Soviet millionaires. About the black market of the USSR and Soviet millionaires The richest man in the Soviet Union
There were no articles about them in Forbes - there were articles of the Criminal Code for them.
Andrey Dubrovsky
The command-plan centralized economy created by Stalin in the 1930s was extremely inefficient, as evidenced by the chronic deficit that accompanied him until his death. Contrary to official statements about overfulfilled plans, it is clear from closed reports to the party and government that none of the five-year plans was not only exceeded, but even simply fulfilled. In conditions of scarcity, a black market flourished since the 1930s, satisfying half of the needs of citizens.
Black caviar and vodka seized from Soviet underground entrepreneurs
And if there was a black market, then there were its heroes - underground millionaires. And if a serious struggle to destroy the black market could lead to the extinction of most of the population (and the authorities understood this), then millionaires from time to time fell under the repressive rink of Soviet power.
Nikolai Pavlenko
Activity time: Great Patriotic War - early 1950s
During the war, this enterprising son of a dispossessed peasant managed to create not just some small artel, but a real private construction corporation with several hundred employees, working throughout the European part of the USSR.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Pavlenko was drafted into the active army and retreated with the troops inland until he reached Vyazma. After that, he deserted, wrote out fake documents for himself and organized the first enterprise in Kalinin (Tver) - "Section of military construction work No. 5 of the Kalinin Front" (UVSR-5). For a bribe at the printing house, Pavlenko printed the necessary documents - invoices, contracts, etc., picked up a dozen abandoned trucks and bulldozers on the front roads and, taking advantage of the confusion of wartime, built UVSR-5 into the system of military construction units of the Kalinin Front.
The “private” division of Nikolai Pavlenko, supplied with allowances and replenished, reached Berlin along with the front, repairing roads and bridges, building airfields and hospitals, sometimes even engaged in battle with the Germans who had broken through to the rear. The "commander" and his "subordinates" received titles, were awarded medals and orders.
By the end of the war, the budget of the mythical UVSR-5 reached 3 million rubles, and Pavlenko himself drove German executive cars Horch and Adler. Having received a railway echelon of thirty wagons for a bribe, Pavlenko took out of Germany food requisitioned from the local population, as well as captured trucks, tractors, cars and other equipment. All this was sold in Kalinin on the black market. After that, Pavlenko demobilized most of his "unit", which by that time numbered about 300 people, while each of the officers received from 15 to 25 thousand rubles, and privates - from 7 to 12 thousand. The "commander" left about 90 thousand rubles for himself.
Further, Pavlenko organized the construction artel "Plandorstroy" in Kalinin. Soon he moved to Lvov, then to Chisinau, where control was not as strict as in the central regions of the country. There he organized the 1st Directorate of Military Construction (UVS-1), which soon became one of the largest construction organizations in the region. The enterprise had its own armed guards, the personnel came from local military registration and enlistment offices. UVS-1 received contracts from industrial enterprises and organizations in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, the western regions of the RSFSR and the Baltic states.
He paid Pavlenko in cash, three to four times more than at state-owned enterprises, and built on the conscience, which even the investigators who conducted the “Pavlenko case” later admitted. Customers did not have any complaints about the operation of UVS-1 either.
From 1948 to 1952, UVS-1 concluded 64 contracts for the amount of 38,717,600 rubles on false documents. Pavlenko received more than 25 million rubles from fictitious accounts in the branches of the State Bank. Business, safely covered by bribes, worked without failures.
Led by chance. One of the employees of UVS-1 was underpaid for government bonds, and he wrote a statement to the local prosecutor's office. An inspection began, during which it turned out that UVS-1 was not officially listed anywhere.
On November 14, 1952, as a result of a large-scale operation, carefully planned by the state security agencies of the five union republics, the construction "empire" of Nikolai Pavlenko was liquidated. Nearly 400 people were arrested. In the apartment of Pavlenko, who by that time was already in the rank of colonel, they found on total amount 34 million rubles. The verdict is predictable: in April 1955, Pavlenko was shot. Another 16 defendants received terms from 5 to 20 years.
Boris Roifman
Activity time: 1940s - early 1960s
This underground businessman has been creating workshops at various state enterprises and organizations since 1947. In 1957, Roifman launched the production of unrecorded products in the knitting shop of the deaf-mute society in Kalinin.
Having accumulated capital, Roifman began to storm the capital: he bought for 2,000 rubles the position of the head of the workshops of the psycho-neurological dispensary in the Krasnopresnensky district of Moscow and obtained permission (also for bribes) to create a knitting workshop at the mental dispensary. Everyone was in the share, from the head physician to ordinary employees. At the dispensary, Roifman equipped an underground workshop, bought several dozen knitting machines for it from various state-owned enterprises and raw materials - wool. Products were sold through "baited" merchants in the markets and railway stations.
By 1961, when the currency reform was announced in the country, Roifman was a millionaire. It was difficult to exchange millions of old rubles for new ones, but the problem was solved more than once by a tried and tested method - for a bribe to employees of several savings banks in which the exchange was carried out. The underground workshop was opened by accident: Roifman's partner Shakerman quarreled with his relatives, and they reported to the prosecutor's office - they say, he lives beyond his means. The vigilant authorities conducted an inspection, revealed the activities of the underground workshop, went to Roifman. During searches, dozens of kilograms of gold were found in several hiding places. Roifman and Shakerman were shot by court order.
Jan Rokotov
Activity time: late 1950s - early 1960s
After the VI World Festival of Youth and Students, which took place in Moscow in 1957, fartsovka began to develop at an accelerated pace.
Meeting the wishes of the working people, who had seen enough of foreigners and wished to dress stylishly and in an original way, enterprising young people quickly established illegal trade with foreign tourists. Over time, their own "kings" appeared among the fartsovshchikov. The most prominent figure in this area - not only in terms of position, but also in terms of the tragedy of his fate - is Yan Rokotov. It was he who first created a well-organized and built system - with its own hierarchy and laws, with a complex scheme of intermediaries for buying up currency and goods from foreigners.
Having begun to create his empire in 1957, by 1959 Rokotov had become an underground millionaire. To make it easier to do business, he became a police informant and from time to time betrayed some of his colleagues and even his own "employees" who were at the lower levels of the Farts hierarchy.
It is not known how long all this would have continued if big politics had not intervened. During Khrushchev's trip to West Berlin, in response to the words of the Soviet leader, "Berlin has turned into a dirty swamp of speculation," someone shouted from the audience: "There is no other black exchange like yours in Moscow anywhere in the world!" Having received a public slap in the face, Khrushchev flew into a rage and ordered the fartsovka to be wiped out in the bud. A campaign was launched to combat black market traders and currency traders. A demonstration process was needed. In May 1961, Rokotov was arrested, a little later they took two of his closest associates - Faibishenko and Yakovlev. During the search, about 1.5 million dollars in various currencies and gold were confiscated from Rokotov. The total turnover of the underground "empire" of Rokotov amounted to 20 million rubles.
Under Soviet law, the maximum sentence for Rokotov, Faibishenko and Yakovlev was 8 years. But Khrushchev did not like this. The case was reviewed, the court imposed a new punishment in accordance with a specially adopted law: 15 years in prison. However, Khrushchev was out for blood and, intervening in the trial, directly ordered the death sentence - this was already a flagrant violation of legal norms. For the sake of the case of Rokotov, Faibishenko and Yakovlev, amendments were made to the Criminal Code, in accordance with which the death penalty was established for currency smuggling. Despite the fact that the law does not have retroactive effect, the case was reviewed and its defendants were sentenced to death. On July 16, 1961, the sentence was carried out.
Siegfried Hasenfranz and Isaac Singer
Activity time: 1950s - early 1960s
Another private knitwear, patching the holes of the Soviet deficit to the best of their ability, worked in the city of Frunze, the capital of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Gasenfranz and Singer purchased outdated equipment from three sewing cooperatives, equipped a weaving factory in abandoned military sheds, and hired tailors from local Jewish communities.
In a short time, they became the owners of millions of capital with all the attributes of a luxurious life: a Rolls-Royce bought in one of the Moscow diplomatic missions, although used, but a huge house with servants.
With these exorbitant expenses, the guild workers gave themselves away. In January 1962, the KGB arrested 150 people in the "knitwear case". According to the detainees, testimony was beaten out of them with fists. Gasenfranz and Singer were accused of embezzlement of socialist property. To this, Siegfried Hasenfranz reasonably replied: “We have not caused damage to the state. How much the state had, so much remains. We got out on our own money, produced unaccounted products. There is no way we can be tried for embezzlement.”21 The defendants, including Gasenfranz and Singer, were sentenced to death, applying the law retroactively: the arrests took place even before the adoption of amendments introducing the death penalty for economic crimes.
Artem Tarasov
Activity time: perestroika
Tarasov is known as the first legal Soviet millionaire. But he had to achieve this status with battles.
It all started in 1987, when he opened the first marriage agency in Moscow and earned 100 thousand rubles in five days, despite the fact that the average salary in the USSR at that time was 120 rubles. A scandal arose, Tarasov was declared a speculator and on the sixth day the cooperative was closed.
