Soviet millionaires. Rich people from the USSR: who they were and where they got their money from. A masterpiece in the toilet of Ehrenburg

As Raikin said: “You come to me, I got a shortage through the store manager, through the store manager, through the merchandiser, through the back porch!” Nevertheless, in the country of developed socialism there were really rich people. Even millionaires.

The whole country knew one official millionaire - this is Sergey Mikhalkov, - says the famous film director Alexander Stefanovich. - I was lucky to write several scripts with him. After the war, film directors and other artists had their fees cut. But writers (Mikhalkov and, say, another Soviet millionaire, the “red” Count Alexei Tolstoy) ensured that this did not apply to screenwriters. And the circulating Soviet time were huge.

There was even a bike that Mikhalkov had so much money that he had an “open” account in the bank - that is, he could take any amount without restrictions. Once I asked: is it true? Mikhalkov said - nonsense. But once, walking with him around St. Petersburg, I jokingly asked, pointing to a four-story Art Nouveau mansion: “Sergey Vladimirovich, can you buy it?” He glanced at the building and, with a characteristic stutter, replied seriously, “P-perhaps I can. But I won't!"

precious baby

People of art, who did not irritate the Soviet authorities, lived really at ease. Nevertheless, not everyone managed to accumulate a million. For example, Stefanovich himself received a six-figure fee for a film shot in France, already at the end of the USSR, during a period of inflation. The most popular satirist Mikhail Zadornov also failed to do this.

In Soviet times, I had about 800 thousand rubles in my account, ”he admitted to Express Gazeta. - But since there was no point in saving then, I rented and spent all the time.

How Mikhail Nikolaevich looked into the water! By 1990, 369 billion rubles, still far from wooden, lay on the accounts of citizens, which irrevocably “burned out” after the Yeltsinoids seized power.

Anyone who had 50 thousand rubles in the seventies was already considered a rich man, - the writer Mikhail Veller recalls those times. - One of the few categories of official Soviet millionaires were songwriters. When Vladimir Voinovich, who was not yet a dissident, composed the verses “Let's have a smoke before the start, guys,” in which, however, vile prudes replaced “light up” with “sing”, he secured years of prosperity for himself. Now the old, forgotten, mendicant poet Alexei Olgin, the author of poems for Maya Kristalinskaya's hit "Top-top, the baby is stomping," received eight to ten thousand a month. What could he spend it on? The choice is small. I bought a Volga, had a three-room apartment in the center, vacationed in Pitsunda, Gagra, Sochi, giving fantastic tips, and wore the most expensive sheepskin coat.

Georgian moneybag

And there were also currency millionaires in the USSR!

Once Georgy Pavlov, Brezhnev's manager, purchased foreign furniture for the patron's residence for as much as a million dollars. But the Secretary General did not appreciate the zeal. “What am I to you, Arab sheikh?!” - Leonid Ilyich was indignant. And he demanded to place an order with domestic producers, - Stefanovich shared his story. - Pavlov was charged, but the question arose - what to do with the furniture purchased for the people's currency? At one of the meetings of the Politburo, Eduard Shevardnadze took the floor: “I have a person in mind. Sculptor, laureate of the Lenin Prize, young guy Zurab Tsereteli. His relative, the architect Posokhin, builds Soviet embassies all over the world, and Tsereteli designs them. He has been living abroad for years, taking private orders and may well solve our problem.”

Tsereteli was summoned to the Central Committee of the CPSU. “Zurab Konstantinovich,” they told him, “there is a party assignment. We know that you have a mansion in Georgia, where you plan to create your own museum. You must purchase furnishings for it from us. For a million American dollars!” Tsereteli smiled: “Actually, I am non-partisan. But, of course, I will fulfill the request of such a respected organization.” Officially, the dollar then cost 60 kopecks. But on the black market it sold one to four. By the way, Tsereteli was not even 30 at that time.

