“Fartsovshchik” is a term that appeared in Soviet times. Under it was understood the illegal sale of scarce imported goods, as a rule, clothing and accessories. Often, farmers were engaged in the sale of vinyl records, audio tapes, cosmetics and household items. Their activities were not limited to the simple operation "buy - sell". Fartsovka has become a complex system in the USSR with its own hierarchy and laws.
Respected profession
Speculators were treated negatively, as evidenced by certain negative characters in Soviet films. The law-abiding citizens and farmers were not respected. In the Soviet Union, engineers and teachers who earned less per month than the so-called bomb per day were held in high esteem . Although, rather, the negative image of the farcer was created by official propaganda.
Risk and danger
Fartsovka in the USSR was an entrepreneurial activity that millions of citizens are engaged in in Russia today. However, in Soviet times, the sale of imported goods was risky. Who was doing the farsing? This activity primarily appealed to students and those who had contact with foreigners: translators, guides, currency prostitutes.
Highly paid labor
Black marketers are distributors of scarce goods. In the USSR, they had an income that the chief technologist at the factory or a surgeon with twenty years of experience could not dream of. What can we say about students. Especially a lot of farmers lived in the dormitory of the Peoples' Friendship University, where mostly foreigners studied.
Fartsovshchiki are representatives of a special subculture that became widespread in the early 60s of the XX century in Moscow, Leningrad and major port cities. Why this dangerous type of trade cannot be called just illegal entrepreneurship, is described below.
Farcer's image
This is a suspicious young man who hangs around the hotel and obsessively offers foreign tourists dubious souvenirs in exchange for gum and other unpretentious, but scarce goods in the USSR. He then sells what he receives at a speculative price. That is, his miserable business is based not on the classic buy-sell principle, but on a physical exchange. This image was created by Soviet propaganda. And he is fundamentally wrong. Black marketers are wealthy people. And those that lounged around Intourist were only small fry in the complex system of the shadow Soviet economy.
The young people who spent evenings near the hotel, where the citizens of the capitalist countries lived , were the lowest link of the Soviet Fartsovka. This phenomenon is still not fully understood. But it is known that it was not only students and graduates of foreign language institutes who were engaged in fartsing. And in the 80s, representatives of the intelligentsia engaged in speculation. Otherwise, it was difficult to survive in the perestroika years.
Research
The history of fartsing is a rather interesting topic. The journalist Dmitry Vasiliev dedicated his book to the underground economy system. “Fartsovshchiki” entered the series “Made in the USSR”. The author used a method that has become widespread in the Union. It is called "oral history."
Vasiliev met and talked with representatives of the Soviet Farsi - with people who once engaged in underground business in Moscow and Leningrad. Today, many of them are very successful entrepreneurs. The author managed to get interesting facts. Being a man of liberal views, he refused ideological cliches. Vasiliev does not try to debunk the myth in his book that all the things produced in the USSR were of poor quality. For example, he honestly admits that foreigners with great pleasure purchased Armenian cognac, which in the West was several times more expensive.
How it all started
Farsovka appeared in the USSR thanks to the International Youth Festival. It took place in 1957. The question arises about the origin of the word “farce-man”. This term came into spoken Russian from the English language - from the phrase for sale, that is, "sale".
There is another version. “Fartsovka” is a word that came from Odessa “ foretz ”. This is the name of a person who had a rare ability - to "talk" the seller on the market, to acquire a thing three times cheaper and immediately resell. As you know, it was in Odessa that smuggling by foreign things flourished. However, the activities of the Odessa forts significantly differed from that conducted by the Moscow and Leningrad farmers.
Dudes
There is another point of view regarding the emergence of farsing. The International Festival was attended mainly by the " right " Soviet young people. They were not interested in imported things. Hipsters - an informal movement, representatives of which were, as a rule, students from wealthy families. They needed the services of farmers.
The image of dudes is contrasted with the image of a positive Soviet young man. The differences between them are primarily in appearance. The dudes dressed up in fashionable clothes in the West, listened to rock and roll. They were white crows in Soviet society. The warriors and Komsomol patrols hunted for the dudes, who tore their western jackets on them and cut their hair. And then, of course, they escorted to the nearest police station.
Sackers and resellers are not the same thing. When purchasing imported items, foreign exchange transactions were extremely rare. Indeed, for this it was possible to go to jail for a long time. Between farmers and foreigners sometimes there was a real exchange in kind. That is, a student of a Moscow university received a fashionable American jacket for a bottle of Armenian cognac.
Ideology
It is also worth mentioning one feature of the early period of Farsing. Its first representatives, oddly enough, were engaged in dangerous activities not for the sake of money. The blacksmiths of the early sixties, as well as the dudes, worshiped everything western. They were adherents of a special ideology, which, of course, suggested a certain style of behavior. The blacksmith could not deceive the dude. This would be a betrayal of one's own ideas.
Style
The blacksmiths 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 purchase clothes in department stores with disdain and distrust, as "strangers." The smuggler dressed in everything western, smoked only imported cigarettes, listened exclusively to foreign music. He behaved in the way that, 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. Its sunset came at the end of the eighties. The Soviet Union collapsed. However, the farmers remained. True, the attitude towards them has changed.
The smugglers 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 was solely the fault of Soviet officials. Who is responsible for the poor quality clothing being presented in stores? Ordinary citizens had no choice but to acquire more or less high-quality goods from farmers, carrying out their activities, risking their freedom.