The entrepreneur did not lose heart and opened a new business: the Tekhnika cooperative, a workshop for the repair of imported equipment. It was almost impossible to get imported parts, but the craftsmen in Tarasov's firm managed to put Soviet parts on foreign equipment. When this was revealed, Tarasov was accused of stealing foreign parts. But, since there was not a single complaint from clients (the equipment, although with domestic parts, worked), the investigators had nothing to catch on to, the case fell apart. Tarasov’s business expanded, the company switched to purchasing computers and software for government agencies, even for KGB.
Since the settlement in those years was only in cash, by the beginning of 1989 the firm had more than $100 million in its account. Tarasov became the richest man in the USSR. In the same year, a law was passed, according to which the cash desk of the company should not exceed 100 rubles. Then Tarasov simply divided the entire salary fund among his employees - in total, 1800 people worked for him. When one of the communist employees made a mandatory party contribution - 3% of his salary of 3 million rubles, the party cell was stunned.
The information reached the very top with lightning speed. A representative commission came, made up of as many as eight different organizations: the KGB, the GRU, the OBKhSS, the Ministry of Finance, the KRU of the Ministry of Finance, and financial territorial branches. They removed the cash register, it turned out to be 959,837 rubles 48 kopecks. The commission checked the documents: everything turned out to be legal. But then Gorbachev intervened, saying: “We will not allow it to be turned into capitalism. We must hold these moneybags to account.” The commission had to break the original protocol, the company was closed.
Tarasov was threatened with the execution of Article 93 of the Criminal Code of the USSR "Theft of state property on an especially large scale." The millionaire decided to take a non-trivial step: he came to television, to the popular Vzglyad program, and told his story to the whole country. And in the end he announced: if they prove that he is a speculator, he is ready to be shot even on Red Square. In the following days, many Soviet and foreign media made materials with him, and it became somehow inconvenient to shoot a media person. Soon Tarasov was elected a people's deputy of the RSFSR, so it turned out to be impossible to persecute him. Artem Tarasov is still one of the richest people in the world.
And yet the question arises: under socialism, could artels created by highly motivated enthusiasts overpower state influence in the economy? That is, do not bring Soviet system to full capitalism, but still take the situation beyond the framework of command and control and the state plan?
Several factors interfered with this. First, artels were not so widespread. They occupied only 6% of the market - this is mainly light industry and the production of so-called luxury goods, which are not top-priority in the economy. The remaining 94% are just raw materials, tools and instruments of production. Since the entire state economy was supervised through the Gosplan system, which dictated the price and consumer environment, the macroeconomic interests of the country and society have always been placed above private traders.
Secondly, artels could produce goods on a very limited scale, but in order for their owners to reach super profits - which in a modern way is called enrichment, they would have to take out loans from banks and have access to cheap money or raw materials. But all banks also belonged to the state. And in such conditions - how can a company with a hundred employees compete with a factory with fifteen thousand workers, research institutes and industry associations?
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, artel workers earned more than ordinary workers, but not much. Stratification was achieved rather because artels were organized by professionals with a unique approach and their own vision. At the same time, the political reliability of a person was taken into account, that is, it was important that the company was made up of ideological communists. Such people were little motivated to earn money, and in conditions when the profit received was spent on expanding the business, their further growth in society occurs at the expense of the already official, state ladder. That is, enthusiasts and private traders could eventually become leaders of people's enterprises and members of the party's administrative core. You won’t earn much money, but that was real career and social growth in the era.
Was the USSR ruined by the lack of economic freedoms?
Khrushchev's coming to power is remembered in our official history as a thaw and a political spring. But it was Nikita Sergeevich who closed all the artels in the country. Their property was ordered to be transferred to the state.
According to the 1961 law, everyone "who did not work at the enterprises" was punished to the fullest extent of the Soviet criminal code. Artels and their property were to be transferred to the state.
Interestingly, it was not the tyrant and dictator Stalin who ruined the relic of a market economy in the USSR, but the reformer and admirer of the idea of planting sown areas with corn, Nikita Khrushchev. Late Soviet economists have always proclaimed the thesis of the dominance of the socialist planned system over the private methods of capitalism. But new projects - like Kosygin's economic reforms already in the Brezhnev era of "developed socialism" - were also practically not allowed to be realized.
And it was then that the state machine began to stagnate, losing mobility and focusing only on the implementation of paper indicators. The workers, not being able to show diligence on their own, began to steal. What about enterprising people? If in the 40s they were engaged in the creation of new televisions, radios and shells, then during the period of “stagnation” they retrained as “farmers”, trading jeans and other purely Western goods behind the “Iron Curtain”, thereby bringing the coming economic crisis of perestroika times closer.
A team of fashionistas of an artel engaged in tailoring and designing clothes. This is already an artel of the 60s, therefore, as you might guess, it completely belonged to the state.
Fourthly, could the creators of artels motivate themselves with bonuses, using them for enrichment? As likely, yes, don't forget a few obvious things. Private business was controlled by both legislation and local authorities, that is, party cells. According to the concepts of the regime, only staunch followers of the ideas of Marxism could create them, which greatly distinguished the artels from the cooperatives of the NEP. Premiums were rather a nice addition.
Fifthly, and finally, the artel could not, without the knowledge of the authorities, change the sphere of activity to a more profitable one, and almost all decisions that are today classified as strategic in terms of the economy were agreed with officials. It turned out that the companies had internal economic freedom, but the adoption of new decisions had to be coordinated and carried out along an ideological line.
But, probably, no one wanted to see the "new Russian capitalism" in the artels - not even the artels themselves. They, in fact, performed two other important functions in society. The first is to keep the "critics" busy, those who did not agree with the Soviet "leveling". The socialist concept denied the private economy, but did not prohibit personal initiative. And if a person produced something in order to prove himself - it was great! It is no coincidence that these people were opened the way to the party and service ladders, were given awards. In addition, it corresponded to the spirit of workers' self-government. The opposite would be worse. The second is to prevent the dominant role of the state in the economy through the total monopolization of all resources.
http://www.m24.ru/articles/42291
"Unsolved secrets": How the black market of goods worked in the USSR
In the USSR, which lived behind the Iron Curtain, one could get rich only by trading on the black market. What was traded in the country of the Soviets, how people found out where and how much to get a deficit, and why the authorities often turned a blind eye to the black market - this was filmed by the Moscow Trust TV channel.
Fight against speculators
In the mid-1980s, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time announced the value of the turnover on the black market - 10 billion rubles. Soon the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a law on cooperatives. They received equal rights with state-owned enterprises: they pledged to pay taxes and keep official accounting. Entrepreneurs began to "come out of the shadows."
Economist Nikita Krichevsky argues that the Soviet economy did not take into account the needs of the people. Half of the inhabitants of a giant country was forced to purchase goods, bypassing stores.
According to Krichevsky, it was the economy of the means of production, and the Soviet leaders in those years, since the days of industrialization, were busy trying to produce as many machine tools, equipment, machines, mechanisms and rockets as possible. “And the inhabitants, the population, will somehow trample on, because times are difficult, we are surrounded by enemies, there is a confrontation between the two systems. In a word, it’s not up to you, gentlemen,” says Krichevsky.
Yevgeny Chernousov, senior detective for especially important cases of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, more than once had to round up speculators. The Soviet government controlled defense enterprises and collective farms, there were no thefts recorded there, but it was not possible to trace unaccounted products in the fisheries, factories and factories, they immediately went to the black market.
“Due to the creation of surplus products and materials, they made new products, stuck labels of foreign companies and passed them off as good products, and then sold them. And it was a lot of money, and it was difficult to fight because no one advertised it. Then they didn’t build there were no dachas, mansions, a few cars - everyone was afraid. They were kept "in a pod", it really was a problem," the detective recalls.
In 1989, Gorbachev again touched on the subject of the shadow economy. The success story of Muscovite Artem Tarasov pushed him to this: he opened the first marriage agency in Moscow and earned 100 thousand rubles in the first five days, and the average salary in the country then was 120 rubles. Tarasov was immediately declared a speculator who illegally arranged marriages of convenience in pursuit of a Moscow residence permit.
In those years, everything was sold only from under the floor - from meat to Helga sets from the GDR (people stood in lines for these sets for three, four years). Tarasov had a friend, an illegal millionaire, and he knew dozens of ways to make money without stealing.
He shared one of these secrets: “A furniture set arrives, I go to the warehouse with a nail and scratch on the sidewall, I make a huge scratch. Then the commission comes from the central office and looks at the set, it is damaged during transportation, it is discounted. And my cabinetmaker closes up the scratch so that the client will never see it. The client comes in turn, receives a satisfied and happy headset for the full price, and also tries to give me a bribe - 50 or 20 rubles. Of course, I don’t take it - it’s stupid to take a bribe. "
The first Soviet millionaire
Despite an unsuccessful attempt with a marriage agency, Tarasov started a new business: the Moscow House of Life allowed him to open a workshop for repairing equipment that was exclusive in those days in the Soviet Union - imported.
Tarasov took two engineers with soldering irons who could repair Japanese household appliances. At that time, there was no way to repair it anywhere in Moscow, there was only one organization that brought these spare parts. Moreover, spare parts waited for a year, two, and paid a lot of money. And these "craftsmen" began to repair Japanese tape recorders, video recorders, televisions.
