How the country's gold reserves changed - from Alexander III to Putin. Stalin's gold: how the USSR restored the gold reserves

The main composition of the reserve includes refined gold - that is, it has undergone deep cleaning from all kinds of impurities. According to statistics and the information declared by the countries, the gold reserves of Russia brought the country's indicators to the 7th position in the world in terms of the amount of gold in the state reserve. The size of the gold reserves of Russia was officially announced, according to the data provided, as of 1.04.2017 in the amount of 1679.6 tons or 54 million ounces.

According to one of the most relevant data, the share of Russia in the global volume of metal is equal to 16.2%. In 2010, the size of the reserve was 788.6 tons, and in 2000 - 384.4. Therefore, in the future, it is possible to predict a subsequent increase in volumes by 2–3 times over 7–10 years. The main place where the gold reserves of Russia are stored is the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which is the main bank of the 1st level, endowed with special powers.

The repository is located in the capital of the country, Moscow, and 2/3 of the total fund is concentrated here. The Bank of Russia has the right to replenish and spend the resource in accordance with the plan agreed by the Government of the country. The rest of the reserve, where the gold reserves of Russia are located, is concentrated in storage in the Gokhran of Russia, a federal state institution under the Ministry of Finance. Decisions regarding the movement of assets stored in the specified institution are made on the basis of the Federal Law.

Gold and foreign exchange reserves - what is the point and who regulates

The gold reserve acts as a constituent element for the total SG (gold and foreign exchange) reserve of Russia - highly liquid assets, which are controlled by state bodies in the field of monetary regulation. Gold and foreign exchange funds initially served as collateral for the national currency with a corresponding value, which was expressed in gold.

But gold reserves in Russia today act simply as part of the gold and foreign exchange reserve, aimed at stabilizing and adjusting the ruble exchange rate, and also acting as anti-crisis insurance for the country. They allow to carry out the financial life of the state and meet the requirements of an emergency nature in case of emergencies of a different plan.

Since gold can be used in the international arena at any time as a means of payment, a country's substantial holdings of said precious metal provide a guarantee for economic independence.

In the base price of the country's reserve, monetary gold occupies about 17%. Monetary gold is such an asset that can be actively used to implement the financial interests of the country.

How did the formation of Russia's gold reserves begin?

Initially, it all started with the Russian Empire, which at the time of 1914 had a gold reserve of approximately 1400 tons, which made it possible to be in the first positions in the world in this indicator. Subsequently, due to the First World War and the subsequent Civil War, a significant part was moved to other countries.

Before World War I began, the empire had a so-called gold standard (a monetary-type system in which a certain standardized number of “yellow” metal acts as a key unit of measurement). At the same time, 1 imperial ruble contained about 0.774 g of gold and 1 million rubles. respectively equated to 774 kg of gold. At the time of 1913, the exchange rate of the ruble against the US dollar was 1.94 rubles. for 1$.

Changes in gold reserves in the Soviet Union were within the following framework:

• The gold reserves of the USSR by 1928 consisted of 150 tons of precious metal;
• With the advent of Stalin to the management of the Union, the stocks increased significantly and in 1941 they already amounted to 2800 tons;
• The Second World War and the subsequent accelerated restoration of the country after the victory led to a serious depletion of the stock;
• Until the time of Stalin's death, it was possible to restore reserves to 2500 tons, but over the following decades, the reserve was again severely depleted.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister in 1991, G. Yavlinsky, at the time of the transition from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation, only 290 tons of gold were stored in reserves.

Dynamics of change and current situation

According to information from various sources and from various observers, Russia's assets began to be intensively replenished with purchases from the Central Bank.

In comparison with 2005, the gold fund increased by 3 times by 2015 and at that time amounted to 1238 tons.

This behavior was called an exception in world practice, and the British weekly The Economist expressed the opinion that this active purchase, regardless of what price fluctuations occurred for the precious metal, began as a result of the country's leadership's mistrust of the US dollar.

However, already in 2013, as a result of negative revaluation, when the amount of gold in Russia increased, as the Bank of Russia actively continued buying metal on the domestic market, the reserves decreased by $11 billion in terms of value. As noted in the aforementioned weekly, an increase in gold reserves in the gold reserves (gold and foreign exchange reserves) leads to the fact that the risk of a decline in the price of these reserves increases when the price of gold itself decreases.

