The children and grandchildren of the Khrushchev-Gorbachev "sixties", hung with loud academic degrees and titles, either do not know or consciously conceal that the "oil needle" is the legacy of Nikita Khrushchev, so revered in their circles, perhaps one of the most sinister figures of the Russian stories.
The coming 2016 will be not only the year of the next parliamentary elections, which, according to a number of experts, can seriously reform the lower house of the Russian parliament, but also the year of two “Khrushchev's” anniversaries. One of them - the 60th anniversary of the XX Congress of the CPSU - we have yet to celebrate in February this year, and the second - the 55th anniversary - has already passed, however, it went unnoticed, since it coincided with the chiming of the Kremlin chimes at the New Year's table.
Oddly enough, but the last anniversary has the most direct relation to the upcoming parliamentary elections this year. And that's why. An astute viewer, who is still amused by watching political talk shows, could notice one characteristic detail: all our written "oppositionists" have long saddled an old nag called "oil pipe" and any dispute in the studio is immediately translated into heart-rending cries of its immortality. These screams were not born by themselves, and it is more than obvious to any sane person that this is a completely coordinated and precisely calculated course of the upcoming political struggle: it is on the country's economic problems and inevitable social conflicts that our fifth column will focus the entire blow of its heavy artillery in the hope of getting both at least at least 3% of the votes, and with them the state funding of party structures. After all, 2018 is not far off …
Meanwhile, all these gentlemen - the children and grandchildren of the Khrushchev-Gorbachev "sixties", hung with loud academic degrees and titles, either do not know or consciously conceal that the "oil needle" is the legacy of Nikita Khrushchev, so revered in their circles, perhaps one of the most sinister figures in Russian history. They only, being in power all the 90s, and even now remaining at the helm of the entire financial and economic block of our government, brought this dependence to complete absurdity, and now, as they say, from a sore head to a healthy one …
As you know, on January 1, 1961, a new monetary reform was carried out in the country, as a result of which there was a simple exchange of old banknotes for new banknotes without any confiscation component. Although in reality everything was not as simple as it seems at first glance. Traditionally, this reform is presented in the form of an ordinary denomination, because for the uninitiated ordinary people everything looked quite commonplace: the old Stalinist “footcloths” were replaced with new Khrushchev “candy wrappers”, much smaller in size, but more expensive at face value. The banknotes of the 1947 model in circulation were exchanged without restrictions for new banknotes of the 1961 model in a 10: 1 ratio, and the prices for all goods, tariff rates of salaries, pensions, scholarships, benefits, payment obligations, contracts changed in the same ratio etc.
However, then practically no one paid attention to one important detail: before the reform, the dollar cost 4 rubles, or 40 kopecks in the new calculation, and after its implementation, the dollar rate was set at 90 kopecks. Many naively believed that now the ruble has become more expensive than the dollar, but in fact the dollar has risen significantly - by 2, 25 times, that is, from 40 to 90 kopecks in new terms. The same thing happened with the gold content of the ruble: instead of 2.22 g of gold, only 0.98 g of gold remained in it. Thus, the ruble was undervalued by 2, 25 times, and its purchasing power in relation to imported goods decreased by the same amount.
It is not for nothing that the permanent Minister of Finance of the USSR, the famous "Stalinist People's Commissar" Arseny Zverev, who has held his position of responsibility since 1938, having learned that in early May 1960, Khrushchev signed the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On Changing the Scale of Prices and Replacing Current Money with New money”, immediately resigned, because he perfectly understood what this seemingly simple denomination of money would lead to.
The fact is that immediately after the Stalinist monetary reform of 1947, on the personal instructions of the leader, the Central Statistical Office of the USSR (Vladimir Starovsky) recalculated the exchange rate of the new Soviet ruble, which had been pegged to the US dollar since 1937. Initially, focusing on the purchasing power of the ruble and the US dollar, Soviet economists derived the ratio: 14 rubles per dollar instead of the previous 53 rubles. But, according to the testimony of the then heads of the State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance of the USSR Maxim Saburov and Arseny Zverev, Stalin immediately crossed out this figure indicated in the certificate of the Central Statistical Administration, and directly stated that the ratio of the dollar to the ruble should be at the level of 1: 4, and no more.
