A Chance for Survival: Trapped within the Confrontation between Unified State Political Department and Torgsin

The article uses previously unknown sources to analyze the issues of confrontation between the Special Office for Trade with Foreigners on the territory of the USSR (shortly – “Torgsin”) and the Unified State Political Directorate (later – People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Torgsin is an understudied feature in the history of the Soviet Union of the first half of the 1930s. While closed distribution centers, cooperatives, commercial stores, the “black” market, and the card rationing system operated, the Torgsin network stores were by far the only examples of open state trade where every citizen could purchase the commodities s/he needed and the network itself was the most successful industrialization-oriented trade organization. The article defines the role of the USPD in the life of Torgsin; it pinpoints key controversies between the organizations that intensified confrontation between them; and compares their efficiency. The timeline of the research is the period between 1930 and 1936, from the moment of establishment of the Office to its liquidation.