The company had a huge flow, because the engineers managed to put Soviet transistors in Japanese portable tape recorders. And when one of the users opened the lid and looked at what was there - there were huge transistors, a bunch of wires, all this was filled with epoxy, but most importantly, the tape recorder worked.
The company was accused of stealing foreign parts, the process began. The book of complaints saved Tarasov: there was not a single complaint in it, all thanks, and the investigators had nothing to catch on to. But soon he gave a new reason for arrest.
"Management - I, my deputy, second deputy and chief accountant, divided 10 million among themselves. They wrote out 3 million salaries, and 700 thousand were given to the accountant so that she would stay with us. She almost hanged herself from horror," says the entrepreneur . As soon as the statement was signed, it came to Gorbachev himself.
“From time to time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened criminal cases on speculation, started cases of operational development and identified the organizers of the supply of those products from abroad or unaccounted for. But it was a drop in the ocean, so it was simply impossible to overcome it. And the authorities, understanding this, made an appearance, that they are fighting these black markets, and so on, but in fact, there was certainly no such efficiency of work in this direction," detective Chernousov believes.
Tarasov also had to communicate with speculators, otherwise the system would not work: to get one, you need to get something else. His imported equipment repair firm grew, they switched to buying computers and software for all structures in the country, including the Star City of the Academy of Sciences and even the KGB.
Payment in those years was only in cash. By the beginning of 1989, the company had 100 million rubles on its account, and this at a time when a luxurious Mercedes cost 12 thousand.
Tarasov's firm had an acquaintance in the USSR Ministry of Justice, who reported all the news about the legislation. And once he said: "Soon there will be a limit on the cash that the cooperative can spend per day - only 100 rubles. There should be 100 rubles in the cash register. All the rest should be placed somewhere in banks and cannot be spent." And the cooperative "Tekhnika" had 1800 people in the state. It was then that Tarasov came up with the idea to divide the salary fund among "his own", so that later during the year he would spend it on the needs of the cooperative. But when they made party contributions for 90 thousand rubles, this was immediately reported "upstairs".
Soon a commission came - eight different organizations: OBKhSS, the KGB of the USSR, the GRU, the Ministry of Finance, the KRU of the Ministry of Finance, and financial territorial departments. When they removed the cash register, it turned out to be 959 thousand 837 rubles 48 kopecks. The commission was preparing a protocol stating that everything was legal, but Gorbachev spoke and said: "We will not allow our socialist homeland to be turned into capitalism. We must call these moneybags to account."
The commission returned, the protocol was torn, the cooperative stopped work, everyone quit. Tarasov was left alone, he was threatened by the 93rd article of the Criminal Code of the USSR "Theft of state property on an especially large scale." There is only one punishment - execution. Under the same article, a few years ago, the father of a friend of Tarasov, the director of the Eliseevsky store Sokolov, was sentenced, at one time this story made a lot of noise.
The Soviet millionaire Artem Tarasov took a desperate step: he came to television, to the progressive program "Vzglyad", and told his story to the whole country. Moreover, he made a loud statement: if they prove that he is a speculator, he is ready to be shot even on Red Square.
"Vzglyadovtsy" were afraid that they would be closed, but they were not closed, and I became popular: in the following days I was surrounded by a huge number of all sorts of journalists, they wrote about me "Moscow News" - at that time a very progressive newspaper, in English. I was interviewed by all the agencies of the world: Associated Press, all sorts of Japanese. And, of course, it was difficult to touch me," Tarasov said.
It got to the point that he was elected people's deputy of the RSFSR. Then Tarasov gained "immunity" and could already calmly, being in the Yeltsin camp, in unison with everyone say that it was time for Gorbachev to leave, that this perestroika was wrong and a free market was needed.
History of free trade in the USSR
The word "market" at that time in itself was considered criminal. An article could be imputed for private trade. If a person bought a product and resold it, this is speculation: five to seven years in prison with confiscation of property. For commercial mediation (there was such an article) - three years.
True, life in the Soviet Union was not always like this. In the mid-1920s, trading on the streets was conducted openly - these were the years of the NEP. Moscow historian Tatiana Vorontsova devotes a separate excursion to a short but such a bright period in history.
“Many of us believe that the Aurora fired, and then immediately the metro was launched, these 10-15 years all the time disappear somewhere from our history, but, nevertheless, it was a very interesting time when trade flourished. There was both private and cooperative trade, there were many artels. And state trade also began to rise. There was competition, there was a variety of goods, "Vorontsova believes.
True, even then private traders were somewhat infringed: they were not allowed to print color advertisements or use the help of professional poets, while Mayakovsky himself promoted public services.
An interesting fact: in 1927 in Moscow there were 25 fashion magazines (children's fashion, women's fashion, summer, spring) on free sale - for any request. But at the end of the 1920s, when the five-year plans began, they had to forget about free private trade, the country embarked on the rails of industrialization.
However, the publicist Alexander Trubitsyn recently made a peculiar discovery: he discovered that under Stalin, entrepreneurs as a class were not destroyed, but, on the contrary, they flourished very, very much.
For example, in the "Collection of documents of the NKVD during the Great Patriotic War", it was written that at such and such a factory there are so many shells in production, so many in production, so many at the output, so many prepared, so many can produce, deadlines and so on - the usual technical report. But the most important thing is that this production belonged to the artel.
An artel is when people united in brigades for seasonal earnings or established small-scale production. As a rule, they occupied the niche where the state did not have time. By the way, in 1953, about 6% of the gross national product was made by private entrepreneurs, and the first televisions and the first radiograms were made in artels.
In the documents of the Stalinist period, members of artels were indicated along with workers and collective farmers. They were full citizens, who were also awarded orders and promoted to the honor roll. Not only that, in order to exclude corruption, the Council of People's Commissars provided for the exact rates at which raw materials are delivered to the artels. The only requirement for them is that the price of products should not exceed the state price by more than 10%.
Under Khrushchev, such a phenomenon as fartsovka appeared. This became especially noticeable after the International Festival of Youth and Students, arranged in Moscow in 1957. Then Soviet people saw how to dress. Soviet mods were immediately dubbed dudes. At first, only they were the main clients of the black marketers, and then illegal trade grew to an all-Union scale.
Hotel "Intourist" - the most famous hotel company, which was inhabited by merchants, black marketeers. By the 70s, the network of black marketers included almost all the maids, storeys, bartenders, and hotel cleaners. Their task is to bargain fashionable things from unlucky foreigners by any means and then give them to resellers.
At "Intourist", "Metropol" and other hotels popular among foreigners, black marketers were on duty for days. For a fee, the porters did not drive them away. They often sold the booty right there, in the nearest Moscow courtyard and even in a public toilet. One of them was once located in Kamergersky Lane, not far from Red Square.
"Currency" cases and red dollars
And if the authorities often turned a blind eye to petty trade, then currency transactions in the country were illegal. For a couple of dollars you could get a lot of time. This happened to the actor Vladimir Dolinsky: five years before the filming of the film "The Same Munchausen", he, an artist of the Satire Theater, was caught red-handed selling currency. He served almost four years in a strict regime colony. The petition of friends-artists and evidence of the randomness of the transaction had no effect on the investigation. And all because of $ 30 - he bought them when the theater was going abroad on tour. Then the trip was canceled, and Dolinsky wanted to return his rubles.
As the economist Krichevsky recalls, illegal foreign exchange transactions in the Soviet Union sometimes reached the point of absurdity. So, in the 70s in Moscow, an amusing episode that happened in the so-called "pipe" - the transition from the current Okhotny Ryad to Revolution Square received wide, naturally, informal, non-newspaper publicity. One comrade who wanted to buy dollars, on the advice of friends, collected all the free Soviet rubles, came to this point, went to the "pipe" and quickly enough found the one who had the dollars in stock.
Then the most interesting began. The seller informed our unlucky buyer that the real dollar was not green, but red. And if he buys red dollars and travels abroad, he will be able to exchange these dollars for European currency at a higher rate. The seller was very surprised that the buyer, who wanted to buy these dollars, knew nothing about it and had not heard anything.
By the way, the buyer was not the last Soviet athlete. He bought red dollars and, of course, was ridiculed by absolutely all his buddies.
Persecution of antiquarians
In the wake of perestroika, a wave of raids came: the police arrested large speculators who had not been dared to touch before. There were operations to capture the guild workers - these are those who produce goods underground and on a large scale. Most often they forged foreign brands. The denim business was especially popular, and the highest rates were in the antiques market. One of the few private collectors at that time was Mikhail Perchenko.
He had a passion for antiques and collecting since childhood. Perchenko still remembers that day in the smallest detail: he was walking along the old Arbat and accidentally noticed a beautiful service in the window of a commission store, or rather, its price tag. The service cost 96 thousand rubles (for comparison: the ZiM limousine, which no one could buy, cost 42 thousand).
The service, by the way, was not easy: it was for 48 people, weighed 146 kilograms and belonged to Nicholas II, with his monograms and native gilding. Perchenko was able to buy his first item at the age of 19. True, he sold it a long time ago - he says that you can’t assemble a real collection without parting with anything.
