Soviet millionaires. How underground millionaires Gazenfranz and Singer lived in the USSR. A masterpiece in the toilet of Ehrenburg

There were no articles about them in Forbes - there were articles in the Criminal Code for them.

Andrey Dubrovsky

The command-planned centralized economy that Stalin created in the 1930s was extremely inefficient, as evidenced by the chronic shortages that accompanied him until his death. Contrary to official statements about plans being exceeded, it is clear from closed reports to the party and government that the plan of none of the five-year plans was not only exceeded, but even simply fulfilled. In the face of shortages, a black market flourished from the 1930s, satisfying half of citizens' needs.

Black caviar and vodka seized from Soviet underground entrepreneurs

And since there was a black market, that means there were its heroes - underground millionaires. And if a serious struggle to destroy the black market could lead to the extinction of most of the population (and the authorities understood this), then millionaires from time to time fell under the repressive skating rink of the Soviet regime.

Nikolay Pavlenko

Time of activity: Great Patriotic War - early 1950s

This enterprising son of a dispossessed peasant managed during the war to create not just some small artel, but a real private construction corporation with several hundred employees, working throughout the European part of the USSR.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Pavlenko was drafted into the active army and retreated with the troops into the interior of the country until he reached Vyazma. After that, he deserted, wrote out forged documents for himself and organized his first enterprise in Kalinin (Tver) - “Military Construction Work Site No. 5 of the Kalinin Front” (UVSR-5). For a bribe at the printing house, Pavlenko printed the necessary documents - invoices, contracts, etc., picked up a dozen abandoned trucks and bulldozers on front-line roads and, taking advantage of the wartime confusion, built UVSR-5 into the system of military construction units of the Kalinin Front.

Nikolai Pavlenko’s “private” unit, paid and supplied with reinforcements, reached Berlin along with the front, repairing roads and bridges, building airfields and hospitals, and sometimes even entered into battle with the Germans who had broken through to the rear. The “commander” and his “subordinates” received titles and were awarded medals and orders.

By the end of the war, the budget of the mythical UVSR-5 reached 3 million rubles, and Pavlenko himself drove German luxury cars “Horch” and “Adler”. Having received a railway train of thirty cars for a bribe, Pavlenko exported from Germany food requisitioned from the local population, as well as captured trucks, tractors, cars and other equipment. All this was sold in Kalinin on the black market. After this, Pavlenko demobilized most of his “unit,” which by that time numbered about 300 people, with each officer receiving from 15 to 25 thousand rubles, and privates from 7 to 12 thousand. The “commander” kept about 90 thousand rubles for himself.

Then Pavlenko organized the Plandorstroy construction artel in Kalinin. Soon he moved to Lviv, then to Chisinau, where control was not as strict as in the central regions of the country. There he organized the 1st Military Construction Directorate (UVS-1), which soon became one of the largest construction organizations in the region. The enterprise had its own armed guards; personnel came from local military registration and enlistment offices. UVS-1 received contracts from industrial enterprises and organizations in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, the western regions of the RSFSR and the Baltic states.

Pavlenko paid in cash, three to four times more than at state-owned enterprises, and built conscientiously, which even the investigators who conducted the “Pavlenko case” later admitted. Customers also had no complaints about the work of UVS-1.

From 1948 to 1952, UVS-1, using forged documents, concluded 64 contracts in the amount of 38,717,600 rubles. Through fictitious accounts in State Bank branches, Pavlenko received more than 25 million rubles. The business, reliably covered with bribes, worked without failures.

It was a coincidence. One of the UVS-1 employees was underpaid for government bonds, and he wrote a statement to the local prosecutor's office. A check began, during which it became clear that UVS-1 was not officially listed anywhere.

On November 14, 1952, as a result of a large-scale operation carefully planned by the state security agencies of the five union republics, Nikolai Pavlenko’s construction “empire” was liquidated. Almost 400 people were arrested. In the apartment of Pavlenko, who by that time already had the rank of colonel, they found a total amount of 34 million rubles. The verdict was predictable: in April 1955, Pavlenko was shot. Another 16 defendants received sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years.