The fact is that gold can also decline in price, as happened in 2011-2015, when the price fell from 1900 thousand dollars to 1100. in such a situation, those investors who made the main investments in the precious metal suffered significant losses. Another downside, which suggests that it can be extremely disadvantageous when a large amount of gold is stored compared to other assets, is that there will be no interest income and significant costs of foreign exchange reserves are spent on storage.

General trends in the increase in gold reserves in the Russian Federation

According to the results of recent years, in terms of the rate of metal production, Russia is second only to China and it can rightfully be attributed to one of the fastest growing. Now the growth in the fund is mainly due to production. At the same time, most of the country's territory has not yet been sufficiently explored, and it can be assumed that in the future there is a tendency for the active discovery of new deposits and innovative methods of production. The growth of the gold fund consists of the following stages:

1. Own extraction methods;
2. Loans in the international arena;
3. Transportation of export goods abroad.

Gold prices are dominated by international trading, as well as domestic, held in the country itself.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a trend towards a significant increase in the price of gold, which has led to an increase in the number of offers from gold mining enterprises.

All this contributes to the increase of the gold fund of the country.

Summing up, it is worth noting that the gold reserve acts as a guarantee of stability in the country. In many ways, the state of the country can be judged by the amount of precious metal in the reserve. The value of the national currency largely depends on the volume of this mineral in the country's vaults. And the value of the metal itself is directly affected by many factors, including its global reserves that are still available to gold miners.

In the late 1920s, the Soviet Union was close to bankruptcy. Where did the funds for industrialization come from?

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. It is negligible compared to the pre-war gold reserves of the 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. The gold was used to pay indemnities under the separate Brest peace with Germany, which allowed Soviet Russia to withdraw from the First World War, to "gifts" under the 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, it was impossible to solve the problem of external debt and financing of industrialization at the expense of the gold and foreign exchange reserves available in the State Bank.

What to do? At the turn of the 1920-1930s, 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 of 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. At the end of the 1920s, the criminal investigation department and the police transferred all the cases of "currency traders" and "holders of valuables" to the Economic Department 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”. The demonstrative executions of "currency and gold hiders" sanctioned by the Politburo were also in the arsenal of the OGPU's methods.

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 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 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 appetite 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 frenzy of industrial imports - to open the doors of torgsins to Soviet citizens. In exchange for cash currency, the royal gold 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 unattractive 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 is a finite 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 with the state in dire need of 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 the 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 traveled to the United States to learn from the 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, Dalstroy was added to the “civilian” gold mining, which was under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry, 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 Dalstroy prisoner 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 was mined in the USSR both during the war years and after it. In the last years of 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 through 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.

Stocking up 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.

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. It is negligible compared to the pre-war gold reserves of the 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, it was impossible to solve the problem of external debt and financing of industrialization at the expense of 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 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 of 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. At the end of the 1920s, the criminal investigation department and the police transferred all the cases of "currency traders" and "holders of valuables" to the Economic Department 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”. The demonstrative executions of "currency and gold hiders" sanctioned by the Politburo were also in the arsenal of the OGPU's methods.

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 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 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 appetite 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, the royal gold 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 with the state in dire need of 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 the 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 traveled to the United States to learn from the 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. 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 was mined in the USSR both during the war years and after it. In the last years of 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 through 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.

Stocking up 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.

How did they plunder the gold reserves of the USSR?

Ah, liberal reforms. Maybe in any other country in the world, such innovations would bring positive changes, but not in our country. Unfortunately, but 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, in fact, by total robbery and geopolitical weakening.

The wind of change blows away everything in its path: the army, the navy, public order, industry and state sovereignty. The values ​​of the defeated power immediately become the object of all kinds 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 left the national territory of the country twice forever due to mass betrayal.

Well-known blogger, publicist writer 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 in what ways the gold reserves of the USSR were exported under the curtain of Gorbachev's perestroika. You can read this post. Nikolai Viktorovich ends his post with these words: “This is such a story. Maybe some of you, dear readers, faced by the will of fate with that very “mysteriously disappeared gold?”.