Owner of Gorky Street

Far 1976. Alla Pugacheva, whose song "Harlekino" was already heard by the whole country, was returning by train from a tour from Odessa with her husband Alexander Stefanovich. There was a gentle knock on the door.

A typical middle-aged Odessa citizen very politely said that he did not want to be imposed, but since the dining car will open only in two hours, he invites you to have a bite to eat in the next compartment, Stefanovich recalls. - We, having taken a bottle of cognac, went to visit. And there everything is littered to the ceiling with boxes! Instead of the traditional road chicken, the owner began to throw scarce balyks, kilogram cans of caviar and other delicacies onto the table. It turned out that the man is the director of the legendary Privoz, and “people gave him boxes on the road.” Under cognac, Alla told a pleasant interlocutor that she received only 8 rubles for a concert. He goggled his eyes: “Frankness for frankness. I earn several million times more.”

He was on his way to his son's 18th birthday, whom he hired at MGIMO, "despite our nationality." I brought a kilo as a gift gold medal, on which the inscription "Monya, 18 years old" shone.

And he wasn't the only trading millionaire knocking on our door. Once, in the absence of Alla, a bell rang in the apartment at 37 Gorky Street. A respectable man with a box stood on the threshold. Strangers were not allowed in the entrance, our neighbors were the famous ballerina Semenyaka, the director Mark Zakharov lived downstairs.

A stranger - you can immediately see a decent person. He introduced himself as a great admirer of Pugacheva and brought a gift - a spectacular floor lamp in the form of a ball. I asked what his name was. "Sokolov," he answered simply. "What are you doing?" - I ask. The guest looked at me as if I were crazy: "I am the owner of Gorky Street." It was the legendary director of the Eliseevsky grocery store, a front-line soldier, who was subsequently shot.

Let's add on our own: even the executioner who executed the sentence sincerely regretted the death of this man. Although the state accused him of causing damage of three million rubles.

Buy the head of the KGB

Weller has a book "Legends of Nevsky Prospekt". It bred the Leningrad Jew Fima Blyayshits, the founder of the Soviet fartsovka:

“Maids and porters in hotels, prostitutes, taxi drivers and guides, policemen - all made up the base of Fimin's pyramid. The clothes exchanged with foreign tourists were handed over to the commission, and the money flowed like water. However, Fima far-sightedly invested most of it in business and, in a fit of pride, thought of taking on the content of the head of the Leningrad department of the KGB.

According to Weller, the legendary Fima is a real person who was shot in 1970. And at its core, the book is true. But Mikhail Iosifovich emphasizes that Blaishitz is an exception:

Usually they didn’t rise like that on farce. There were no underground millionaires in Leningrad. They lived in the Caucasus or in Central Asia. Asia - registry and trade. In the Caucasus - guilds. And these are already real super-rich people who, for example, could afford a white Mercedes. It's like buying a rover now.

In the Slavic republics, underground merchants were forced to behave more modestly. We drove a maximum of "Volga". But somewhere you have to invest innumerable earnings! It came to curiosities. In the late 60s, they arrested the Simferopol owner of an underground clothing factory, whom everyone called Uncle Zero or Tsekhovik. Among other things, they seized from him ... the front door of the car, made of gold. It never opened, allegedly due to a breakdown.

Although the king of Moscow currency traders Yan Rokotov dined every day at the Aragvi restaurant, he lived in a communal apartment with his aunt, walked in the same shabby suit, in which he appeared in court. Valuables worth $1.5 million were confiscated from him.

A masterpiece in the toilet of Ehrenburg

Refined people invested in paintings and antiques. Like, for example, the director of a car service on Varshavskoe Shosse, who showed Stefanovich his unique collection.

But the most amazing private art gallery, which the Hermitage would envy, I saw not at the shop worker, speculator or merchant, but in the apartment of the legendary writer Ilya Ehrenburg, who lived opposite the Moscow City Council, the film director admits. - All the walls were hung with originals of Chagall, Modigliani, Chaim Satin, Picasso, Kandinsky - these were his friends. He even had a toilet like a museum. Above the toilet and on the door hung the work of the artist Fernand Léger. He did not get a place, poor fellow, among the artists of the first row ... Now a meter-long painting by Léger costs an average of 10 million euros.