Mikhail Perchenko acknowledges that in Soviet years cooperated with speculators - bought icons from them. But there was one ironclad rule that he adhered to, and which, he believes, saved him from prison - never mess with smugglers.
"The black market in Russia was huge. True, even now it is rarely possible to buy something worthwhile from a shop window, everything is sold in offices, in hands, and so on. It was possible to accuse every antiquarian of speculation and imprison him for a long time, and many of the collectors sat. When I had already begun to collect Western European art, they began to hunt me. Somehow I managed to catch me on a bribe of 10 rubles, and the bribe was not to an official, but to the seller, and not in the form of money, but in the form of sweets, " Perchenko said.
The search in the collector's house began at 6 o'clock in the morning and continued until late in the evening. He's already learned the procedure - this is the third time they've tried to arrest him. Only later did his friends tell him that 13 collections had been confiscated that day in Moscow, and only Perchenko managed to get everything back thanks to his connections.
According to unwritten laws, the shadow economy appears everywhere and always, if there are restrictions on trade in a particular product. The profit in such a market is much higher, although the risks are also higher. The black market in the USSR became an integral part of Soviet life. It was impossible to forbid to live beautifully even behind the Iron Curtain.
On Sunday, July 23, Artem Tarasov, the first legal millionaire in the USSR, died. He was 67 years old.
Artem Tarasov was born in 1950 in Moscow and gained fame in the USSR and abroad as the first legal Soviet millionaire who was paid a salary of 3 million rubles for January 1989 by the decision of the Tekhnika cooperative headed by him from the profits of this cooperative. All taxes from this salary were paid - only the tax for childlessness amounted to 6 percent for Tarasov, or 180,000 rubles. Tarasov's deputy for the cooperative, who also received a salary of 3 million rubles as a member of the CPSU, paid membership dues to the party in the amount of 3 percent of the salary - 90,000 rubles. This caused a shock in Soviet society and a wave of discussions in the USSR.
Artem Tarasov was elected a people's deputy of the RSFSR and a deputy of the State Duma of the first convocation. He was nominated as a candidate for the presidency of Russia in the 1996 elections, but was not registered by the election commission and did not take part in the elections.
Until the last moment, he worked as chairman of the board of directors of the Innovation Institute LLC he created. Since 2016, he has been a member of the Yabloko party. In the elections to the State Duma in 2016, he headed the regional list of "Yabloko" in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, he was also nominated as a candidate in a single-mandate constituency.
Radio Liberty publishes a conversation between columnist Mikhail Sokolov and Artem Tarasov dedicated to the release of the book of Tarasov's memoirs "Millionaire". This program, in which a State Duma deputy also took part, was first heard on Radio Liberty in September 2004.
Mikhail Sokolov: Artem, let's start with your book. That's how difficult it is to write candidly about the 90s? After all, many of those people you write about are alive, healthy, occupy various, high positions. Well, for example, the same Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov, whom you actually recommended to Gavriil Popov as vice-mayor. Here are all these stories... There are no complaints about you now from those who actually became the heroes of your book?
Artem Tarasov: Well, Mikhail, I would like to start with the fact that I am not a writer, and I never was, and I won’t be, and I don’t consider myself. And so everything that happened like this - this book was born, this misunderstanding, it seems to me, in itself. I started to write the first lines in 1997. That is, you can imagine, 7 years, with long breaks, sometimes one and a half, two years - that's how this thing was written.
I am not writing about people in this book. It seems to you that I am writing there about Luzhkov and about some other person ...
Mikhail Sokolov: About Gaidar, for example.
Artem Tarasov: It seems to you too. I am writing about that trace ... the trace that remained in my life when I came into contact with these people. This is very easy to prove. These are the people who are dead, whose fates I also describe in the book, they are no longer there, and the trace, it remained to my very last days. And if I write that a person is a bandit, he really was a bandit in my life, he left me such an impression and such scars on my heart or somewhere else. Maybe he is a decent person, maybe he loves his grandmother, maybe he keeps an orphanage - I don’t know, I can’t write a characterization of this person. So let these people not be offended. Here are the traces that they inherited in my biography, in life, in fate, they are exactly the same as I described - and nothing more.
If I write that a person is a thug, he really was a thug in my life
Mikhail Sokolov: I'll just note that your book, in a sense, is such a... well, not exactly an encyclopedia of corruption, but a reference book of easy swindle from this crazy time of the 90s.
And I want to tell our listeners that we have been joined by a deputy of the State Duma of Russia, a columnist for the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, Alexander Khinshtein, who writes a lot about the problems of corruption, about the problems of special services and is a member of the Security Committee.
In general, we have two deputies in the studio: one is a former deputy of the State Duma, the other is a current one. And there is something to talk about.
I would turn to Mr. Khinshtein. Moskovsky Komsomolets also published your article "Getting rid of the KGB" in September with the subtitle "For what they fought for, they ran into it." And the author, that is, you, prove that we, that is, the people, are to blame for destroying the best intelligence services in the world.
So you are worried that the most efficient people of the middle level, above the middle level, have left, and you are calling on all these KGB officers to return and protect the Motherland from terrorism.
Are you serious at all?
Absolutely seriously. Well, not exactly, I'm not calling them to go back and defend their homeland. I just expressed my assumption that the president should address them with such an appeal, as Supreme Commander like, after all, their former colleague. Because, otherwise, the people who today, for the most part, are arranged quite well, of course, will not go back.
As for the responsibility of society for the collapse of the special services and for the consequences of this collapse, which we are unfortunately witnessing today, yes, I am absolutely convinced that society, and primarily its most thinking and progressive part in the form of the intelligentsia, that is us, is most directly responsible for what happened.
Mikhail Sokolov: So you think that the KGB needs to be restored right in the form it was?
No no. I don't want any extremes, and I'm not talking about extremes here. In general, it is always necessary to approach such global issues very carefully and very carefully. I'm talking about something else. I'm talking about the fact that when the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, it collapsed, by the way, I should note, not through the fault of the KGB, because all the processes that are taking place today in the Caucasus are analysts and specialists of the KGB, in particular, the Fifth Directorate of the KGB USSR, they predicted back then, in the late 80s, and, unfortunately ...
Mikhail Sokolov: And clients of the Fifth Department also predicted. Andrei Amalrik, for example.
Predicted. Well, unfortunately, there was no reaction to those notes that were written to the Central Committee of the Party and to other leading bodies of the state.
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, and on the books of dissidents ... Here Amalrik wrote a book that "Will Soviet Union until 1984. Well, he lived until 1991. That's true.
So, I'll continue. At that time, indeed, the KGB was probably one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world. And then the events that began to take place in the country, of course, led to the erosion of the service, led to the erosion of the structure. I don't want to sing the praises of the KGB now and say that everything that happened within the walls of this building was very good. In the same way, I shy away from any sweeping criticism that everything that happened behind these walls was bad, wild and disgusting. I urge you to just really find some kind of middle ground. The society is obliged to have and protect its special services. And, look, in our society, I mean, first of all, the thinking part, the intelligentsia, some kind of relationship with the special services, so to speak, not just closeness, but if you are a writer, and you write about intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers, or journalist, then the attitude towards you is appropriate. They look at you as a paid agent or as an undercover employee, and this is considered bad manners.
The society is obliged to have and protect its special services
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, it's such a special relationship, right? They don't let anyone in.
Oh sure. But why, say, in America, those specialists who, say, write about the history of the CIA, exist absolutely normally among their own kind, I mean representatives of the elite, representatives of the intelligentsia, and it never occurs to anyone to throw stones at them and say: here they come - paid mercenaries of the CIA, or paid mercenaries of the FBI?
Mikhail Sokolov: I can answer your question.
Let's.
Mikhail Sokolov: Because if we look at the experience of Western intelligence agencies, to a greater or lesser extent, with certain exceptions, they, in general, defended democracy. And what did the KGB, the Cheka and so on protect?
OGPU?
Mikhail Sokolov: But we know perfectly well that we are not children... a criminal regime.
OGPU - it was a very long time ago.
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, so what, what a long time ...
And we are by the same criterion with you ...
Artem Tarasov: I'm sorry I got in. You have come to a very important definition that is being asked right now. In fact, any strong power strong country, and even more so great country, which Russia wants to be, must have a strong organization, special services and so on. And that's not the fear.
It's scary when the secret services run errands or at the mercy of the authorities, when the authorities use the special services to achieve their personal interests: selfish, political, whatever you want, strengthening itself, suppressing the initiative of people - that's what's scary. That's why the KGB was scary in the Soviet Union.
Sorry for interrupting you now. This is not a question for the special services, and not for the KGB, and not for the FSB.
Artem Tarasov: Correctly.
This is a question for the government.
Artem Tarasov: By themselves, they perform it professionally, because they are in the service.
Of course. This is a question for the government. The special services are exactly the same state tools as the Ministry of Health or, relatively speaking, postal workers.
Special services are exactly the same tools of the state as the Ministry of Health
Artem Tarasov: Absolutely agree. Moreover, they are more disciplined.
Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, you say that the basis is healthy, that is, the KGB, on this basis it is possible to build new special services. Other people believe that the basis is absolutely rotten, and we must do ... as in Eastern Europe.