Answering this question, I will say that I have encountered. Only not in reality, of course, but when reading journalistic literature. Now the author of these lines is finishing 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 quote an excerpt from this work, which describes in sufficient detail the procedure of treacherous export of gold reserves USSR to the West. Reading:

“The former Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government, 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 classified "Special Importance". Accordingly, the operations for the export of gold also took place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy.

It was transported by couriers of Vnesheconombank with certificates of the KGB and the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU; Among them, by the way, is a trusted person Igor Malashenko (later the general director of the NTV television company). No one inspected the gold-bearing couriers at the border - the customs service was instructed to let them pass through Sheremetyevo-2 without hindrance. According to the papers, the export of gold was registered as foreign trade operation, allegedly it went to pay for imported goods, mainly food. In fact, it was pure fiction. In exchange for the country almost nothing returned.

Everything. As one movie hero said, oil painting.

But what about products? - you ask. But with the products bad luck. There were no products abroad, there, too, apparently, a shortage raged. Instead, toilet soap was brought to the USSR. True, a few small batches. But, it's imported.

According to this scheme, from 1989 to 1991, from the Union, they overtook abroad more than 2 thousand 300 tons of pure gold. (In 1990 alone, a record amount was exported: 478.1 tons). No accounting of gold tranches, as evidenced by the former officer of the active reserve of the KGB Viktor Menshov (he worked under the "roof" of the assistant to the chairman of the board of the USSR), no one kept. There was so much gold, Thomas Alibekov, the first deputy chairman of the board of the same Vnesheconombank, recalls in turn that the ingots were loaded onto planes directly from the runway.

This was far from the only way to privatize the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the USSR, invented by the then schemers. By secret orders of the State Bank and the Council of Ministers, for example, a brisk trade in the country's foreign exchange reserves was established. Officially, dollars were sold at the rate 6 rubles 26 kopecks; for "their own" structures, controlled by the manager, a special preferential rate was established - 62 kopecks. The purchased currency instantly went abroad, and wooden rubles fell like a dead weight into the vaults of the Gokhran.

And how do you like such a detective story, waiting for its Nestor the chronicler?

On the rise of Soviet power, the KGB became aware that the Israeli secret services were preparing to seize the Lebanese People's Bank, where the so-called valuables of Yasser Arafat were stored with a total value of $ 5 billion. The raid on the bank really took place. Only the Israelis did not organize it at all. calmly transported Arab treasures in the neighborhood, to the Beirut branch of the Moscow People's Bank - one of the subsidiaries of the Vnesheconombank of the USSR. A day later, the Beirut branch curtailed its work. Further traces of Palestinian gold are lost in the Middle Eastern stuffiness...

The country rolled into the abyss, the people became impoverished, even the simplest products - milk, meat, eggs - disappeared from the shelves. And in the meantime, who found themselves in the right place and at the right time, made fabulous fortunes. Let's compare just two numbers. Over the last three years of perestroika, no less than for 30 billion dollars.

And, exactly, at the same time - from 1989 to 1991 - the external debt of the USSR increased by 44 billion dollars. When in December 1991 Gorbachev read out his last address to the nation in his life, he (in the sense of duty) had already reached 70.2 billion dollars. For decades to come, this debt will bind the national economy with pound weights. Under Yeltsin, it also doubled. (Putin will inherit obligations for 158 billion).

With such unbearable people, not only did she fall into foreign bondage, she also lost the opportunity to develop normally. The threat of bankruptcy hovered over the country all these years. A step to the right, a step to the left - and the creditors pulled the leash at once. The annual interest payments alone amounted to 15 billion dollars.

Ah, liberal reforms. Maybe in any other country in the world, such innovations would bring positive changes, but not in our country. Unfortunately, but 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, in fact, by total robbery and geopolitical weakening of Russia. The wind of change blows 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 left the national territory of the country twice forever due to the mass betrayal of the ruling elite.

Well-known blogger, publicist writer Nikolai Starikov in his article titled “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 means the gold reserves of the USSR were exported under the curtain of Gorbachev's perestroika. You can read this post.

Nikolai Viktorovich ends his post with these words: “This is such a story. Maybe some of you, dear readers, faced by the will of fate with that very “mysteriously disappeared gold?”.

Answering this question, I will say that I have encountered. Only not in reality, of course, but when reading journalistic literature. Now the author of these lines is finishing 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 quote an excerpt from this work, which describes in sufficient detail the procedure for the treacherous export of the gold reserves of the USSR to the West. Reading:

“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 classified as "Special Importance". Accordingly, the operations for the export of gold also took place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy.