"Golden" Mists

Amazingly, private enterprise officially existed in the USSR. After the Great Patriotic War, the country's economy lay in ruins. The authorities turned a blind eye to the emergence of a class of small handicraftsmen who sewed clothes and produced various household trifles. In the late 50s, there were 150 thousand artels in the Union. But not everyone wanted to swim shallowly. The fate of the legendary Vadim Tumanov is proof of this.

Sailor, junior national team boxer Pacific Fleet he ended up in camps under the "political 58th article" - for his love for Yesenin. He served eight years, tried to escape several times. How he survived, only God knows. The film "Lucky" with Vladimir Epifantsev in leading role according to the book by Vladimir Vysotsky and Leonid Manchinsky "Black Candle" - this is about Tumanov.

After his release, he organized a dozen and a half of the largest prospecting artels in the Union, prototypes of future cooperatives that mined 500 tons of gold for the country. His people received salaries more than the members of the Politburo - an average of two thousand rubles!

Here is how the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote about him:

“Our legal Soviet millionaire waved to the porter through the glass of the door with a lilac quarter. When a gap appeared in the door, Tumanov immediately put a quarter-piece in the gap, and it disappeared, as in the hand of a fakir. The doorman was short, majestically slightly reminiscent of Napoleon.<…>Suddenly something happened to his face: it crawled simultaneously in several different directions.

Tumanov? Vadim Ivanovich?

Captain Ponomarev? Ivan Arsentievich?

It turned out that the Kolyma legend met her former overseer. The meeting, oddly enough, turned out to be cordial.

Instead of an epilogue

To mention all the Soviet underground magnates, you need to write a book. This is the guild worker Shah Shaverman, who set up a sewing workshop ... in a psychiatric dispensary, where he was the director. And Kharkiv "Uncle Borya", who flooded the country with his products: from shorts and galoshes to fake crystal chandeliers. And the Azerbaijani Teymur Akhmedov, who was shot on the personal orders of Aliyev. Among them, of course, there were dishonest businessmen - deceivers, informers, scammers. But there were also many hard-working smart people who were simply unlucky to be born 30-40 years later.
*
Superstars of the level of Raimonds Pauls or Yuri Antonov earned about 12-15 thousand rubles a month from copyright alone. And yet they were getting paid. The creator of "The roof of his house" in the early 80s carried cash not in a wallet, but in a suitcase.
*
Mikhail Sholokhov "dripped" legal millions both from publications in the USSR and from translations.
*
The playwright Anatoly Baryanov received 920,700 rubles in interest for the public performance of his play "On the Other Side" in 1949.
*
The artist Leonid Vladimirsky, having made the famous illustrations for the fairy tale "The Magician emerald city”, I didn’t draw anything else - it was enough for a lifetime!
*
The great chess player Anatoly Karpov says without embarrassment: “Was I a legal Soviet millionaire? Yes".
*
The authors of the song "Victory Day" David Tukhmanov and Vladimir Kharitonov each May 9 earned a new car.

In the USSR, people did not attach as much importance to money as they do today. One could live on a small wage without denying oneself anything. Especially if there were acquaintances, for example, in the field of trade. As Raikin said: “You come to me, I got a shortage through the store manager, through the store manager, through the merchandiser, through the back porch!” Nevertheless, in the country of developed socialism there were really rich people. Even millionaires.

Deficit on the table in the USSR was the main sign of prosperity

precious baby

In Soviet times, I had about 800 thousand rubles in my account, ”he admitted to Express Gazeta. - But since there was no point in saving then, I rented and spent all the time.

Vladimir Semyonovich with prospector TUMANOV

Georgian moneybag

And there were also currency millionaires in the USSR!