From East Germany, the Stasi agents, very professional, probably, in their part, were not hired by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Do you understand?
Absolutely fair. I will answer your questions. Quite rightly, they were not taken to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is abbreviated as BFV, because this department existed in West Germany.
And the German authorities did not need to create any new agency.
Here you have given such, as it seems to me, a very revealing and very significant thesis. You say that in America it is normal to praise the CIA, because the entire history of Western intelligence agencies is one continuous defense of democracy...
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, with a few exceptions.
No, well, that's what you said... But in Russia it's not quite like that. I want to point out to you that, on the contrary, the entire history of the Western intelligence services is one continuous history of absolutely anti-democratic, since the vast majority of terrorist events, conspiracies of some kind, coups, uprisings, in all countries of the world took place with the direct participation of the CIA.
Today, when all these ideological blinders have been cast aside and there are no stereotypes of the Soviet era, we can talk about it calmly and say that, yes, bin Laden...
Mikhail Sokolov: And you want to say that there was never a communist threat to the world, right?
I want to say that in order to avoid one crime, it is not enough to commit another crime. Evil for evil - this, excuse me, is completely undemocratic. As for bin Laden, whom the Americans are now hunting for, for the sake of which they have already seized two sovereign, let's say, states, this bin Laden did not appear yesterday, this bin Laden did not fall from the moon, this is the product of American special services. I don't want to burden you and the listeners with a list of all those...
Artem Tarasov: Alexander, you see what you are coming to, and in America the special services are a kind of maintenance, service team in the current government.
Yes Yes.
Artem Tarasov: And that's what's scary, the only thing that makes me afraid. I am not a revolutionary, not a politician. I was also on the Security Committee in the State Duma, oddly enough, even the first State Duma was. But today, this worries me just as a citizen. Is the government today able to say with all responsibility that the use of the special services, which they are reviving, which they will still revive, and, obviously, will call everyone back and pay good salaries, is the government today able to tell the people, and can it believe our people that this special service will not, contrary to the interests of the people, simply serve the top of power? If it does, then some kind of seizure of countries may await us - we, too, are fighting terrorism. Basayev will leave for Turkey, and we will capture it.
Mikhail Sokolov: You know, there is still a problem. So you said again about the United States and so on, but what you know about what happened in the American intelligence services is connected primarily with the work of a mass of commissions, parliamentary control, this activity of the CIA was repeatedly reviewed, investigated, and so on, then There is parliamentary control in one way or another, to a greater extent in recent times, say, in the 80s, in the 90s, to a lesser extent in the past, but it has always existed.
In the Soviet Union, there was no control, sorry, except for control by the Central Committee of the CPSU.
And in the 1990s, I generally suspect that there was no control on the part of the presidential power either.
By the way, in the book of Artem Mikhailovich there are details when employees of the same state security or structures close to it, they solved their personal problems.
Yes, and you wrote about this, in my opinion, many times, how they solved their personal problems of enrichment or, so to speak, career problems with the help of this cherished certificate with the inscription "FSB" or some other, "FAPSI", you have a lot was written on the subject.
Yes.
Mikhail Sokolov: And parliamentary control, in general, was brilliantly absent. And I suspect he still hasn't shown up. Truth?
No, he didn't show up.
Mikhail Sokolov: Here you see.
Let's connect some listener so that we don't have a conversation for three.
Artem Tarasov: From the former bodies, please, someone call.
Mikhail Sokolov: I suspect they probably will.
Boris is calling us from St. Petersburg. Please, your question to our guests.
Listener: I would like to ask both guests in the studio. What do you think, was there an alternative, perhaps, I will put it too roughly, criminal privatization of property? Thank you.
Mikhail Sokolov: Artem, did you participate in privatizations?
Artem Tarasov: Well, still, of course. It was and, of course, it should have been. And, in principle, there was a time that really passed as if before my eyes and even with my participation. At one time I was a member of the Council under President Yeltsin, he was not the president, but the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, and there were quite respected people there. There was a writer Granin, there was a director Zakharov, Grigory Yavlinsky, Burbulis. And we got together, drank cognac, of course, three-star brandy, and discussed what to do with the country and how to solve issues, including privatization. Galya Starovoitova was there then. After all, why did they choose the voucher system of privatization, did they choose it then? Because, as it seemed then, it was very successful in Czechoslovakia. The first vouchers appeared there through this system. But there were also alternatives. There were many things proposed. In particular, here we are ... I say "we", I was a representative of the emerging bourgeoisie, it was a class of so-called cooperators. We already had a lot of people, 5 million people worked, 300 thousand enterprises. I was vice-president of the USSR Union of Cooperatives. We suggested another way to Yeltsin: let's take a territory, and make a zone of free cooperation on this territory, and see what comes of it, but don't immediately spread it to the whole country. Because we realized that the cooperative, which appeared at some enterprise, pulled out the best personnel, paid more money. Naturally, shadow money also went to the cooperative. I say: well, fence us, I don't know, with barbed wire, create a Hong Kong zone, and we'll see what happens. And we asked for any territory. And then there were not governors, but also secretaries of the regional party committees, who themselves offered Gorbachev more ... By the way, I can’t help but recall Yuri Spiridonov, in the Komi Republic they wanted to create a zone of free cooperation. And if it had gone this way, well, there would have been privatization errors somewhere in one territory, then they would have been distributed in a different way. So here's an alternative. But they chose this way.
I've already left. Chubais appeared after. And so it all happened.
I was a representative of the emerging bourgeoisie, it was a class of cooperators of the so-called
I want to say that, probably, if the idea that Artem Tarasov proposed to Yeltsin was to take everyone and protect them behind barbed wire in the Komi Republic, all this company that you listed, together with Yavlinsky, Starovoitova, probably, a different model would develop really in Russia.
Seriously speaking, the way the privatization was carried out raises and will continue to raise a lot of questions. Unfortunately, we will probably not get answers to them soon. Because in all normal countries privatization takes a long time. In England, let's say, it lasted almost 100 years, 80 years. And we privatized and sold property... let's say we sold the fleet at the price of one ship. We were selling ports for the price of one crane. We sold factories for the price of one machine.
Artem Tarasov: Yes, it was scary, Alexander. But most importantly, there were many other mistakes. It is impossible to start privatization at all without liquidating the monopoly.
Mikhail Sokolov: You agree with Yavlinsky.
Artem Tarasov: See how interesting. And with Gregory, I agree, although I did not know about it.
But this is actually written in Western economics textbooks.
Mikhail Sokolov: He talked about it all the time.
Artem Tarasov: Privatization begins after the introduction of antitrust laws, and so on. There were many of these things. And I'm writing about it. I remember this historical thing, I describe it in a book. Koch spoke in the State Duma, he was then the chairman of the State Property Committee. This is exactly when the loans-for-shares auctions appeared, and the very same Nickel, Yukos and everything else were mortgaged for 9 billion rubles. And I asked him a question: "Tell me, please, how do you pledge such a property that costs, well, at least $ 9 billion, for 9 billion rubles to Russian commercial banks, knowing that you will not buy it out next year?" And Kokh, without blinking, on a white eye, I don’t know, on a blue one, answered: “You know, Artem Mikhailovich, we have a“ hole ”in this year’s budget, we must close it. We figured out how to do it. This money will go to closing the budget "hole" in 1995".
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, they were just getting ready for the presidential election. Here is some money.
Sergei is calling us from St. Petersburg. Please, your question. Hello.
Listener: You here urged the former employees of special services to call. But I, as a lover of special services, would like to ask a question.
"Amateur of special services" is the new kind sexy, right?
Listener: Yes. Here in our family is a very popular book by Viktor Suvorov "Aquarium", and, of course, here, for example, Alexei Konstantinov "Traitor". And, comparing these two books, we can say that during all this time the KGB has been reorganized three times, five times, ten times. It probably needs to be restored. But the "aquarium" remained unshakable. And even judging by all the operations, he is thriving. Here's how a former KGB officer would comment on how much this affects, how good or bad it is, the safety of the "aquarium"?
Mikhail Sokolov: GRU means the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. I explain.
To be more precise, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. It is not very clear to me, however, the appeal to former KGB officers. I don't know which of the three of us is meant here.
You know, Artem Mikhailovich, we have a "hole" in this year's budget, we must close
Mikhail Sokolov: Hint.
They hint, right? I will answer. Well, to be honest, I don’t know in what recent operations that make people say and say that the GRU has not changed, but I, and probably the majority of the general public, do not know about these operations.
As for Suvorov's book, well, there is probably no need to analyze it in detail now. I think that most people who can read and understand understand that this is a fairly well-cooked and well-made agitation, this is a purely propaganda book, written not without the help of the British and with their active participation. Well, you can recall the most probably "delicious", as journalists say, example from this book that Penkovsky, a spy who worked for British and American intelligence, instead of being executed by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, was burned alive in stove. Then, for a long time, these shots of the charred Penkovsky were shown as a warning to future fighters of the invisible front.
I do not know to what extent the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff has been reformed or how it is being reformed. Today it is practically not engaged in work on the territory of the country, it performs tasks that, first of all, need to be performed abroad. Well, not counting, of course, the situation connected with Chechnya and the North Caucasus region.