Boris Roifman

Time of activity: 1940s - early 1960s

This underground businessman has created workshops at various state enterprises and organizations since 1947. In 1957, Roifman launched the production of unaccounted products in the knitting workshop of the deaf-mute society in Kalinin.

Having amassed capital, Roifman began to storm the capital: for 2,000 rubles he bought the position of head of the workshops of a psychoneurological dispensary in the Krasnopresnensky district of Moscow and obtained permission (also through bribes) to create a knitting workshop at the mental dispensary. Everyone had a share, from the head physician to ordinary employees. At the dispensary, Roifman equipped an underground workshop, purchased for it several dozen knitting machines from various state-owned enterprises and raw materials - wool. The products were sold through “lured” traders at markets and train stations.

By 1961, when monetary reform was announced in the country, Roifman was a millionaire. It was difficult to exchange millions of old rubles for new ones, but the problem was solved more than once in a proven way - by bribing the employees of several savings banks in which the exchange was made. The underground workshop was discovered by accident: Roifman's partner Shakerman quarreled with his relatives, and they reported to the prosecutor's office that he was living beyond his means. Vigilant authorities conducted an inspection, uncovered the activities of the underground workshop, and found Roifman. During searches, tens of kilograms of gold were found in several caches. By decision of the court, Roifman and Shakerman were shot.

Yan Rokotov

Time of activity: late 1950s - early 1960s

After the VI World Festival of Youth and Students, held in 1957 in Moscow, fartsovka began to develop at an accelerated pace.

Meeting the wishes of workers who had seen enough of foreigners and wanted to dress stylishly and originally, enterprising young people quickly established illegal trade with foreign tourists. Over time, their own “kings” appeared among the black marketeers. The most prominent figure in this area - not only in terms of position, but also in the tragedy of his fate - is Yan Rokotov. It was he who first created a well-organized and structured system - with its own hierarchy and laws, with a complex scheme of intermediaries for buying currency and goods from foreigners.

Having begun to create his empire in 1957, by 1959 Rokotov had become an underground millionaire. To make it easier to do business, he became a police informant and from time to time ratted out some of his colleagues and even his own “employees” who were at the lower levels of the farce hierarchy.

It is unknown how long all this would have lasted if big politics had not intervened. During Khrushchev’s trip to West Berlin, in response to the words of the Soviet leader, “Berlin has turned into a dirty swamp of speculation,” someone shouted from the audience: “There is no such black exchange as your Moscow one anywhere in the world!” Having received a public slap in the face, Khrushchev flew into a rage and ordered the black market to be wiped out. A campaign has been launched to combat black marketeers and currency traders. A show trial was needed. In May 1961, Rokotov was arrested, and a little later two of his closest associates, Faibishenko and Yakovlev, were taken. During the search, about $1.5 million in various currencies and gold was seized from Rokotov. The total turnover of Rokotov’s underground “empire” amounted to 20 million rubles.

According to Soviet law, the maximum sentence for Rokotov, Faibishenko and Yakovlev was 8 years. But Khrushchev was not happy with this. The case was reviewed, the court imposed a new punishment in accordance with a specially adopted law: 15 years in prison. However, Khrushchev was thirsty for blood and, having intervened in the trial, directly ordered the death penalty - this was already a flagrant violation of legal norms. For the sake of the case of Rokotov, Faibishenko and Yakovlev, changes were made to the Criminal Code, in accordance with which the death penalty was established for currency smuggling. Despite the fact that the law does not have retroactive force, the case was reviewed and the defendants were sentenced to death. On July 16, 1961, the sentence was carried out.

Siegfried Hasenfranz and Isaac Singer

Time of activity: 1950s - early 1960s

Another private knitwear workers, who patched up the holes of the Soviet deficit to the best of their ability, worked in the city of Frunze, the capital of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Hasenfrancz and Singer bought outdated equipment from three sewing cooperatives, set up a weaving factory in abandoned military hangars and hired tailors from local Jewish communities.

