Shadow enrichment of “counter workers” during the age of Khrushchev’s reform

The article reveals the reasons for the formation and extent of the spread of shadow practices in trade in the Urals, 1953-1964. Despite the difficult situation of the post-war reconstruction of the country, the partial reform of the planning and command administration of the national economy of the era of Khrushchev contributed not only to obvious economic growth but also to the “knocking together” of shadow incomes. The planned-command economy of the Soviet state, fundamentally aimed at the gross output of essential goods and foodstuffs and not at making profit constantly provoked a shortage of “commodity mass” with chronically unsatisfied demand. The liquidation of the Gulag largely neutralized the fear of being subjected to bloody repressions in case of violations of socialist legality. At the same time, in the post-war society that a short time ago had fulfilled the duty in the rear and shed blood on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the desire to “finally live like a human being” was massively manifested. These two trends, having developed during the period of the “Khrushchev thaw,” prompted individual Soviet citizens to engage in shadow self-enrichment. The counter workers have become a specific layer clandestinely correcting the balance of interests between the aggregate supply of state producers and the aggregate demand of the population for a limited supply of food and industrial products. The Khrushchev era, both in the Center and on the periphery, gave rise to a new reality - the formation of a clan of “Khrushchev’s rich” including trade workers, who clandestinely enriched themselves thanks to the availability of scarce food and manufactured goods that fueled the spread and rooting of the “second economy,” which received flourishing in the period of “developed socialism.”