It was transported by couriers of Vnesheconombank with certificates of the KGB and the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU; among them, by the way, is Gusinsky's trusted person Igor Malashenko (later the general director of the NTV television company). No one inspected the gold-bearing couriers at the border - the customs service was instructed to let them pass through Sheremetyevo-2 without hindrance.

According to the papers, the export of gold was formalized as a foreign trade operation, allegedly it was used to pay for imported goods, mainly food. In fact, it was pure fiction. In return, almost nothing returned to the country.

Poltoranin managed to trace in detail the fate of one of these parties: 50 tons of gold of the highest standard, sent in 1990 across the cordon on a secret order of the USSR Council of Ministers to pay for food for the needs of the population.

The route was as follows: from Gokhran the gold was delivered to Vnesheklonombank, from there it was delivered by couriers to the vaults of foreign banks (Paris, London, Geneva, Singapore), the banks sold it to jewelry firms, and the resulting currency went to anonymous accounts of mysterious people from Moscow.

Everything. As one movie hero said, oil painting.

But what about products? - you ask. But with the products bad luck. There were no products abroad, there, too, apparently, a shortage raged. Instead, toilet soap was brought to the USSR. True, a few small batches. But it's imported.

According to this scheme, from 1989 to 1991, more than 2,300 tons of pure gold were shipped abroad from the Union. (In 1990 alone, a record amount was exported: 478.1 tons.)

No accounting of gold tranches, as evidenced by the former officer of the active reserve of the KGB Viktor Menshov (he worked under the "roof" of the assistant to the chairman of the board of Vnesheconombank of the USSR), no one kept. There was so much gold, Thomas Alibekov, the first deputy chairman of the board of the same Vnesheconombank, recalls in turn that the ingots 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 then schemers.

By secret orders of the State Bank and the Council of Ministers, for example, a brisk trade in the country's foreign exchange reserves was established. Officially, dollars were sold at the rate of 6 rubles 26 kopecks; for "their own" structures, controlled by the manager of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a special preferential rate was established - 62 kopecks.

The purchased currency instantly went abroad, and wooden rubles fell like a dead weight into the vaults of the Gokhran.

And how do you like such a detective story, waiting for its Nestor the chronicler?

On the rise of Soviet power, the KGB learned that the Israeli secret services were preparing to seize the Lebanese People's Bank, where Yasser Arafat's so-called valuables worth $5 billion were stored.

The raid on the bank really took place. Only the Israelis did not organize it at all. The robbers calmly transported the Arab treasures in the neighborhood, to the Beirut branch of the Moscow People's Bank - one of the subsidiaries of the USSR Vnesheconombank. A day later, the Beirut branch curtailed its work. Further traces of Palestinian gold are lost in the Middle Eastern stuffiness...

The country rolled into the abyss, the people became impoverished, even the simplest products - milk, meat, eggs - disappeared from the shelves. Meanwhile, a small handful of people who found themselves in the right place at the right time made fabulous fortunes.

Let's compare just two numbers. Over the past three years of perestroika, at least $30 billion worth of gold has been 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 in December 1991 Gorbachev read out his last address to the nation, he (in the sense of duty) had already reached 70.2 billion dollars.

For decades to come, this debt will shackle the national economy with pood weights. Under Yeltsin, it also doubled. (Putin will inherit liabilities for 158 billion.)

With such unsustainable debts, Russia not only fell into foreign bondage, it also lost the opportunity to develop normally. The threat of bankruptcy hovered over the country all these years. A step to the right, a step to the left - and creditors at once pulled the leash. The annual interest payments alone were 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 avoided the debt hole. True, it is not clear on what then the newly-minted masters of life would have risen?

To whom exactly the gold of the party passed, remains a mystery to this day, despite the fact that in the fall of 1991 even a criminal case was initiated on the theft of foreign exchange funds of the Central Committee of the CPSU. But both the official and the unofficial investigation, commissioned by the Russian government by the Kroll detective agency, did not find any remnants of the former luxury ...

The treasurers of the party could certainly shed light on this riddle, but someone preferred that they be silent forever. Not even a week had passed since the failure of the GKChP, when Nikolai Kruchina, the manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 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. "