If you strain your ears, you can even hear the sound of waves splashing. The swinging, circling, roaring of the bicoloured maelstrom goes on for a while. The intense flickering about of that whirlpool, consuming your entire vision. The sound of paint swirling around paint. Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. Yet the fact that Misha’s entire production operation is housed in a small, one-room apartment suggests, at least, that our state industry and trade might meet the demand for such items with relative ease. The extent of the demand for such items can be gauged by the fact that on the black market a pair of jeans may sell for as much as 200 rubles and a tapered shirt for 40. When I asked Misha what goods are in the greatest demand among young people, he listed jeans, denim suits, tapered shirts, T-shirts, tote bags and records. Certainly one reason that speculators like Misha can find such a ready market for their wares is that so many of our stores offer only outmoded and unattractive goods. In seeking the factors that produce such a phenomenon as Misha, one should also look beyond Misha himself to our design bureaus and light industry. And he would keep repeating this process ad infinitum. “Misha,” I asked, “is there any point in talking about ideals? ” “No,” he replied, “no point.” And suppose Misha had a car, a dacha and an unlimited bank account? He said that he would then sell the car, the dacha and other items he owned at a profit in order to buy better ones. After all, he said, he isn’t interested in money for its own sake but for what it will buy – such as records, which may cost up to 100 rubles each on the black market. He said that his life suits him quite well, and he denied that he is becoming a philistine. In my conversation with Misha, I probed persistently for signs of an uneasy conscience in this young speculator, but I found only the slightest indication that he was capable of even entertaining the notion that his actions might be wrong. He plans to enroll in a trade technicum so that he can get a middle-level job in a state commission store, where he anticipates he will be in a good position to expand his illegal commerce. As for the future, Misha intends to take his wares south, where they will fetch a higher price. Impressed by the ease with which he accomplished this operation, Misha then spent some time selling cartons of American cigarettes, which he got from an older acquaintance, outside the GUM. His first act of speculation was to sell a tape recorder at a sizable profit. His family was well off, but he also knew that some people lived better -with money to spare. He said that he had grown up in an officer’s family and had never experienced poverty or deprivations. In an interview with Misha, I attempted to discover what had led him into an activity that is explicitly prohibited by the Soviet criminal code. Misha boasted that one woman customer told him she nearly had a heart attack in her excitement over the chance to buy a bag with a foreign trademark. A meter of cloth costing I ruble 25 kopeks yields two bags, which, with the addition of a rope handle, sell for 15 rubles each. For a box of candy, a young woman they know stitched up the bags for them at her garment factory. After achieving success with the T-shirts (they have sold 100), Misha and his partner introduced a new product – canvas tote bags with the Marlboro trademark stenciled on them. The two then package them in cellophane bags and sell them usually outside state commission stores – for 10 to 15 rubles apiece. He buys Soviet-made T-shirts for 3 rubles each, and an artist partner stencils the trademark of a West German firm on them. Mikhail Ostaf’ev (the last name is a pseudonym) is a 19-year-old evening-school graduate who works as a laboratory assistant in a research institute. Original Source: Komsomol’skaia pravda, 10 August 1977.
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