasing, sometimes growing in different years of the history of our state. Since the collapse of the USSR, many have been concerned about the question of where the party’s gold went.
The first years of the USSR
During the First World War, the economy of the Russian Empire faltered. Large quantities of gold were distributed as collateral in order to obtain loans to restore the economy crippled by the war. The reserve, distributed to foreign countries, began to be called “war gold.” After the collapse of the USSR, attempts were made to return the disappeared capital, but all efforts were unsuccessful.
In 1917, the size of the gold reserve was about 1,100 tons of metal, which was transported to different parts of the empire, caches were created where the gold was hidden from prying eyes. A year later, most of these caches were discovered, and at the end of the war, the transported gold began to be collected together. Nevertheless, more than 180 tons of reserves were irretrievably lost.
Part of the stock, about 100 tons, went to Germany as reparations after peace was concluded with the Germans. Gradually, the gold of the USSR, inherited from the empire, melted away, going towards endless military needs: military equipment, equipment, food. Part of the reserve was spent on supporting revolutions in foreign countries. The locomotives purchased from Great Britain and Sweden alone required approximately 200 tons of precious metal from state storehouses. As a result, by 1923 the reserve amounted to 400 tons, and by 1928 - 150 tons of gold. In 1924, 1 ruble was worth approximately 0.770 grams of gold.
Thus, in 20 years, the country’s economy was completely destroyed, and the new authorities wasted the remaining reserves, not intending to share with their people. Gold mining during these years was not completely controlled by the government due to the location of the mines. For this reason, only a small percentage of actual metal production reached the treasury.
Industrialization
The current situation and the arrival of the new government have become an incentive to search for alternative ways to raise funds. Industrialization required about 4-5 billion rubles to implement its processes, while the amount of approximate profit to the treasury was 400 million.
It was decided to save the situation using any available methods. As a result, new plans and standards began to emerge that had to be implemented in the so-called five-year plans. Increased performance required an accelerated pace of work.
In 1927, Stalin personally established a five-year plan for the Soyuz-Gold trust, according to which it was now necessary to extract the required amount of the precious metal. The special task was for gold mining in the USSR to take first place in the world, ahead of even the richest mines.
However, the idea of expanding production seemed insufficient to the government to replenish the treasury, so a number of measures were taken to take away the gold in the hands of the population. Precious metal was taken through confiscation, as well as through a system of special stores where goods could be purchased by paying for them in gold items. In such stores they sold simple products: flour, sugar, cereals. At the same time, the violent method of selection replenished the state treasury by only 30 tons, and trade for the precious metal - by about 220 tons.
The metal extracted in the mines amounted to 130 tons per year, but the USSR lost to South America in this matter, taking second place in the world in gold production. However, little of these funds went towards the development of the state; most of it simply ended up in the treasury’s vaults. The table according to (Fig. 1) shows what a leap occurred in this industry in the 30s.
Stalin carried out a monetary reform, which helped change the monstrous exchange rate of the ruble. If you compare how much the ruble was worth against the dollar before and after the reform, you can see how the national currency rose from an absolute minimum to 2 rubles. for a dollar.
Post-war time
Before World War II, the state treasury contained 2,800 tons of gold. Thanks to this reserve, the USSR was not only able to recover after the war in conditions of total devastation, but also gained a certain weight on the world stage for the next decades.
Each new leader of the state significantly reduced the fund increased by Stalin. Khrushchev left behind 1,600 tons, and Brezhnev - about 437. However, under Andropov and Chernenko, the stock was replenished by 300 tons. And already under Gorbachev, the fund began to steadily decrease; a huge amount of gold was sent for export. In general, during Gorbachev's reign, about 1,200 tons of gold reserves managed to disappear from the treasury. In 1980 alone, the summer of which passed under the banner of the Olympics, 90 tons of the precious metal were sold.
After the collapse of the USSR, the Russian Federation inherited debts and, which amounted to 290 tons. Putin took the reins with a fund of 384 tons, but Russia's gold reserves now stand at about 850 tons of the precious metal. Russia's entire reserve had to be restored anew. Where the CPSU gold could have gone and in whose pockets it ended up, one can only guess.