After a short time, they became the owners of millions of dollars in capital with all the trappings of a luxurious life: a Rolls-Royce purchased at one of the Moscow diplomatic missions, albeit a used one, and a huge house with servants.

The shop workers gave themselves away with these exorbitant expenses. In January 1962, the KGB arrested 150 people in the “knitwear case.” According to the detainees, testimony was extracted from them with fists. Hasenfrancz and Singer were accused of theft of socialist property. To this Siegfried Hasenfrancz reasonably replied: “We did not cause damage to the state. As much as the state had, that's what remains. We scraped by with our own money and produced unaccounted for products. There is no way we can be tried for embezzlement.”21 the accused, including Hasenfranz and Singer, were sentenced to death, applying the law retroactively: the arrests took place even before the adoption of amendments introducing the death penalty for economic crimes.

Artem Tarasov

Time of activity: perestroika

Tarasov is known as the first legal Soviet millionaire. But he had to fight to achieve this status.

It all started in 1987, when he opened the first marriage agency in Moscow and earned 100 thousand rubles in five days, despite the fact that the average salary in the USSR was then 120 rubles. A scandal arose, Tarasov was declared a speculator and the cooperative was closed on the sixth day.

The entrepreneur did not lose heart and opened a new business: the Tekhnika cooperative, a workshop for repairing imported equipment. It was almost impossible to get imported parts, but the craftsmen at Tarasov’s company managed to install Soviet parts on foreign equipment. When this was revealed, Tarasov was accused of stealing foreign parts. But, since there was not a single complaint from customers (the equipment, although with domestic parts, worked), the investigators had nothing to cling to, the case fell apart. Tarasov’s business expanded, the company switched to purchasing computers and software for government agencies, even for KGB.

Since payments in those years were cash only, by the beginning of 1989 the company had more than $100 million in its account. Tarasov became the richest man in the USSR. In the same year, a law was passed according to which the company’s cash desk should have no more than 100 rubles. Then Tarasov simply divided the entire salary fund among his employees - in total he employed 1,800 people. When one of the communist employees made a mandatory party contribution - 3% of his salary of 3 million rubles, the party cell was stunned.

Information reached the very top with lightning speed. A representative commission came, made up of as many as eight different organizations: the KGB, the GRU, the ObkhSS, the Ministry of Finance, the Control and Inspectorate of the Ministry of Finance, and financial territorial branches. They removed the cash register and it turned out to contain 959,837 rubles 48 kopecks. The commission checked the documents: everything turned out to be legal. But then Gorbachev intervened, saying: “We will not allow it to be turned into capitalism. We must hold these moneybags accountable.” The commission had to tear up the original protocol and the company was closed.

Tarasov was threatened with execution under Article 93 of the USSR Criminal Code, “Theft of state property on an especially large scale.” The millionaire decided to take a non-trivial step: he came on television, on the popular program “Vzglyad”, and told his story to the whole country. And at the end he announced: if they prove that he is a speculator, he is ready to be shot even on Red Square. In the following days, many Soviet and foreign media made materials about him, and it became somehow inconvenient to shoot a media person. Soon Tarasov was elected people's deputy of the RSFSR, so it turned out to be impossible to prosecute him. Artem Tarasov is still one of the richest people in the world.

One of the pioneering cooperators during perestroika in the USSR, businessman Artem Tarasov died last Saturday, July 22.

Tarasov is considered the first Soviet legal millionaire: it was he who officially received a salary of 3 million rubles in 1989, which then caused a real sensation. Later, Tarasov never became an oligarch - although he could have, he didn’t “sit down” - although everything was heading towards this, he survived emigration and ruin, tried to return to politics and died alone from pneumonia at the age of 67.

