1,616 workers and heads of the bodies that issued ration cards were prosecuted in 1943 for abuse. Together with their accomplices and everyone who fraudulently with cards, monthly, they deprived tens of thousands of people the only opportunity to get bread, according to the most conservative estimates. The State Defense Committee, headed by Stalin, adopted the strictest decisions on the fight against the thieves, the police conducted raids and raids, and deployed agents everywhere to identify criminals, but the results did not meet expectations.
Tsar's rations
Any war, among other hardships and hardships, is accompanied by food difficulties, often turning into hunger. The subjects of the Russian Empire, who became citizens of the USSR, knew about this like no one else. In 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, it was believed that Russia's food resources were almost inexhaustible. The soldiers at the front and in the rear were supplied in abundance, and there was no question of any rationing of consumption in the rear.
However, the massive conscription of peasants into the army reduced the production of agricultural products. And the problems of railway transport, suffocating from an excess of military cargo and a lack of fuel, sharply hampered the delivery of grain from Siberia, where there was no shortage of grain. In addition, the grain was required by the allies of Russia, primarily France, which in fact exchanged it for weapons and ammunition. So in 1916, food prices, which had risen gradually before that, soared sharply, and the government began to think about urgent measures to remedy the situation.
Large cities, primarily Petrograd, tried to free them from unnecessary eaters by sending those who did not work in the military departments and industries to the villages. However, this event demanded huge funds and soon failed. In the summer of 1916, a committee was created to combat high prices under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, followed by a special government committee of the same appointment. Both emergency authorities examined the situation and concluded that it was necessary to jail all traders who unreasonably raise prices. Nicholas II approved the corresponding decision of the Council of Ministers, writing on the document: "Finally!"
However, the austere measures did not help, prices continued to rise. To save the situation, the government took an extreme step: introduced cards for essential products - bread, sugar, cereals. In the fall of 1916, the cardholder was entitled to no more than three pounds (pound - 409.5 g) of sugar per month. And so that the high-ranking subjects of the empire more easily survived food difficulties, the issuance of additional rations was organized. However, the rates of additional payments for privileged consumers gradually decreased, and in February 1917 they were canceled altogether due to the depletion of stocks. According to contemporaries, food reserves dried up primarily because with the introduction of rationing, consumption did not decrease, but increased, since everyone tried to buy everything that was due to him on the cards.
The fewer products remained, the more often they were sold at prices very far from those set by the government. Products from shops and stores, in which they bought ration cards, migrated to market merchants, who offered them five to seven times more expensive. The queues grew, and general discontent became one of the most important reasons for the first February and then the October revolution.
A lot of abuse was observed during the Civil War, when the supply was carried out according to ration norms, which sharply differed in different localities and institutions. Many violations were committed in the early 1930s, when, after the start of collectivization and the resulting sharp decline in agricultural production, cards were reintroduced, which were called intake books. According to the reports, the disturbances in the distribution of rationed products were successfully fought, so that the accumulated experience should have made the next introduction of the cards, canceled in 1935, almost a routine operation. But everything turned out differently.
People's Commissariat for Trade
It was decided to reintroduce the card system shortly after the start of the Great Patriotic War. It would seem that the product distribution scheme was carefully thought out. Enterprises and organizations prepared data on their employees, and house managers - on pensioners, housewives, children and other non-working citizens of the country, who were then called dependents. All data was transferred to card bureaus that functioned at district, city and regional trade departments. There, cards were drawn up for each citizen in accordance with the norms relying on him and sent for issuing to the population at enterprises and house administrations. And in shops and canteens, to which employees of institutions or residents of houses were attached, they sent documents to receive funds allocated to these outlets.
When buying food, coupons were cut off from the card, corresponding, for example, to the daily ration of bread, which was sold to the buyer. Store employees had to collect and hand over coupons to card bureaus, reporting on the funds allocated. However, the system immediately began to malfunction. The Moscow Prosecutor Samarin in August 1941 reported to the leadership of the capital on the results of the inspection:
The workers who process the issuance of food and industrial cards were not supplied with instructions from the USSR People's Commissariat of Trade, were not instructed in a timely manner, and the regional card bureaus did not carry out a deep check of the issuance of cards and did not carry out and do not carry out any control over the work of enterprises, institutions and house administrations on issuing cards. until recently, which creates an atmosphere of complete lack of control and contributes to the commission of various kinds of abuse.
Especially grocery stores operate uncontrollably, where the registration of coupons from the date of introduction of the cards and up to the present time is not kept. For the day worked, coupons for sold goods are put into the package without counting, at best they are sealed and stored in this position. So, in the store N24 of the Frunzenskiy RPT from 1 to 5 August coupons were not pasted and not counted. The same situation was observed in the store N204 of the Leninsky district and in a number of other stores in Moscow.