Owner of Gorky Street

He was on his way to his son's 18th birthday, whom he hired at MGIMO, "despite our nationality." As a gift, he carried a kilogram gold medal, on which the inscription “Monya, 18 years old” shone.

Let's add on our own: even the executioner who executed the sentence sincerely regretted the death of this man. Although the state accused him of causing damage of three million rubles.

By selling paintings in the apartment of Ilya Ehrenburg, it was possible to build another Tverskaya street on which he lived.

Buy the head of the KGB

Weller has a book "Legends of Nevsky Prospekt". It bred the Leningrad Jew Fima Blyayshits, the founder of the Soviet fartsovka:

According to Weller, the legendary Fima is a real person who was shot in 1970. And at its core, the book is true. But Mikhail Iosifovich emphasizes that Blaishitz is an exception:

Usually they didn’t rise like that on farce. There were no underground millionaires in Leningrad. They lived in the Caucasus or Central Asia. Asia - registry and trade. In the Caucasus - guilds. And these are already real super-rich people who, for example, could afford a white Mercedes. It's like buying a rover now.

The author of the illustrations of the "Wizard ..." provided for himself for life

A masterpiece in the toilet of Ehrenburg

Refined people invested in paintings and antiques. Like, for example, the director of a car service on Varshavskoe Shosse, who showed Stefanovich his unique collection.

Director of the Eliseevsky grocery store Yuri SOKOLOV...

Instead of an epilogue

... the little daughter did not refuse anything

"Golden" Mists

A sailor, a young boxer of the Pacific Fleet team, ended up in camps under the "political 58th article" - for his love for Yesenin. He served eight years, tried to escape several times. How he survived, only God knows. The film "Lucky" with Vladimir Epifantsev in the title role based on the book "Black Candle" by Vladimir Vysotsky and Leonid Manchinsky is about Tumanov.

Here is how the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote about him:

Tumanov? Vadim Ivanovich?

Captain Ponomarev? Ivan Arsentievich?

It turned out that the Kolyma legend met her former overseer. The meeting, oddly enough, turned out to be cordial.

DROPPED

* Superstars of the level of Raymond Pauls or Yuri Antonov earned about 12 - 15 thousand rubles a month only on copyright. And yet they were getting paid. The creator of "The roof of his house" in the early 80s carried cash not in a wallet, but in a suitcase.

* Mikhail Sholokhov "dripped" legal millions both from publications in the USSR and from translations.

* Playwright Anatoly Baryanov received 920,700 rubles in interest for the public performance of his play "On the Other Side" in 1949.

* The artist Leonid Vladimirsky, having made the famous illustrations for the fairy tale "The Wizard of the Emerald City", did not draw anything else - it was enough for a lifetime!

* The great chess player Anatoly Karpov says without embarrassment: “Was I a legal Soviet millionaire? Yes".

One of the pioneer cooperators of the times of perestroika in the USSR, businessman Artem Tarasov, died last Saturday, July 22.

Tarasov is considered the first Soviet legal millionaire: it was he who officially received a salary of 3 million rubles in 1989, which then caused a real sensation. Later, Tarasov never became an oligarch - although he could not have “sat down” - although everything went to this, he survived emigration and ruin, tried to return to politics and died alone from pneumonia at the age of 67.

(Total 11 photos)

Artem Tarasov was born in Moscow on July 4, 1950 in the family of photojournalist Mikhail Artemovich Tarasov and Doctor of Biology Lyudmila Viktorovna Alekseeva. On the paternal side, A.M. Tarasov comes from the Armenian merchant family Tarasov.

After school, Tarasov graduated from the Moscow Mining Institute (1972) and received a Ph.D. in technical sciences (1982). In the 1960s, he participated in the KVN team of the Mining Institute.

Tarasov became famous as the first legal Soviet millionaire in the late 80s. In the country then there was devastation, in stores - an acute shortage. People hardly pulled from payday to payday with an average salary of 130 rubles. And in 1989, Artem Tarasov, in the Vzglyad program, said that he and his deputy received 3 million rubles in salaries for January. Only the tax on childlessness from this amount amounted to 180 thousand rubles, and the deputy who was in the CPSU gave 90 thousand in the form of party contributions.