(Total 11 photos)

Artem Tarasov was born in Moscow on July 4, 1950 in the family of photojournalist Mikhail Artemovich Tarasov and Doctor of Biological Sciences Lyudmila Viktorovna Alekseeva. On the paternal side, A.M. Tarasov comes from the Armenian merchant family of the Tarasovs.

After school, Tarasov graduated from the Moscow Mining Institute (1972) and received a Candidate of Technical Sciences degree (1982). In the 1960s he participated in the KVN team of the Mining Institute.

Tarasov gained fame as the first legal Soviet millionaire in the late 80s. There was devastation in the country at that time, and there was an acute shortage in stores. People struggled to get by from paycheck to paycheck with an average salary of 130 rubles. And in 1989, Artem Tarasov said in the “Vzglyad” program that he and his deputy each received 3 million rubles in salary for January. The childlessness tax alone from this amount amounted to 180 thousand rubles, and the deputy, who was a member of the CPSU, gave 90 thousand in the form of party contributions.

This was just two years after the registration of the Tekhnika cooperative, of which Tarasov was the director. The cooperative repaired foreign household appliances. After some time, employees of the Main Computing Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences began to transfer the rights to their software products to the Tekhnika cooperative and through it sold them to branches of the State Committee on Computer Technology. Revenue for the first month of operation, according to Tarasov’s recollections, amounted to about a million rubles.

This is what the cooperative's products looked like in the late 80s. Then, according to Tarasov, the enterprise was involved in 27 areas of activity: construction, training, innovation, trade and so on. As of January 1989, Tekhnika had 79 million rubles in its account, which is 100 million dollars in dollar equivalent.

The legendary performance of millionaire Tarasov in the “Vzglyad” program caused a shock in Soviet society and an extraordinary resonance throughout the country. A whole series of inspections of Tarasov’s cooperative began, which they tried to bring under the article “Theft on an especially large scale” (in the USSR it was punishable by execution). After 9 months of inspections, the company was closed and all accounts were frozen. Although the case never came to court, since the inspectors did not find any crime.

Tarasov was called an enemy of Gorbachev. The first and last president of the USSR spoke sharply after that broadcast of the “Vzglyad” program: “Our country is rich in talented people. One of them bought computers cheap and sold them for big money! This cannot happen in the USSR.” Tarasov irritated him and disturbed him with his harsh statements, especially since he later became a people's deputy and received immunity.

However, after the businessman in February 1991 spread information that Gorbachev was preparing to transfer the Kuril Islands to Japan for $200 billion, his conflict with the authorities forced him to leave the USSR for London: Tarasov believed that immigration in March 1991 saved him life, because, as he believed, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had already ordered his killer for 12 thousand rubles.

Tarasov returned to Moscow in 1993, when directly from London he participated in the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation and won in the Central District of Moscow, becoming a deputy. In 1996, Tarasov even nominated himself to participate in the Russian presidential elections, but the Central Election Commission did not register him.

Tarasov later recalled: “When I came to Russia after emigrating, I saw another country. Bandit. Where my friends were killed. These are politicians, journalists, and businessmen. I had a nostalgic breakdown. And after two years as a deputy, I left this terrible country back to England. I realized: there’s nothing to catch here.”

At the end of 1996, he again went to London and lived there until 2003. There he lost his millions, getting involved in a scam by a certain Lebanese named Abdel Nassif, and then spent a lot of money on litigation with him.

Tarasov returned to Russia permanently in 2003. He twice participated in elections for the posts of governor of St. Petersburg (2000) and governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (2002), but was not successful.

Tarasov had a plan to overcome corruption in Russia. Among other things, he proposed abolishing taxes.

In recent years, Tarasov led a somewhat reclusive life. Only a couple of years ago I tried to return to public life through the political door. From the Yabloko party, he tried his hand at the State Duma elections. As Tarasov himself admitted in one of his interviews, he lived modestly in a small apartment on Arbat, as they say, “on a salary,” plus the money saved in the American pension fund during the years of former luxury came in handy.

The house where Artem Tarasov died at the end of July 2017.

