Stalin's Quest for Gold: The Torgsin Hard-Currency Shops and Soviet Industrialization

A fascinating book to read. All of its richly researched topics, from relations between Torgsin and the state security apparatus to interior design offer intriguing insights into the relationship between plan and market, state and society, practice and ideology. Elena Osokina is an eloquent storyteller and a thoughtful commentator, expertly mediating between individual stories and larger historical—and historiographic—questions.

Elena Osokina's analysis of a key Soviet business affords a fascinating angle on diverse aspects of Soviet life. Soviet historians have traditionally focused on collectivization as the regime's solution to the urgent need for hard currency but Osokina draws attention to Torgsin as a still more important source and emphasizes the extent to which famine was the engine of the company's growth. A richly rewarding book.

Elena Osokina has produced a rich, multilayered study of Torgsin, the Soviet institution that allowed citizens to exchange their valuables for food and other goods. Based on exhaustive archival research, this book explores how the Soviet Union funded industrialization, as well as the centrality of the 1932–1933 famine to Torgsin's success, as starving peasants exchanged family gold and silver trinkets for bread. This is a study of major importance.