This was just two years after the registration of the Tekhnika cooperative, of which Tarasov was the director. The cooperative was engaged in the repair of foreign household appliances. After some time, employees of the Main Computing Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences began to transfer the rights to their software products to the Tekhnika cooperative and through it sold them to branches of the State Committee for Computer Engineering. Revenue for the first month of work, according to Tarasov's memoirs, amounted to about a million rubles.

This is what the products of the cooperative looked like in the late 80s. Then, according to Tarasov, the enterprise was involved in 27 areas of activity: construction, training, innovation, trade, and so on. As of January 1989, Technika's account had 79 million rubles, which is 100 million dollars in dollar terms.

The legendary performance of the millionaire Tarasov in the Vzglyad program caused a shock in Soviet society and an extraordinary resonance throughout the country. A whole series of inspections of the Tarasov cooperative began, which they tried to bring under the article “Theft on an especially large scale” (in the USSR it was punishable by execution). After 9 months of inspections, the company was closed, and all accounts were arrested. Although the case did not reach the court, because the inspectors did not find any crime.

Tarasov was called an enemy of Gorbachev. The first and last president of the USSR spoke out sharply after that broadcast of the Vzglyad program: “Our country is rich in talented people. One of them bought computers cheaply and sold them for big money! This cannot be in the USSR.” Tarasov irritated him and interfered with his harsh statements, especially since he later became a people's deputy and received immunity.

However, after the businessman spread the word in February 1991 that Gorbachev was preparing to transfer the Kuril Islands to Japan for $200 billion, his conflict with the authorities forced him to leave the USSR for London: Tarasov believed that immigration in March 1991 saved him life, because, as he believed, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had already ordered his killer for 12 thousand rubles.

Tarasov returned to Moscow in 1993, when directly from London he participated in the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation and won in the Central District of Moscow, becoming a deputy. In 1996, Tarasov even put forward his candidacy for participation in the presidential elections in Russia, but the Central Election Commission did not register him.

Tarasov later recalled: “When I arrived in Russia after emigrating, I saw another country. Gangster. Where my friends were killed. These are politicians, and journalists, and businessmen. I had a nostalgic breakdown. And from this terrible country, after two years of being a deputy, I drove back to England. I realized: there is nothing to catch here.

At the end of 1996, he again went to London and lived there until 2003. There he lost his millions, getting involved in the scam of a Lebanese named Abdel Nasif, and then spent a lot of money on litigation with him.

Tarasov again returned to permanent residence in Russia in 2003. Twice participated in the elections for the posts of governor of St. Petersburg (2000) and governor Krasnoyarsk Territory(2002), but was not successful.

Tarasov had a plan to fight corruption in Russia. Among other things, he proposed abolishing taxes.

AT last years Tarasov led a kind of reclusive life. Only a couple of years ago he tried to return to public life through the political door. From the Yabloko party, he tried his hand at the elections to the State Duma. As Tarasov himself admitted in an interview, he lived modestly in a small apartment on the Arbat, as they say, “on a salary,” plus the money set aside in the years of former luxury in the American pension fund came in handy.

The house where Artem Tarasov died at the end of July 2017.

In recent years, the businessman lived alone in an apartment and only once a week a housekeeper came to him. The corpse of a millionaire was discovered by his friend on Saturday evening, July 22, when he brought him medicine.

By the way, the millionaire did not like to go to the doctors, because he did not trust medicine. He told everyone that he knew his body better than doctors. Therefore, he made his own diagnoses, and searched the Internet for the medicines to be taken. Investigators of the UK ordered a check, but according to the first conclusions of doctors, the death is not of a criminal nature.