The establishment of the gold content of the ruble and its decoupling from the American currency were caused by three main reasons:
1) a significant decrease in retail prices, which significantly increased the exchange value of the new Soviet ruble;
2) the creation of a socialist camp, which prompted the Soviet leadership to give the ruble an international value level and replace the US dollar as the main clearing unit of account;
3) the extremely aggressive policy of the US Federal Reserve System, which, relying on the Bretton Woods Agreements of 1944, led the economies of many foreign countries to de facto dollarization, to the release of the entire money supply from the real control of national banking structures and their transfer under the full control of the FRS …
Therefore, in reality, the consequences of the Khrushchev reform turned out to be disastrous for our country both in the short and long term, because:
1) All imports and foreign goods, which were always inaccessible for Soviet buyers, have sharply risen in price, now they have generally passed into the category of luxury goods, and then speculation.
2) Prices in state trade changed exactly 10 times, but on the collective farm market they changed only 4–5 times. As a result of this "imbalance", a rapid outflow of products from state trade to the highly expensive collective farm market began, which hit the well-being of practically all agents began to massively sell all the popular goods, in particular, meat and sausages, to the collective farm market, at the same time fulfilling the sales plan and receiving a substantial gain from this simple operation into their own pockets.
3) During 1962-1963, latent price increases in state trade amounted to more than 60%. A particularly difficult situation developed in the regions, since if in Moscow and Leningrad the situation in state trade was at least somehow controlled by local authorities, then in the regional, regional and regional centers many types of food products completely disappeared from state trade and spilled over to the collective farm market. As a result, the "Stalinist" store abundance, so characteristic of all 1950s, was replaced overnight by half-empty counters. Therefore, in order to somehow compensate for the outflow of basic products, primarily meat and sausages, to the collective farm market, it was decided to raise retail prices in state trade. And in May 1962 the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the rise in prices for meat and dairy products" was issued.
4) Another reason for the monetary reform, strange as it may seem, was the notorious oil. The fact is that in the post-war period in our country there was a huge increase in its production - from 20 to 148 million tons, and it was then, in May 1960, that N. S. Khrushchev, with the support of a number of members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, primarily Anastas Mikoyan, Frol Kozlov and Nikolai Podgorny, breaks through the decision to start large-scale export of crude oil abroad. In the first post-war years, the export of oil and oil products from the USSR was extremely insignificant and accounted for less than 4% of the country's total foreign trade balance in foreign exchange earnings. The reason for this was mainly that all the 1950s a barrel (barrel) of crude oil on the world market cost less than $ 3, that is, 12 Soviet rubles, and the cost of extracting and transporting Soviet crude oil was more than 9.5 rubles, then its export abroad was simply unprofitable.
This export could become profitable only if much more rubles were given for the dollar than before. And since under Khrushchev, in conditions of a sharp increase in oil production by 7, 5 times, its export abroad began to grow, it was necessary to change the ratio of the dollar to the ruble to replenish the seriously emaciated budget, which became the "innocent victim" of all Khrushchev's innovations in the industrial and agricultural sector of the Soviet economy … Now, when the exchange rate changed, a barrel of oil in terms of Soviet banknotes began to cost 2, 7 new, or 27 old rubles, that is, 2, 25 times more than under Stalin.
In this situation, with quite stable world prices for crude oil and maintaining its previous cost, oil export abroad turned out to be a rather profitable thing.
Thus, the monetary reform was not a simple denomination. It brought irreparable harm to the country's economy and two chronic troubles: dependence on oil exports and a chronic food shortage, which would later become one of the main economic factors that destroyed the Soviet Union.