Mikhail Sokolov: So you write about the liquidation of Yandarbiyev, Barayev and Khattab - they should be proud of, these classic operations.
The GRU had nothing to do with this.
Mikhail Sokolov: So I think maybe you military secret issued when you write that the liquidation of Yandarbiev is, so to speak, the work of the authorities.
Maybe someone was even framed.
I do not think. I think that this is actually an open secret, this is again clear to everyone.
Artem Tarasov: For me, it's really surprising that I got into such a topic - the KGB. You didn't tell me what it was about.
And they didn't tell me.
Artem Tarasov: But you know what I can say. All this objectively happened - the destruction of the KGB. At some point, they were left without the task that the authorities set before them. Power has disappeared, tasks have disappeared. And what is the saddest thing for them, at the same moment the funding disappeared. Indeed, KGB generals also came to work and said: we want to work, we want to earn money.
I describe this case in the book when I spoke on the radio ... I’m afraid that you, Mikhail, I don’t remember, no, probably not with you, and said that the anti-Soviet people had already disappeared, there was no one to catch, but since such a huge team, let us, as the Union of Cooperatives, help, pay and train all KGB workers in management - they will return as managers and raise the economy. And then the head of the KGB of Moscow spoke, just some general, in the press, and said: these moneybags, they are still ...
What year was this?
Artem Tarasov: It was 1990.
Then there was, probably, the head of the KGB of Moscow - Prilukov Vitaly Nikolaevich.
Artem Tarasov: Exactly. But that's how it ended, Alexander. I received a letter with more than 40 signatures, starting ... there were colonels, lieutenant colonels and majors: “After your speech, Artem Mikhailovich, we held a large meeting. The whole meeting accepted your point of view. We want to go to study as managers. There's nothing else for us to do." Do you understand? Here's how it happened. I think that the GRU also ran out of money at some point.
Mikhail Sokolov: Went to study for managers.
By the way, so that they don’t reproach me for not reading messages from a pager, I’ll read something good. "Why are you giving the stage to Khinshtein? This is the mouthpiece of these same special services. And I even suspect that the employee is." I don't read any further, Varvara Alexandrovna, it's impolite.
Alexander, so are you an employee or not?
Well, the fact is that, according to the current legislation, a person after he is elected a deputy of the State Duma or appointed a member of the Federation Council ...
Mikhail Sokolov: Dossier destroyed?
No, no, the dossiers are not destroyed. He cannot hold any other position.
Mikhail Sokolov: But can he do journalism?
He can write, he can practice creative activity, teaching and research.
Mikhail Sokolov: But another comrade, Sergey, writes: "Thank you for a good article glorifying the FSB officers. I would like these bodies to help strengthen the state and fight international terrorism."
Well, this is what many would like them to do, and not something else, like criminal showdowns and protection rackets.
I just want to say, you see, we exist and live in captivity of certain stereotypes. And we are not even trying to destroy these stereotypes somehow. So we say: these are the organs... That is, you came across an unscrupulous, bad FSB officer or a police officer, and the person is so arranged, he begins to say: they are all like that there.
Mikhail Sokolov: Very much.
Agreed. But at the same time, yes, of course, today, especially with the money they are paid, but who will we recruit there? A lot of people with higher, university education, lawyers go to the same militia today? Go and invite today a young man, 23-24 years old, to be paid 3-4 rubles a month.
Artem Tarasov: Alexander, Kudrin said that for last years the budget for law enforcement agencies has tripled.
I honestly...
Mikhail Sokolov: And it is still growing, and will continue to grow.
I understand. I am ready to tell you with full responsibility that this is not true. The budget for 2005 has not yet been adopted. It's closed... well, like my colleague in the recent past...
Mikhail Sokolov: Too bad it's closed.
Well, this is a normal practice, it is exactly the same in all countries of the world.
Mikhail Sokolov: No, the rubricator is completely different.
No. There is a single figure, after adoption it becomes open - how much money is allocated for each department, and then the distribution of this money, it, of course, is closed.
Mikhail Sokolov: Read any Western budget, including the defense budget, where the detail goes much deeper.
May be.
Mikhail Sokolov: You are being swindled, probably in the Duma, because of your youth.
It's clear. But I want to say that yesterday we just had a closed meeting of the Security Committee, at which we considered the draft budget, specifically related to the budget of law enforcement agencies. Yesterday, the committee did not accept, did not agree that this budget should be sent further for approval, because, in fact, the government does not allocate additional money. And all the talk about the fact that the budget is increasing, that some additional money is being given, all this remains just talk. On average, the increase is somewhere, as they wrote, of the order of 20 percent. But if we have inflation of 12 percent, well, then what do we leave, what other money can there be.
And when, for example, Kudrin says that the budget of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has grown from 80 billion to 100-something billion, but at the same time bashfully omits that they transferred money that had not previously appeared anywhere at all, in any federal reports that were developed by Private security is more than 38 billion rubles, today they were transferred to the treasury, they went, this is the same money from the same pocket, but now not 80, but 120 billion.
So, just to end this topic, I want to say that there is more speculation and more demagogy than there really is. Unfortunately deep, the budget of special services does not increase seriously. Unfortunately, the state does not seriously think about this topic.
Artem Tarasov: Alexander, I would like to say this. When I was a deputy, I ran into the respected Economic Department of the Kremlin, then they were engaged in reconstruction ...
Mikhail Sokolov: Pavel Pavlovich Borodin, known to everyone.
Artem Tarasov: Well, I don't want to name names...
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, I called.
Artem Tarasov: He called his last name. So we talked to this person. And he says to me: "Do you know how much money I have for this year?" I say: "How much, Pavel Pavlovich?"
You yourself have now called.
Artem Tarasov: Well, what to do. "3 billion dollars". I say: "Forgive me, Pavel Pavlovich, but we only adopted the budget, there are only 200 million for your entire Economic Department." "Well," he says, "we trade a few more million tons of oil, so that there are, as it were, extrabudgetary sources." He bought doors for 11 thousand dollars, they installed the door in the Kremlin. Well, the reconstruction of the Duma with whitewashing from the Turks turned out to be a price of 45 million dollars.
Reconstruction of the Duma with whitewash from the Turks turned out to be a price of 45 million dollars
Therefore, you understand, the budget of the special services is understandable, but there is also a resource economy that can, as it were, support this budget a little.
It is easier for the administration of presidential affairs than for the special services, because they can create unitary enterprises, they can create subsidiary structures, and, frankly, I can hardly see the unitary enterprises of the FSB.
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, to be honest, you know, everything is complicated with the Office of Affairs. Because there is still the Federal Security Service, which has its own budget, dachas, facilities ...
The Federal Security Service and the Office of the President have nothing in common.
Mikhail Sokolov: I mean that there are these special objects and there are expenses, and it's all so mixed up that I'm afraid that if you arrange some kind of commission in the Duma, you won't figure it out soon.
Let's hear another question. Vladimir Georgievich from Moscow, please. Hello.
Listener: Good afternoon, colleagues. I am very pleased to hear from you. And in general, interesting programs, Mikhail, you are hosting. Therefore, I have a question for you, or rather, mainly for Alexander Khinshtein, and partly for you. Such an opinion and such a question.
Opinion first. From October 1917 to this day, the authorities have been waging war on their own people. And he is waging this war with the hands of the NKVD. Unfortunately, this service existed and exists to this day. And all these upheavals that are happening now, well, I don’t know, they are for the better or for the worse. But, in any case, that a lot of people left, maybe that's not bad either. As they say, old blood changes.
Therefore, I have a question. Well, under the current regime, of course, there will be no changes in the special services - this is quite obvious. And in the next three years we will have what we have today. But if suddenly there are some shifts in the top leadership of the country or something changes in the political course, will there be in the bowels of the special services, our NKVD, forces that can turn this service in a completely different direction, change what has been happening for the past 80 years ? Here is a question. Thank you.
Change for the better or for the worse? Sorry, I have a counter question.
Listener: Well, I think that today the NKVD is as it has been since 1917 ...
Mikhail Sokolov: That is, an anti-people institution?
Listener: Completely anti-people. These are psychiatric hospitals, these are prisons, this is the destruction of inconvenient, dissidents, whatever you want. Will the secret services finally go about their own business? That is, the fight against terrorism, the prevention of all sorts of troubles that threaten us from behind the hillock, and other things. That is what intelligence agencies around the world are doing.
Mikhail Sokolov: It's clear.
By the way, I'll tell Alexander. You know, if people in our country still call themselves "glorious Chekists" and hang portraits of Dzerzhinsky in the Lubyanka, this is very symbolic. It's like ... again, you mentioned Germany there, German counterintelligence officers would call themselves "glorious Gestapo" and hang portraits of, well, Himmler or Muller, it's about the same thing.
It is absolutely not the same thing. I am ready to argue on this topic. Because Dzerzhinsky and his portraits do not personify Dzerzhinsky himself, but personify a certain faith. After all, what happened? Yes, of course, the financial component, yes, the collapse of the Union, but another very important thing happened. Those who went to serve in the KGB, especially in the central apparatus, they were people, well, to a sufficient extent, if not to say that they were ideological, at least they understood what they were working for and in the name of. They felt they were in a special position, they felt they belonged to a certain caste...