This practice has put each outlet in complete uncontrolled conditions. There is a situation that food in a certain amount is imported into the trading network, and how many and where these products go, the regional food industry does not have information, since coupons are not taken into account …
The cumbersomeness of counting is explained by the different denominations and an extremely large number of coupons. So, to obtain 1 kg 200 g of meat, 24 coupons are cut off of various bills, and according to a work card for receiving 2 kg 200 g of meat, it is necessary to cut off 44 coupons. To get 800 g of bread, 5 coupons are cut off. It is completely inappropriate to split coupons for bills for pasta, sugar and fish. True, petty coupons for products such as meat and bread create the necessary conveniences for those using the canteen.
Comrade Pavlov, People's Commissar of Trade of the RSFSR, issued an order on August 7, 1941.for N СН-80/1129, burn all coupons received in July, with the preparation of relevant acts on this. In fact, when the coupons for July were destroyed, no counting and reconciliation with the amount of products received by the store was carried out, which made it possible to cover with money at fixed prices the abuse of products received in the store for sale by cards."
In essence, the People's Commissariat of Trade, by allowing the destruction of coupons, created the basis for massive abuses, which began immediately. Regardless of whether the number of coupons collected in a month corresponded to the volume of products received or not, the store compiled a report on the full distribution of funds. The report was accompanied by an act on the recount and destruction of coupons. Card bureaus could easily identify these abuses, but since they were staffed by employees of the same trade departments as in stores, and the stolen goods were distributed among accomplices, the card bureaus did not find any violations, and the theft of products continued.
At the beginning of 1942, the Soviet government decided to transfer card bureaus from the subordination of trading to local authorities - district, city and regional executive committees. However, the employees in them remained the same, so the situation remained practically unchanged.
As a new measure to combat the abuse of cards, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on June 26, 1942, by its order, created new supervisory bodies - control and accounting bureaus of manufactured goods and food cards (KUB). Now, instead of card bureaus, they accepted coupons from cards and monitored the correspondence of their number to the figures from the reports on the funds sold. CUBs began to regularly check the work of card bureaus, retail outlets and immediately revealed many violations. It seemed that under the control of KUBs, the card system would work as intended. However, as you know, any business goes smoothly only on paper.
Taming the "predators"
The most significant problem with distribution by cards was that at times there was simply nothing to distribute. From the majority of the regions of the country not occupied by the enemy, letters were sent to Moscow stating that it was impossible to get the necessary food, even in the minimum amount, even with ration cards.
In the fall of 1942, a commission appointed by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) discovered a depressing state of affairs in those areas where most of the complaints came from. These regions did not receive the required food. In some regions, for months, they did not see any fats or sweets, and in the Yaroslavl region, for example, only 6% of the required amount was given out on meat ration cards in July 1942. An audit report submitted in November 1942 to the country's leadership specifically mentioned one way of abusing the card system. As it should be during the war, first of all, the army and defense enterprises were supplied with food. In addition, large military production facilities had a special status: they were directly subordinate to the allied people's commissariats and the number of their workers was a secret not only for enemies, but also for regional leaders. This is what the directors of the enterprises used: the departments of workers' supply (OPC) of the factories overestimated the number of workers in the factories and demanded much more products than the current standards allowed. However, death from starvation threatened the population of many regions not only for this reason.
There was no optimal way out of the situation. Huge territories with fertile lands were occupied by the enemy, and before their liberation, there was no need to talk about an increase in harvests and food supplies. It was impossible to take anything else from those who had already handed over to the state every last spikelet and therefore the starving collective farmers was impossible. It was madness to degrade the supply of the army during heavy fighting. But leaving everything as it was meant undermining morale in the rear. The only way out was to reduce the loss of available products. First of all, losses from plunderers, or predators, as they were then called.
In the decree "On strengthening the fight against theft and waste of food and industrial goods", which was adopted by the State Defense Committee on January 22, 1943, the main measure proposed the creation of a new structure - trade inspections, which were supposed to monitor the correct distribution of rationed goods. In addition, it was proposed to create public control groups at each outlet, so that workers and housewives themselves check the correctness of the consumption of products. Moreover, members of the public were now involved in overseeing the distribution of cards and the work of the KUBs.
But most importantly, the decree proposed changing the conditions and rules of trade that contributed to theft. For example, in shops and canteens, instead of the previously existing accounting of goods at cost, their quantitative accounting was introduced. So it has become more difficult to sell scarce goods to the left and instead deposit money in the cashier or replace some goods with others.