In recent years, the businessman lived alone in an apartment and only once a week did a housekeeper come to see him. The millionaire's body was discovered by his friend on the evening of Saturday, July 22, when he brought him medicine.

By the way, the millionaire did not like going to doctors because he did not trust medicine. He told everyone that he knew his body better than doctors. Therefore, he made his own diagnoses, and looked for medications to take on the Internet. Investigators from the Investigative Committee ordered an investigation, but according to the first conclusions of doctors, the death was not of a criminal nature.

Mikhail Kozyrev

Underground millionaires: the whole truth about private business in the USSR

I had never come across such people closely before. Coming out of the underground passage on Pushkin Square, I saw a bunch of strange characters with homemade posters “Withdraw troops from Chechnya!”, “Let all imperial dreams die!”, “Don’t make Ingushetia a second Chechnya!” and the like.

Opposite these rather poorly dressed people stood several men in good-quality suits and jackets. One of them conscientiously filmed everything that was happening. “What are these, FSB agents, or what?” – I was surprised. One of those whom I was supposed to meet was exactly in the group that was filmed by a man in civilian clothes. It didn’t really frighten me, but it added some intrigue to the plot.

At this time I worked in the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. We were preparing another issue with a rating of the richest entrepreneurs. For him, it was decided to prepare historical material about people who were engaged in business in the Soviet Union - speculators, guild workers (owners of underground production) and other bigwigs. I was assigned to prepare the article.

The idea seemed winning - many had heard that there was an underground business in the USSR. And certainly everyone remembers Comrade Saakhov from “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and the sinister “chief” from “The Diamond Arm.” The idea was to find real prototypes of these characters and communicate with them. Write about their business, destinies, lifestyle. In general, it all looked tempting - just in Forbes style, moderately glamorous and a little provocative.

Having started to study the issue, I soon found out that the person I needed was Viktor Sokirko. No, he did not sew jeans in the basement and did not engage in speculation. He received his sentence at the end of Soviet power under a completely different article - for criticizing the order that existed at that time and samizdat publications. Then, during perestroika, Sokirko, like other dissidents, actively participated in social and political life. In 1989, he created the “Society for the Protection of Convicted Business Owners and Economic Freedoms” - a public organization that was supposed to review the cases of those convicted on economic charges.

And now it turns out that Sokirko is not even a former dissident. Looking ahead, I will say that a few months after our meeting, Victor

Vladimirovich was arrested on that same Pushkin Square. They say that he violated the rules of holding a public event - he announced only one number of participants, but many more came (which is not surprising - the picket was held in protest against the murder of the famous human rights activist Natalya Estemirova that had just occurred in Grozny). 70-year-old Viktor Sokirko was grabbed by riot police and forced into a police bus. They were released only a few days later.

Well, then I approached some unshaven man for a long time, holding a cardboard with something like “Putin resign!” in his hands, and asked if Viktor Sokirko was there. They pointed to an elderly man. I approached and introduced myself. We talked. Viktor Vladimirovich offered to drive up to his home. View archival materials. A couple of days later I was already in his three-room apartment in Maryino, crammed with stacks of papers and books. There, while sorting through the old archives of the Society for the Protection of Convicted Business Executives, I really managed to find what I needed. And about “fate”, and about “business”. Then I found a couple more sources. I talked to several shop workers. My colleague Anya Sokolova, with whom we worked together on the text, interviewed retired officers from the Federal Security Service. And we wrote a cheerful article.

However, as a result of this whole story, I was left with a feeling of unsaidness. Digging into the materials of criminal cases thirty or forty years ago, I often caught myself thinking that all these stories have not lost their relevance today. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, what do we know about the country in which we ourselves or our parents lived just a few decades ago? About the “heroes” and “anti-heroes” of that era? About the real reality that hides under the varnished production television novels and the crackling propaganda of Soviet newspapers? Which is hidden behind the facade of society, where at first glance everything is controlled and everything belongs to the State with a capital “S”?