Mikhail Sokolov: Punishing sword of the party, huh?
Revolutions. Such a secret Order of Knights of the Sword. And any secret Order, any secret thing, it is always attractive. Suddenly, overnight, the system crashed. And the idea for which they worked was taken away from them. They weren't given a new idea. And today, it seems to me, what is one of the main reasons for the problems and troubles of our special services, that people have nothing to believe in and no one to work for. And Dzerzhinsky is a kind of symbol, a kind of personification of the faith that they had. And by the way, I must say that I studied the life of Felix Edmundovich a lot, worked in the archives, this figure was very interesting to me. I can say that Dzerzhinsky could still be a model for many leaders today, because, as you know, he slept in the rest room in his own office on a hard overcoat, covering himself with a tunic ...
Dzerzhinsky could still be a model for many leaders today
Mikhail Sokolov: And he signed hundreds of death sentences for people who are now considered the pride of Russia. Well, you know, this story...
Yes, I signed, but there was a war.
Mikhail Sokolov: War, yes. Anti-people.
In the same way, his opponents signed reverse verdicts.
Mikhail Sokolov: Not in that amount.
I should point out that again...
Mikhail Sokolov: And in a lot of cases.
Artem Tarasov: I'm sitting here and thinking how to turn you from this topic somewhere into the economy.
Still, people do not receive salaries, they live poorly. Maybe we'll talk about it. What will happen to the economy. Please, in the light of the same strengthening of power structures.
And these things are still inseparable.
Artem Tarasov: That would be there...
Mikhail Sokolov: You know, an interesting message from the pager, Alexander, to you. “So you wrote about the deeds of Colonel Sukhodolsky, but you failed to stop the ascent of this ... (I skip the epithet) figure, and he has already become a general in the main and most numerous structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - in the Main Directorate of Private Security. As a deputy of the Duma, you still powerless to stop this figure's rise to power."
Don't you think you're fighting windmills?
You approve the system and think that if good people who sleep in the same overcoat in offices and fight real criminals, support, then the system will improve. Do you understand? Here you are an idealist.
Yes, I am an idealist. But is it bad?
Mikhail Sokolov: Probably bad. It is better to change the system.
And it seems to me that the opposite is true.
And it seems to me that everything that happens in life, all the changes, all the shifts, they are all made by idealists.
Mikhail Sokolov: We have a call from Petersburg. Malkhaz Grigoryevich, please. Hello.
Listener: I would like to turn to Tarasov. Artem, I want to go back... you keep saying: let's go back to something else. That's about the so-called incident in your book. There are pages of your life, and people who, as you said, inherited ... And I, and many of my friends, remember you from their youth and were very good friends with your father.
Artem Tarasov: Yes?
Listener: And I am sure that many of them would not mind meeting and nostalgic.
I have this question. Is this period a turning page for you?
Artem Tarasov: You know, Malkhaz, I deliberately didn't include a chapter about my life there. However, this book is not a biography. I wrote about my grandmother, who lived under the tsarist regime, and did not write at all about my parents, about Georgia, about Sukhumi. A very sick topic for me is Abkhazia. I didn't try to write an autobiography. Therefore, I do not remember this period. Although for me it is very painful. I once spoke here, you know, I was recorded on Sukhumi television. And I turned to the Abkhazians, to the Georgians and to the Russians, and said: "Give me back my youth and childhood - it does not belong to you, neither to the Abkhazians, nor to the Georgians, nor to the Russians. This is my youth - the city of Sukhumi in the form in which I I lived there when I was young. That's why I didn't touch on this topic. But it's good that you remember it. I don't know where you got the book in St. Petersburg, it doesn't seem to be there yet.
Listener: And I didn't get it. I was guided by what you said at the beginning of the transmission.
To my left lies Korzhakov, and to my right stands Berezovsky, Trud, and I am in the middle
Artem Tarasov: There are no books yet. But it is sold in Moscow. I just went to the store ... very good neighbors: Korzhakov lies to my left, and Berezovsky, Trud, stands to my right, and I am in the middle.
Mikhail Sokolov: All three volumes?
Artem Tarasov: Berezovsky?
Mikhail Sokolov: Here are three volumes of Berezovsky.
Artem Tarasov: Three volumes, I think. They are all standing, but Korzhakov is lying about something. That's how I am between them.
Mikhail Sokolov: And Khinshtein is not, apparently, still on sale.
Sold out.
Artem Tarasov: Sold out already.
Mikhail Sokolov: Next volume is preparing.
Artem Tarasov: Therefore, there is no biography, there is no my childhood, parents - I did not touch on this period. The book ends not even with the Putin period, not because I have nothing to write, but because my new return to the Motherland did not leave enough impressions, still traces. This is the next work.
Mikhail Sokolov: I would like to touch on one more topic, quite interesting. Artem just did not write in his book about an interesting, in my opinion, period when he ran for governor. It was in St. Petersburg and it was in Krasnoyarsk.
Artem Tarasov: Also, a whole chapter, Mikhail, was written, called "The Campaign for Governors", very modestly.
Mikhail Sokolov: Where is the head?
Artem Tarasov: And I realized that this thing is not finished. This is a different period, a different country, this is Putin's country, but I am still writing about the Yeltsin country and the pre-Yeltsin period. it new country, which is necessary ... Michael, I discovered a new law. You know, when a person fasts for five days, how long does he get out of hunger? Roughly five days. You starve for ten - you sit on water for ten days. That's how long you were absent from Russia, how many years you have to return. I was absent for five years, I returned in 2002, I have been here for two years, I have three more. In 2007 we will talk about Russia...
Mikhail Sokolov: Can I run for the next governor? If only it will. By the way, I wanted to ask you, as a participant in this whole affair. And how do you feel about the latest ideas, so that governors are not elected, but appointed, and deputies, too, such as Alexander Khinshtein, who are single-mandate, should be eliminated. Maybe deputies will also be appointed?
Artem Tarasov: In fact, of course, the elections are biased. Now people dragged me, just people even persuaded me, here are some of my friends, to run in Bryansk. Elections will take place in December.
Mikhail Sokolov: Yes, there the governor Lodkin, so "red", ruined a lot of things.
Artem Tarasov: We sent a car there that I was supposed to drive. She was stopped at the border of the Bryansk region, and they found cartridges from a machine gun. But it turned out that I was not driving in this car. I just wanted to take a look. This is how Lodkin's campaign begins. I did not go there, because there was not enough money and the local, well, today's authorities would not agree with me. I don't belong to any circles.
What do I think of Putin's ideas on the appointment of governors, on these very alternatives. In fact, I am not some kind of revolutionary and I do not shout that this is some kind of infringement of democracy. The way the elections are held today, Mikhail, it would be better if they already appointed.
Mikhail Sokolov: You don't tell me.
Artem Tarasov: Especially not to tell you, you are running such programs. So this is something else that worries me. We once discussed what consequences this system would have on the Russian economy. Maybe Putin chose the Chinese option, then he will set the task for the appointed governors to introduce 10, 100 small enterprises every day, open and report...
Mikhail Sokolov: And for this it is necessary to appoint the Chinese as governors, and also to shoot corrupt officials.
Artem Tarasov: What for? But I didn’t open it, I’m sorry, they removed me from work. In England, 2,000 small and medium-sized businesses open daily. In Russia, in my opinion, somewhere around 100-150 throughout Russia.
Mikhail Sokolov: And just as many closed, probably.
Artem Tarasov: In England? Yes. Well, good. And here, if you open it, you can’t close it without a bribe. It is necessary to create a commission, liquidation - a lot of money.
Mikhail Sokolov: Let Alexander also give his opinion on this topic. Moreover, I think ... Last Monday, he scheduled a press conference on this issue, still, in my opinion, not knowing that the president would speak out in support of all these ideas, and, nevertheless, did not refuse from this event. It was even interesting. Like a dick" United Russia", by the way. I went against the party line.
Not only did I not refuse, but I expressed the point of view that I held even before the President's speech.
Well, as for the cancellation of the gubernatorial elections. I do not have an unequivocal attitude to this, because ... here I agree with Artem Mikhailovich, since the elections are taking place today, it would be better if they did not exist at all.
Mikhail Sokolov: But that depends on the people. In some places it goes like this, and in others it doesn't.
Unfortunately no.
Mikhail Sokolov: And not everywhere choose those pleasing to the authorities.
Artem Tarasov: Just one example...
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, you know, the story with Governor Yevdokimov in Altai is rather funny. Yes? But who was the Kremlin punching? Surikov, a man who for many years, in general, led the region, and without great success.
I don’t know if the actor will succeed, but maybe even such a replacement is better.
Artem Tarasov: I'm not sure he didn't find funding. And what funding could Evdokimov find? Well, ask him who gave him money and how much.
Mikhail Sokolov: And this can be seen from the composition of his government already ...
Artem Tarasov: Here you see.
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, what to do. Nothing works without money.
Artem Tarasov: Therefore, this is not an election, again, not an election at all. This is not the will of the people. It's either money or power.
Mikhail Sokolov: Let's let Alexander finish.
