In search of the gold reserve of the USSR

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Letter to Nikolai Starikov from reader Andrey Erdn

"… I served in the border troops in 1989 - 1991, the place of service is the Separate Detachment of the Border Control" Moscow "(military unit 9939). (Disbanded in 2007).

We were engaged in a search at the Sheremetyevo international airport.

Between 1990 and the first half of 1991 (I don’t remember the exact date), one of ours was summoned for inspection of a cargo IL-76, which was flying to Belfast from the cargo terminal of Sheremetyevo-2. He is a dog handler with a dog trained to find people.

The usual call, if not for one "but". This man later told us that the plane was loaded with gold, and during its work, armed people watched its every movement. Afterwards he boasted that he walked with boots on gold.

Perhaps the gold transported by this plane is related to the missing gold reserves of the USSR. In those days, one could often hear in the media about the "plight" of the USSR, about the need to take loans abroad, loans were taken and the amount of external debt increased. After that we were still surprised - we hear one thing, but in fact the opposite is happening …"

The book "Crisis". Khinshtein Alexander Evseevich, Medinsky Vladimir Rostislavovich Publisher: OlmaMediaGrupp, 2009

"You shouldn't be afraid of the crisis, you need to overcome it!" - the authors of this incredibly topical and very timely work, Alexander Khinshtein and Vladimir Medinsky, declare with one voice."

Former Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government Mikhail Poltoranin, who studied in detail the closed archives of the Politburo, devoted many years to unraveling this tangle. Poltoranin saw with his own eyes documents confirming that at the end of the 1980s gold reserves were actively exported from the USSR.

All these decisions of the Politburo were, of course, not just secret, but were labeled "of special importance." Accordingly, the operations for the export of gold also took place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy.

It was transported by couriers of Vnesheconombank with certificates of the KGB and the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU; among them is named, by the way, and Gusinsky's confidant Igor Malashenko (later the general director of the NTV television company).

At the border, no one examined the gold-bearing couriers - the customs service was instructed to pass them through Sheremetyevo-2 without hindrance. According to the securities, the export of gold was registered as a foreign trade operation, supposedly it went to pay for imported goods, mainly food. In fact, it was pure fiction. In return, almost nothing was returned to the country.

Poltoranin was able to trace in detail the fate of one of these consignments: 50 tons of gold of the highest standard, sent in 1990 across the cordon by a secret order of the USSR Council of Ministers to pay for food for the needs of the population.

The route was as follows: from Gokhran, the gold was delivered to Vnesheklonombank, from there it was transported by couriers to the vaults of foreign banks (Paris, London, Geneva, Singapore), the banks sold it to jewelry firms, and the resulting currency went to the anonymous accounts of mysterious people from Moscow.

Everything. As one movie hero used to say, oil painting.

And what about the food? - you ask. But with food, bad luck. There were no products abroad, there, too, you see, a deficit was raging. Instead of them, toilet soap was brought to the USSR. True, in several small batches. But on the other hand, it is imported.

According to this scheme, from 1989 to 1991 more than 2,300 tons of pure gold were transported abroad from the Union. (In 1990 alone, a record amount was taken out: 478, 1 tons). No one kept records of gold tranches, as the former officer of the current KGB reserve Viktor Menshov (he worked under the "roof" of the assistant to the chairman of the board of Vnesheconombank of the USSR) testifies.

There was so much gold, Tomas Alibekov, First Deputy Chairman of the Board of the same Vnesheconombank, recalls that the ingots were loaded onto planes directly from the runway.

This was far from the only way to privatize the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the USSR, invented by the then combinators. For example, by secret orders of the State Bank and the Council of Ministers, a brisk trade in the country's foreign exchange reserves was established.

Officially, dollars were sold at the rate of 6 rubles 26 kopecks; a special preferential rate was established for “their own” structures, controlled by the administration of the Central Committee of the CPSU, - 62 kopecks. The purchased currency immediately went abroad, and wooden rubles were dumped into the storage facilities of the Gokhran as a dead weight.

How do you like this detective story, waiting for its Nestor the chronicler?

On the rise of the Soviet regime, the KGB became aware that the Israeli special services were preparing to seize the Lebanese People's Bank, where the so-called values of Yasser Arafat were kept with a total value of $ 5 billion.

The raid on the bank did take place. Only the Israelis did not organize it at all. The robbers calmly transported Arab treasures in the neighborhood, to the Beirut branch of the Moscow People's Bank - one of the subsidiaries of the USSR Vnesheconombank. And a day later, the Beirut branch closed its work. Further traces of Palestinian gold are lost in the stifling Middle East …

The country was sliding into an abyss, the people became impoverished, even the simplest products - milk, meat, eggs - disappeared from the shelves. Meanwhile, a small group of people, who were in the right place and at the right time, amassed fabulous fortunes. Let's compare just two numbers. Over the last three years of perestroika, at least $ 30 billion worth of gold has been exported from the country, and in fact stolen.

And, exactly, at the same time - from 1989 to 1991 - the external debt of the USSR increased by 44 billion dollars. When, in December 1991, Gorbachev read out his last address to the nation in his life, he (in the sense of debt) had already reached $ 70.2 billion.

For decades to come, this debt will weigh the national economy down like a pood. Under Yeltsin, it also doubled. (Putin will inherit obligations worth 158 billion).

With such overwhelming debts, Russia not only fell into foreign bondage, it also lost the opportunity to develop normally. The threat of bankruptcy has been hovering over the country all these years. One step to the right, one step to the left - and the creditors pulled on the leash at once. Annual interest payments alone were up to $ 15 billion.

The numbers, however, are a stubborn thing. The USSR did not need loans at all. If the gold reserves had not been plundered, the country could well have passed the debt hole. True, it is not clear on what then the newly-minted masters of life would have risen?

To whom exactly the gold of the party was transferred remains a secret to this day, despite the fact that in the fall of 1991, even a criminal case was initiated on the theft of foreign exchange funds of the Central Committee of the CPSU. But both the official and unofficial investigation, carried out by the order of the Russian government by the detective agency "Kroll", did not find any remnants of the former luxury …

The treasurers of the party could certainly have shed light on this riddle, but someone preferred that they be silent forever. Not even a week had passed since the failure of the GKChP, when Nikolai Kruchina, the head of affairs of the Central Committee of the CPSU, fell out of the window of his apartment.

A month and a half later, the same happened to his predecessor, Georgy Pavlov. Despite the strange circumstances of these deaths, they were officially declared a banal suicide …"