It's worth more than an entertaining feature in a semi-gloss magazine. This is worth looking into. To start, just do it yourself.

Let's go back 40 years. Industry, agriculture, trade - everything is in the hands of the state. Soviet plants and factories are managed by directors appointed by industry headquarters. Prices for goods are determined by the State Planning Committee. With his directives, he assigns the routes of commodity flows - to which enterprise how much and what to supply. Gosplan consists of tens of thousands of estimators, planners, and economists. They seem to know everything. But in fact, the information that this machine grinds and the real state of affairs in enterprises and industries are two different realities. The result: production chains in industry are barely able to function due to the irregularity of supplies from subcontractors. The store shelves are empty. Agriculture, where government money is pumped in and out, suffers from a shortage of the most necessary materials, the same board.

If we consider that almost half of the Soviet official economy worked for the defense industry, it turns out that private traders provided every fifth ruble of the Soviet “peaceful” GDP.

And then “pushers”, “guild workers”, “speculators” appear - people who are driven by entrepreneurship and initiative. They provide the clumsy, unbalanced mechanism of the Soviet economy with “lubricant”, which allows it to somehow function. The pushers, and not the State Planning Committee, organize the supply of the required quantity of components from subcontractors at the right time. Shop workers from defective raw materials, or even materials simply stolen from Soviet production, produce goods in demand by the population - shoes, clothes and other consumer goods. Speculators, reducing the severity of supply problems, ensure supply shortages.

Who are these people whose activities gave the Soviet economic system at least a minimal degree of flexibility? Perhaps they can be called entrepreneurs. They took risks, they came up with schemes, they made money. Their activities shaped an entire sector of the Soviet economy, the so-called shadow economy. According to estimates - up to 10% of the official one. And if we consider that almost half of the Soviet official economy worked for the defense industry, it turns out that private traders provided every fifth ruble of the Soviet “peaceful” GDP.

How many were there? Despite the official ban on entrepreneurship, almost all Soviet citizens earned their living privately. They grew potatoes on their plots. Rabbits were bred and handed over to the state. They were hanging out at construction sites. We sewed bags. But there were, of course, fewer real entrepreneurs, those who earned money and did not provide for themselves. Probably, at best, several million people throughout the entire Union.

The most amazing thing is that they were. Despite state repression. Despite the intolerance and condescending and contemptuous attitude cultivated in society. These people were. Otherwise, where in the archives of the “Society for the Protection of Convicted Business Executives” would the manuscript of Mark Sherman, a Soviet “trader,” as he called himself, come from in the colony?

Here is just one of the striking episodes from Sherman's manuscript. The sixties of the last century. Transit prison in Ust-Labinsk. A batch of prisoners freshly arrived from the stage. In the corridor they are stretched out in a line: “Undress! Naked! Sidora in front of you! The prison is old. The corridor is in the women's section. Women look through the cracks from the cells and squeal with happiness... The guards are gutting the bags. Those who have photographs of children, mothers, wives, sisters, and loved ones are torn up and immediately thrown on the floor. Those who try to collect the scraps are beaten.

"Step back!" We stepped back. “Sit down! Get up! Sit down! Get up! Bend over! They look into the “point” - or “nasty” according to prison science. Then they enter from the front. “Roll back!” They look to see if anything is on the penis. “We've collected the bags! Fast, fast! Get dressed in your cells!” Prisoner Mark Sherman was shoved into a cell with the others. There are about fifteen people inside. Solid bunks in two tiers, in the shape of the letter “P”. The new arrivals settled in. They settled down. The people got tired and fell asleep. However, at night Sherman woke up - some kind of fuss was heard from below.

The myth of global income equality in the Soviet Union has long been debunked. As elsewhere, in the country there were ordinary citizens whose income was limited by rates and salaries, but there were very rich people. We are not talking about underground guild workers or those who were called plunderers of socialist property. Surprisingly, the legal millionaires were not the leaders of the party and government.