So, according to the way they choose today, I repeat, it would be better if there were no elections.
And, to our deepest regret, the electoral system, by and large, is, of course, a convention, it is, of course, a screen, since the main decision is still made by the federal center. And the administrative resource is the weapon against which, unfortunately, the people today are powerless.
The example with Evdokimov, he only confirms the general rule, because we will probably not name such examples anymore - one, two, three.
As for the election of single-mandate deputies, well, I think that this is a mistake. I say this as a single member myself. Because I understand very well that, first, the list-deputy is a deputy of all Russia, he is elected from the country, and he has no personal responsibility for what is happening. Here I have a constituency where half a million voters live, I know their current problems, I know what difficulties I have in the districts.
I just came to your program, and just before that, before that I was in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, I went to the Deputy Minister for Logistics, punched through new buildings in order to speed up the construction of police facilities in the district and help with vehicles.
I have to do this because there is a reverse mechanism. This is the second reason why I am against it.
The reverse mechanism, the only mechanism of control that humanity has managed to come up with is re-elections. If I don't work well as a deputy, they don't elect me.
The governor does not work well - he is not elected. The president does not work well - he, accordingly, is not elected, God forgive me, I beg you ...
Mikhail Sokolov: "Democracy is a terrible thing, but nothing better has been invented." I agree.
Yes, Churchill was absolutely right. This is the second. The MP is not responsible for anything. Well, they attributed to you, they said: for example, you will be registered with the Republic of Karelia, or with Sakha (Yakutia). Well, you go there once every six months in Sakha (Yakutia), probably, eat stroganina, drink frosty vodka - it will all be over.
The only mechanism of control that mankind has managed to come up with is re-elections.
In the Nizhny Novgorod region, from which I was elected, we probably have at least 12 people on the list from all factions assigned there. I didn’t see anyone there, in my district, not even once. And, probably, for the remaining three years I will not see.
Third. See what we get. It turns out that everything in the country is controlled by a single center and one only person. All threads of power, all threads of control gather in one office. Because the president appoints governors - time. The governor, in turn, sends his representative to the Federation Council - two. Deputies are elected by lists. How are these lists formed? Are they formed without the participation of the administration? I strongly doubt it. Three. The next step that the authorities will take, I am absolutely sure of this, will be the abolition of elections in municipalities.
Mikhail Sokolov: Because the governors need compensation.
Undoubtedly. Well said. But not only that. Because it is much more difficult for an appointed governor to lead people than for an elected governor. Because behind the elected governor there is a human resource, and behind the appointed governor there is nothing but virtual support. Thus, we compress the decision-making ring from responsibility into a very thin, thin, so to speak ...
And the last argument is very important. The fact is that in this way we are essentially throwing out the regional elite, the people who are active in the regions, we are throwing them overboard. Because decisions will be made in Moscow, and appointments will come from Moscow.
Artem Tarasov: So it seems to me ... I will now say one phrase, and I think that the people who listen to us will support me. Yes, deeply, in fact, the entire population does not care how all these verticals, horizontals of power are arranged. Can this new structure, any, still lead to economic reforms in society, so that life becomes better for people, so that people earn more - that's what it leads to. If, I say again, this tool, centralization, will be used to somehow... After all, you see, no one questions the free market economy. No developed country can exist without this form of economy. Yes?
I absolutely do not care, the Islamic Republic or the Chinese version, as a person. If I live day by day, year by year it’s better, if it’s easier for me and they let me do business, I don’t care what kind of power. I tell you honestly. Absolutely do not care who discusses what, what verticals. If Putin chooses such a concentration of power in order to introduce, somewhere by force, somewhere by orders, a highly developed economy that will give results, and the country will begin to follow not the path of a raw materials appendage of world countries, but really science-intensive products, innovation and so on, well, God bless him. Then he will order everyone up to the municipalities, implement and create conditions for business.
Mikhail Sokolov: We have a call from Tomsk. Anna, please. Hello.
Listener: My question is mainly to Artem Mikhailovich. The question is how he relates to the issue of social responsibility of business.
Mikhail Sokolov: Need to share?
Artem Tarasov: You see, the fact is that we do not have a business as such. We have surviving small enterprises that miraculously survive, and there are oligarchic structures that are doing very well.
Mikhail Sokolov: And connected with the state.
Artem Tarasov: And connected with the state. The fact is that a poor person, he is not able to be a benefactor. He thinks about how to feed his family. Well, absolutely rare people-heroes can sacrifice everything for the sake of someone's misfortune. And a rich person or just a person who is provided with everything necessary is engaged in charity work, social problems. This is a huge number, this is an army of funds in the West, these are all the wives of medium and small even, and large, of course, entrepreneurs in the West, all members of the funds. And it's a huge move. And we have this ... I tried, I brought the crown, I didn’t collect any money, she left for Riga, the bank bought her for the oligarch - that’s all.
We do not have a business as such. We have surviving small businesses and oligarchic structures
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, thank God. We have Faberge eggs...
Artem Tarasov: Excuse me, well, Faberge eggs are eggs, and this crown belonged to Pushkina, was presented to the Romanovs - these are still great families, and this crown has a huge historical value of the state.
Mikhail Sokolov: It is better to help disabled children.
Artem Tarasov: Well maybe. But neither one nor the other succeeded.
Mikhail Sokolov: Vladimir from Moscow. Hello.
Listener: Objection to Artem Tarasov. You gave Czechoslovakia as an example for privatization in Russia. So it was the other way around. There were nominal privatization checks that ensured a smooth transition, not predatory, not looting, or idiotic, like privatization in Russia, but a smooth transition from socialist to capitalist property. This is the first.
Mikhail Sokolov: There, too, their oligarchs appeared.
Listener: Now the second, on privatization. All over the world, first of all, unprofitable enterprises, low-profit ones are privatized ...
Artem Tarasov: You're right.
Listener: ... but profit-making enterprises remain, and the state is funded from their profits. We started the other way around. And Chubais said bluntly: the goal was not to optimally solve the problem of this transition, but to create a class of big capitalists.
Artem Tarasov: You know, I agree with you. Here is the period that I gave, it was then that they discussed the option of Czechoslovakia, but it was 1990. I left in 1991, and privatization began in 1992. I didn't participate. They introduced non-registered checks, this is really, maybe worse.
Mikhail Sokolov: Let's have another pager question. "Hushed up the case about the" werewolves in uniform "?".
No, they haven't hushed it up. Now all the accused, and I remind you that these are six employees of the MUR and the former head of the Security Department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Major General Ganeev, they are getting acquainted with the materials of the indictment. It is assumed that somewhere in December-January the materials will go to court. The investigation managed to establish 11 criminal episodes. The story does not end there, because many letters and appeals from the victims of these people come to me, and to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and to me directly. Unfortunately, many of those who got in their way are already serving their sentences today. I have visited several colonies. Of course, very difficult human stories, when people, in fact, for no reason turned out to be victims of provocations. And today one person, I am now dealing with his case in detail, was sentenced to 24 years.
Mikhail Sokolov: Well, rehabilitate, perhaps?
Today we already have the decisions of two courts, which removed the convictions from the victims of "werewolves", and this work must be continued.
Mikhail Sokolov: Here they write: "People who were shot without guilt, it is not easier because the executioner slept in the office in the same overcoat." Do you understand? They argue with you.
So it's good that they argue. It would be worse if, instead of arguing, they would also be shot today.
Mikhail Sokolov: By the way, another question for you: "Who benefits from the provocation with the pardon of Budanov?"
I don't think it's a provocation. As far as I understand, there is indeed a fact, indeed an attempt to pardon Budanov has been made...
Artem Tarasov: Will he be pardoned?
I think not, because the scandal has gone too far. And he did not even spend half of the appointed term in the colony. Here the so-called principle of parole - parole, it does not work. The man must serve half his sentence.
Mikhail Sokolov: But Mr. Shamanov is just in a hurry, because he has elections on his nose, and he needs to help his colleague...
By the way, Shamanov's example is one of those examples that, in general, makes one agree with the president's position that governors should not be elected by the people, but appointed by the president. Because we get people like Shamanov.
Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, you know, I'll tell you that Shamanov was elected, among other things, with the great support of the federal government and Moscow. That is, he was actually pushed there. So what is it...
Even if there was no support from the federal center and Moscow, the hero Shamanov, a handsome man, full of orders, he would still be elected there.
Mikhail Sokolov: God knows. He is a military man. If he had been told that he should not go there, he probably would not have gone there.
Artem Tarasov: Let's say something good in conclusion.
Mikhail Sokolov: Tell me, Artem. Can you also answer why all the oligarchs go to London, they ask.
Artem Tarasov: Well, good again... Because London doesn't betray anyone. If he does not extradite Zakayev, then, of course, he will not extradite any oligarch. Do you understand? Therefore, London is such a place... There are not only oligarchs there, a lot of people leave there. That's where I came from. Maybe they will follow me, I would like to.
We would be happy to meet them here and place them in comfortable cells.
Mikhail Sokolov: Not everyone, not everyone. No need...
One of the pioneer cooperators of the times of perestroika in the USSR is businessman Artem Tarasov.
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. 
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. 
In recent 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.