Today Russia is a great and fairly independent power. The country was put in a difficult position during the collapse of the USSR, but even at that moment people organized themselves who managed to orient themselves correctly and build their business. It will be about people who are considered the first Russian millionaires.

Among the very first millionaires in Russia, Artem Tarasov, a people's deputy of the 90s, can be nominated. The entrepreneur and member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation was nominated for the presidential elections in 1996, but did not take part in them.

In 1989, having received a salary of 3 million rubles, Tarasov gained popularity as the first legal millionaire Soviet Union. Tarasov's popularity went beyond the borders where he was forced to emigrate.

Another political figure, who later became a multimillionaire - German Sterligov, now lives in the forest. In 1990, under his name, the first Soviet commodity exchange "Alisa" was organized. It included 84 more subsidiaries in Russia and abroad.

Sterligov ran for governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in 2002, for mayor of Moscow in 2003, and even ran for president in 2004. In the same year, German Sterligov left business and politics and left Moscow with his family for the Mozhaisk region, took up agriculture, and delved into religion.

Alexei Konanykhin and Georgy Miroshnik are experts in their field and excellent businessmen who previously held high positions in the country's economy. To date, little is known about them, apparently due to big problems with the authorities. Modern businessmen and entrepreneurs create their business in alliance with foreign colleagues and create international business and economic relations, nourish experience from their employees. These people can also be called the first millionaires of Russia.

The average Soviet citizen was familiar with the lifestyle of underground millionaires only from the novel by Ilf and Petrov "The Golden Calf". The owner of millions, Koreiko, lived quietly, did not attract attention to himself and waited for the collapse of Soviet power.

Real Soviet millionaires, even in those conditions, lived in such a way that even the "official" rich of that time - successful actors, singers and party functionaries - would envy them.

Siegfried Hasenfranz

Siegfried Hasenfranz and his companion Isaac Singer made a fortune on the eternal Soviet deficit and the citizens' love to dress well. First, they opened a "third shift" at the factory, and then - underground production in abandoned hangars.

Products sold like hot cakes. Gasenfranz bought a house for the family and hired servants. His wife wore diamond jewelry.

He had a large office and laboratory in a separate wing. In the evenings, the millionaire liked to think and write his own "Code of the Builder of Communism." In it, he justified the power of money and emphasized that everything is good, what is good for a particular person. Gasenfranz was among the Jewish emigrants who knew perfectly well how people live "in the West." Romanian was spoken at home.

After some time, the millionaire took a risky step - he acquired Rolls-Royce in one of the diplomatic missions. In the Soviet Union, where the pinnacle of success was the "Seagull", and for the "simple" person - the Volga. The car was second-hand, but you can imagine how noticeable it was on the streets.

Isaac Singer

The full namesake of the famous inventor of the personal sewing machine also made a fortune tailoring and curtains. When he was little, his family was exiled to Kyrgyzstan "for entrepreneurial activity"father, previously expelled from the party "for connection with Trotskyism." Later, when Isaac Singer himself was arrested, his sister was summoned to the KGB to find out why she had not denounced her brother.

Isaac Singer lived in grand style - the company's income was 400 thousand rubles a year (at the cost of the Volga - 5 thousand). He also bought himself a foreign car, walked in restaurants on a grand scale and did not need anything.

Other participants in the underground company literally kept money “in banks” - in dachas, in the ground. There was no other way to hide income. Perhaps Singer and Hasenfranz also went this way.

Rumors about earnings at the factory dispersed throughout the city. Foreign cars were driven not only by Singer and Gasenfranz, but also by their assistants. Exorbitant spending no one thought to hide - it happened in Kyrgyzstan, on the very outskirts of the Union.

Arrest of millionaires

Local authorities turned a blind eye to the activities of partners, receiving good bribes. The factory exceeded its plans and regularly received certificates from Moscow. The members of the group slept peacefully - it seemed to them that this gave a guarantee of safety. But Khrushchev's desire to eradicate speculation and underground production turned out to be stronger. In 1962, the entire network (more than 150 people) was arrested.