Scientists and inventors received very decent fees for their discoveries; real legends were formed about the income of nuclear physicists; some titled athletes could compete with them. But the largest number of legal Soviet millionaires was in the sphere of culture and art.

Lidiya Ruslanova

As a child, Agafya Leikina had to beg; later she ended up in an orphanage, changing her last name, because the children of peasants were not taken there. Stunning vocal abilities allowed Lydia Ruslanova not only to conquer Moscow, but also to become the highest paid singer in the Soviet Union. Hunger and poverty were long forgotten, and jewelry and antiques became the real passion of the people's favorite.

A simple village girl very quickly learned to understand all these riches, she could determine whether the original painting was in front of her or whether it was a good copy. She was not shy about wearing her diamonds even to concerts in the Kremlin. During the Great Patriotic War, she not only performed concerts on the front line, but also invested money in purchasing armored vehicles for the front.

In 1948, the singer was arrested along with her fourth husband, General Vladimir Kryukov. All material assets of the couple were confiscated: apartments, dachas, cars, antique furniture, paintings by famous artists. But most of all, the singer regretted the 208 diamonds, as well as sapphires, emeralds, and pearls that were confiscated from her housekeeper’s house. Lidia Ruslanova was released only in 1953, after Stalin's death.

Sergei Mikhalkov

Authors' fees in the Soviet Union could not be called excessively high. For example, for the text of the Anthem of the Soviet Union, Sergei Mikhalkov received only 500 rubles and a good food ration. However, the authors’ income also came from circulation payments. And Sergei Mikhalkov published very actively, not only in the USSR, but also abroad. Surprisingly, copyright law in the country of developed socialism was strictly observed.

Yuri Antonov

He was called the first Soviet millionaire from show business. Yuri Antonov did not hide: his author's income was very high. Officially, the singer and composer received about 15 thousand rubles per month. And this despite the average salary in the country being just over 100 rubles.

For the concert, the singer received only about 50 rubles, but the fees for each performance of the song he wrote were already adding up to a very decent amount in the savings book.

Natalia Durova

The famous trainer was famous for her love of jewelry and antiques, devoting no less time and effort to her collection than to working with animals. It is no secret that Natalya Durova owned the unique blue diamonds of Catherine the Great and the ring of the cavalry maiden Nadezhda Durova, who was in the family of the famous family.

Over the decades, the Durovs were able not to lose, but to increase their wealth. Natalya Durova wore her diamonds with pleasure and was proud of her antique collection. After her death, serious disputes broke out over the inheritance, and as a result, the illegitimate daughter of the son of the trainer Mikhail Bolduman, Elizaveta Solovyova, became the heir.

Lyudmila Zykina

The talented singer owes her well-being entirely to her talent and incredible ability to work. She toured not only throughout the Soviet Union. The singer visited 62 countries with her concerts. The circulation of records with songs by one of the favorite singers of the Soviet era amounted to more than 6 million copies.

After Lyudmila Zykina left, they started talking about her passion for diamonds and antiques, although her relatives and friends claim that she was never a money-grubber or a thoughtless collector of jewelry. She always wore her jewelry.

After the death of Lyudmila Zykina, a serious struggle broke out over her inheritance; a criminal case was even opened regarding the disappearance of valuables belonging to the singer. The collection of jewelry of the famous performer was sold at auction in 2012 for more than 31 million rubles.

Anatoly Karpov

Mikhail Sholokhov. / Photo: www.m-a-sholohov.ru

The Soviet writer, Nobel Prize laureate in literature, laureate of the Stalin and Lenin Prizes received far more than one million from foreign translations of his books alone. At the same time, he donated the Nobel and Lenin Prizes for the construction of schools in the Rostov region, and gave the Stalin Prize to the Defense Fund.

You don't have to shine with your own talents to become a millionaire. Sometimes it's enough to be Some cats were initially lucky enough to be born under a lucky star and settle with rich owners, and some, on the contrary, helped their owners significantly increase their capital. So who are they - cats who are literally swimming in money?