Equally important was the establishment of penalties for products and goods that disappeared from shops and canteens. It was proposed to collect food from financially responsible persons at the market price, and for manufactured goods - at five times the commercial price. The resale of products and goods lost their meaning and abuse in stores and public catering had to stop. However, only those who knew nothing about Soviet trade could decide this.
Cubic theft
The report of the Department for Combating theft of Socialist Property of the Main Directorate of Militia (OBKHSS GUM) of the NKVD of the USSR for 1943 said:
"With the issuance of the decree … the opportunities for unhindered theft of goods have decreased. As a result, the amount of waste began to decrease somewhat. It has decreased more significantly in cities and less in rural areas, where the accounting of goods and control over their sale was later streamlined. In this regard, criminals began to look for opportunities and ways to more easily plunder goods. And weighing and measuring consumers has become more widespread as a more accessible and unhindered way of creating reserves of goods for plundering. Currently, weighing and measuring consumers is the most common form of plundering goods in stores and canteens."
There was another way to conceal the theft: it was possible to pretend that they were sold on ration cards. However, this required unaccounted cards or already used coupons, as stated in the OBKhSS report:
"Criminal elements from among the workers of shops and canteens have intensified their involvement in crimes of employees of control and accounting bureaus and through them receiving coupons and coupons for reuse in order to cover stolen goods. This way of theft of goods has also become widely used by criminals. Suffice it to say that during the second half of 1943, a significant number of uncovered criminal groups in shops and canteens was associated with the complicity of employees of control and accounting bureaus. In a number of cities (Chkalov, Voronezh, Kuibyshev, Saratov, Kazan, etc.) - accounting bureaus. Moreover, this is facilitated by the imperfect system of work of control and accounting bureaus."
As the same report testified, such machinations were committed even in besieged Leningrad:
"A group of 20 criminals from the employees of the control and accounting bureau and Pishchetorg in the Vyborg district was discovered. The group was headed by the head of the Vyborg regional trade department Korenevsky and the head of the control and accounting bureau Zarzhitskaya, who involved a number of employees of the KUB and Pishchetorg in the crimes. Deliberately creating conditions for uncontrolled storage of coupons, untimely redemption of coupons, criminals systematically plundered bread and food coupons, issued stock orders for bribes with an increase against the coupons actually handed over. The stolen coupons were bought by the criminals through the shop directors Novikova, Petrashevsky, Kadushkina, Alekseev, Shitkin, Utkin and others, who were involved in the theft, dividing the food in half. For 4-5 months, coupons for 1500 kilograms of bread and food were stolen. The military tribunal of Leningrad sentenced 2 accused to death, 4 people. to 10 years in prison, and the rest from 2 to 8 years."
And in the Moscow region, the KUB employees not only became the initiators of crimes, but also dragged the employees of the card bureau and house administrations under their control into them:
"The controllers of the Krasnogorsk district control and accounting bureau Kanurin and Rybnikova, the head of the card bureau Mikhailov, the controller of the card bureau Merkulova, the cashier Mukhina, a number of employees of the trading system and others, among 22 people, were engaged in organized theft of cards and coupons. KUB controllers Kanurin and Rybnikova deliberately disorganized order receiving coupons from stores, accepting them not once every five days, but every 10-15 days, and destroyed them without the participation of representatives of the public. and other store employees for reuse. Kanurin, Merkulova and Mukhin, in addition to stealing coupons, together with the commandants of the houses, for a number of months made fictitious demands, issued ration cards for them, purchasing them in stores."
In conditions when a considerable number of CUBs, to put it mildly, have lost their controlling functions, the employees of card bureaus did not sit idly by. The OBKhSS report described numerous cases of crimes identified in KUBs using a variety of methods, starting with banal thefts:
"A large theft of cards in the Ulyanovsk regional card bureau was discovered. Thefts were committed by a group of employees of the card bureau and other organizations, including 22 people, headed by the cashier-storekeeper Kurushina. cabinets and drawers; personal accounts of enterprises and institutions that received cards were not opened; cards were issued without a visa from the head of the card bureau and chief accountant; inventory of the availability of cards was not made and the results were not displayed on the first day of each month; when transferring pantries to others storekeepers did not withdraw the remainder of the cards in the pantry. Only in April of this year, the storekeeper Vinokurov revealed a shortage of 5372 cards and 5106 coupons, the storekeeper Validov had 1888 sets of cards and 5,347 five-day coupons. 1,850 kg of various products, 53,000 in cash x money and a lot of valuables. All were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment."
