"Partsovschik" is a term that appeared in Soviet times. It was understood as the illegal sale of scarce imported goods, as a rule, clothing and accessories. Often, traders were engaged in the sale of vinyl records, audio cassettes, cosmetics and household items. Their activities were not limited to a simple “buy-sell” operation. Fartsovka became a complex system in the USSR with its own hierarchy and laws.
Disrespectful profession
The speculators were treated negatively, as evidenced by some negative characters in Soviet films. Fartsovschiki did not enjoy the respect of law-abiding citizens. In the Soviet Union, engineers and teachers were held in high esteem, earning less per month than the so-called bombila per day. Although rather a negative image of the black marketer was created by official propaganda.
Risk and danger
Fartsovka in the USSR was an entrepreneurial activity, which millions of citizens are engaged in today in Russia. However, in Soviet times, selling imported goods was a risky business. Who did the fartsovka? Thisactivity attracted primarily students and those who had contact with foreigners: translators, guides, foreign exchange prostitutes.
Highly paid work
Scammers are distributors of scarce goods. In the USSR, they had an income that the chief technologist at the plant or a surgeon with twenty years of experience could not dream of. What can we say about the students. Especially many farce traders lived in the dormitory of the University of Peoples' Friendship, where mainly foreigners studied.
Scammers are representatives of a special subculture that became widespread in the early 60s of the twentieth century in Moscow, Leningrad and large port cities. Why this dangerous type of trade cannot be called just an illegal business is discussed below.
The image of a farce
This is a suspicious young man who hangs around outside the hotel and compulsively offers foreign tourists dubious souvenirs in exchange for chewing gum and other unpretentious but scarce goods in the USSR. He then sells what he has received at a speculative price. That is, his miserable business is based not on the classic principle of "buy and sell", but on barter. This image was created by Soviet propaganda. And he is fundamentally wrong. Farmers are we althy people. And those who hung around at Intourist were only small fry in the complex system of the shadow Soviet economy.
Young people who spent evenings near the hotel where citizens of the capitalistcountries, represented the lowest link of the Soviet fartsovka. This phenomenon is still not fully understood. But it is known that not only students and graduates of institutes of foreign languages were engaged in fartsovka. And in the 80s, representatives of the intelligentsia also took up speculation. Otherwise, it was difficult to survive in the perestroika years.
Research
The history of fartsovka is a rather interesting topic. Petersburg journalist Dmitry Vasiliev devoted his book to the system of the underground economy. "Farers" were included in the "Made in the USSR" series. The author used a method that has become widespread in the Union. It's called oral history.
Vasiliev met and talked with representatives of the Soviet fartsovka - with people who were once engaged in underground business in Moscow and Leningrad. Today, many of them are highly successful entrepreneurs. The author managed to get interesting facts. Being a man of liberal views, he abandoned ideological clichés. Vasiliev does not try in his book to debunk the myth that all things produced in the USSR were of poor quality. For example, he honestly admits that foreigners bought Armenian cognac with great pleasure, which was several times more expensive in the West.
How it all began
Fartsovka appeared in the USSR thanks to the International Youth Festival. It took place in 1957. The question arises about the origin of the word "farmer". This term came into colloquial Russian speech from the English language - from the phrasefor sale, that is, "sale".
There is another version. "Fartsovka" is a word that comes from the Odessa "forets". This was the name of a person who had a rare ability to “talk” a seller in the market, buy a thing three times cheaper and immediately resell it. As you know, it was in Odessa that smuggling of foreign things flourished. However, the activities of the Odessa forts differed significantly from that of the Moscow and Leningrad black marketers.
Dandies
There is another point of view regarding the origin of fartsovka. The International Festival was attended mainly by "correct" Soviet young people. They were not interested in imported things. Stilyagi is an informal movement whose representatives were, as a rule, students from we althy families. They needed the services of black marketeers.
The image of a dude is opposed to the image of a positive Soviet young man. The differences between them are primarily in appearance. Stilyagi dressed up in clothes fashionable in the West, listened to rock and roll. They were black sheep in Soviet society. The dudes were hunted by vigilantes and Komsomol patrols, who tore their western jackets and cut their hair. And then, of course, they were escorted to the nearest police station.
Scammers and resellers are not the same thing. When purchasing imported things, currency transactions were carried out extremely rarely. After all, for this you could end up in jail for a long time. Between the fartsovschiki and foreigners sometimes there was a real exchange in kind. That is, for a bottle of Armenian cognac, a student of MoscowUniversity received a fashionable American jacket.
Ideology
It is worth mentioning one more feature of the early fartsovka period. Its first representatives, oddly enough, were engaged in dangerous activities not for the sake of money. Fartsovschiki early sixties, as well as dudes, bowed to everything Western. These were adherents of a special ideology, which, of course, assumed a certain style of behavior. The fartsovschik could not deceive the dude. It would be a betrayal of one's own ideas.
Style
Scammers had a certain slang, in which there were strange expressions that came from the English language and adapted to Russian colloquial speech. It was customary to treat ordinary citizens who buy clothes in department stores with disdain and distrust, as "outsiders". The salesman dressed in everything Western, smoked only imported cigarettes, and listened exclusively to foreign music. He behaved like, according to his Soviet ideas, a real American behaves.
After the collapse of the USSR
So fartsovka is a phenomenon that originated in the early sixties. His decline came at the end of the eighties. The Soviet Union collapsed. However, the fartsovshchiki remained. True, the attitude towards them has changed.
Scammers became pioneers of domestic business, people who managed to do business in the terrible years of “communist tyranny”. And the fact that they had to sell imported goods at exorbitant prices is the fault of exclusively Sovietofficials. Who is responsible for the fact that low-quality clothes were presented in stores? Ordinary citizens had no choice but to buy more or less quality goods from the black marketers, who carry out their activities at the risk of their freedom.