More elegant methods were often used - writing cards for non-existent people and even non-existent organizations:
"In the city of Syzran, a group of criminals, headed by the head of the city card bureau Kashcheyev, was arrested. Rykov made fictitious demands on behalf of the construction of the Palik mine and received through Kashcheev a large number of cards, which he sold through speculators in the Syzran market. Within a few months Rykov received 3948 five-day coupons and cards for bread and other products from Kascheev …The criminals gained 180,000 rubles from the sale of the cards, of which 90,000 rubles. got Kashcheev. The Kuibyshev Regional Court sentenced 8 people, of whom one to execution, three to 10 years in prison and the rest to different terms."
However, this did not exhaust the spectrum of crimes related to the card system. The policemen noted:
"In some cases, workers in shops and canteens began to resort to buying up cards and coupons in the markets to redeem shortages of goods resulting from theft."
And demand, as you know, even under socialism gave birth to supply. If there were not enough stolen coupons and cards, fake ones were used. According to OBKhSS GUM, a significant number of cards and coupons were forged in the country, which were sold to trade workers, in the markets and used by manufacturers for their own needs. At the same time, some criminals produced fakes at Stakhanov's rates and volumes:
"In the city of Kuibyshev, a group of criminals was arrested who were engaged in fabricating coupons for bread and additional food. The typesetter of the printing house of the Stalin factory NKAP Vetrov, taking advantage of weak control over the printing and spending of coupons for bread and additional food, as well as weak accounting for them, systematically abducted and sold them through his accomplices - the workers of the plant at speculative prices. In April 1943, Vetrov, having stolen the type from the printing house, together with his accomplices, the workers of the plant N1, organized an underground printing house in the basement of the hostel, began to print fake coupons, bringing their release up to 1000 pieces a day In total, criminals fabricated 12,000 coupons, from the sale of which over 200,000 rubles were obtained. typographic font and 9 clichés, seals and stamps, 32,000 rubles in cash and 50,000 rubles in different prices ness. In the case, 4 people were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment each, 3 accused for 6 years and the rest to different terms of imprisonment."
To suppress abuse in the card system, a large-scale operation of the NKVD began in 1943, as a result, in 49 republics and regions of the USSR, 1848 criminal cases were initiated, in which 1,616 employees of card bureaus and KUBs and 3028 of their accomplices were involved. To prevent counterfeiting of cards and coupons, their production was transferred to well-guarded printing houses. And in some regions, where such enterprises did not exist, cards began to be transported from Moscow. However, the policemen themselves noted that the measures taken did not bring the desired result.
Abuses are widespread
In the report of the BHSS for 1944, for example, it was said that for the year and three months of the operation to identify crimes in the card system, various types of abuse and theft were detected in 692 CUBs, while there were 832 in total at that time. 156 CUBs of crimes were discovered during repeated and subsequent checks.
And the report for 1945 testified that card crimes by the end of the war and after its end had become much more:
"Card abuse is extremely widespread. It occurs in almost all parts of the card system."
And criminals use old methods and start practicing new ones:
"It is widely practiced by criminals to draw up fictitious acts for the destruction of coupons for manufactured goods or food cards. Such crimes are carried out not only to cover waste, but also to cover theft. In each card bureau, the remnants of cards are generated every month after they are issued to the population. In some cases, criminals steal the remains. cards and cover theft by drafting fictitious acts on the destruction of unused card balances. In addition, it is not uncommon for control and accounting bureaus to issue fictitious stock orders for expended rationed goods to trading enterprises. This makes it possible for criminals to steal large consignments of goods, since the order is the main document proving that the merchant's goods have been used up correctly on the cards. However, after the coupons are destroyed in the control and accounting bureau, and they are destroyed in the majority every day, it is impossible to establish the fictitiousness of the stock order."
Meanwhile, workers and employees continued to receive less rationed food and starve. In June 1944, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Beria reported to the Council of People's Commissars:
"The NKVD and the NKGB of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic report the following data on the situation with the food supply of workers and engineers and technicians of a number of industrial enterprises in Bashkiria. Despite the fact that the food supplied through centralized funds, first of all, is supplied to the ORS of the leading industrial enterprises, food cards of workers and employees some enterprises are not fully stocked … Public catering for workers at a number of industrial enterprises is poorly organized, the quality of meals in canteens is poor. In a number of industrial enterprises workers are suffering from malnutrition. 175 people are exhausted at NKEP plant N268, 110 people at NKAP plant N161. There are a number of deaths from malnutrition."
Attempts to establish the operation of the card system have been made more than once. In 1946, for example, a special commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks got down to business, conducting an inspection in each region and republic. In the Murmansk region alone, 44 criminal cases were initiated, in which, among others, 28 employees of card bureaus and CUBs were involved.
True, ineradicable card crimes soon stopped. After the card system was canceled in December 1947.
