How consumer societies were created and strangled in Russia

This year marks the 170th anniversary of consumer cooperation. As a rule, consumer cooperation is associated with boring regional distribution centers and procurement offices. In fact, the history of the cooperative movement is full of dramatic turns, sometimes even cleaner than in Hollywood detective stories. And the list of famous cooperators includes the Decembrists Pushchin and Odoevsky, Marshal Semyon Budyonny, revolutionary Leonid Krasin, polar explorer Otto Schmidt.

During the Great Patriotic War, cooperative workers donated several tank columns and air squadrons to the army worth tens of millions of rubles. In the photo - the second tank column of T-34 and TO-34 tanks, built with funds from the Central Union and transferred to the 31st Guards Tank Brigade

Photo: Centrosoyuz

The village of Rozhdestvenskoye, Vetluzhsky district, Kostroma province, is the birthplace of the first savings and loan partnership in Russia.

Photo: Centrosoyuz

VLADIMIR GENDLIN

The birth date of global consumer cooperation is considered to be 1844, when weavers from the English city of Rochdale chipped in one pound each and organized an enterprise on the principles of voluntary participation, equality, democratic management “one shareholder - one vote,” and a single price for goods for all. But long before these principles were formulated in the charter of the cooperative in Rochdale (in honor of it, by the way, Rochdelskaya Street in Moscow is named, where, in particular, Trekhgornaya Manufactory is located), associations of small artisans, traders and consumers were already operating in Europe, trying to resist the pressure of big industrial capital.

The development of cooperation in Europe was based on a theoretical basis, where the works of utopian socialists (Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Ferdinand Lassalle and others) played an important role. They saw cooperation as a prototype of a just society and fair industrial relations.

In Russia, the ideas of consumer cooperation were also nurtured in the minds of progressive thinkers. Where can you find progressive thinkers in Russia? Of course, in the zone. In 1827, the Decembrists, residents of the Chita prison, organized the first consumer cooperative in the empire called the “Big Artel” at the Petrovsky Plant. And in 1831, its charter of 106 paragraphs was adopted: voluntariness, equality, democracy, mandatory share contributions, secret voting, reporting of the board and audit commission to shareholders, etc. The charter was developed by Ivan Pushchin, Alexander Odoevsky, Evgeniy Obolensky, Dmitry Zavalishin, Alexander Poggio, Mikhail Mitkov, Pyotr Mukhanov. What the Decembrists failed to achieve on Senate Square, they accomplished in hard labor.

The initial goal of the artel was to purchase wholesale goods that were in short supply in harsh Siberia. But soon the Decembrists also became involved in catering, agricultural production and sales, and loan and credit operations. There were workshops (tailoring clothes and shoes), a bathhouse, a laundry, a hairdresser, and a pharmacy.

By the beginning of the First World War, consumer cooperatives permeated all classes of Russian society
Photo: Centrosoyuz

The cooperative existed until 1839, when the inmates served their time. But for more than 50 years, many of them remained shareholders of the Small Artel, a savings and loan cooperative that helped the Decembrists who remained in Siberia as exiles. In addition, the Small Artel served local artisans and workers - it issued preferential loans at a quite modern 24% per annum (in those days, moneylenders lent at 120%). It turns out that Russian consumer cooperation is 13 years older than the world one - and this in a backward, feudal country.

It is worth saying that such words as “guarantee”, “sharing”, “artel” came from antiquity. Historian Oleg Elyutin, in his article “The Experience of Cooperation in Russia,” argues that the principles of cooperation were known back in the days of the first Moscow princes. Records from the 13th-14th centuries have been preserved, in which participants in hunting and fishing cooperatives in Central Russia and the Russian North vouched for each other and agreed on a “warehouse,” that is, on conducting joint economic activities. Subsequently, artels of carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, coachmen, barge haulers, beekeepers, and horsemen (tenants of forests and fields) arose. A folding record from 1635 reports a merchant cooperation intended for joint trade in the cities of Siberia. An entry from 1654 tells of three comrades who took over the collection of customs duties in Arzamas and surrounding villages.

In the 18th century, when Russia began to build ports on the Baltic and Black Seas, many artels of ship workers, barge haulers, loaders, rejectors, cords appeared - contractors for delivering loaders to ships. At the St. Petersburg customs, a “dragile” artel arose (from the German trager - porter), which took upon itself the inspection of goods and the collection of customs duties, as well as warehousing services. And the corking artel from Arkhangelsk was engaged in uncorking and corking goods in solid containers (barrels, boxes, bales). In those same years, salt-breaking artels appeared. And free associations of mining workers poured into the factories. By the middle of the 19th century, about 4 thousand people worked in the artels of St. Petersburg alone, producing goods and services worth more than 1 million rubles. in year.

The reason for the unification of peasants and artisans in artels has always been the same - a single master or peasant could not fully conduct economic activities due to low production volumes.

On March 2, 1831, at the general meeting of the Petrovsky plant, the Decembrists unanimously adopted the charter of the "Big Artel"
Photo: Centrosoyuz

Oil fever

It was a little strange, although pleasant, for Swiss cheese makers to meet the retired Russian naval officer Nikolai, who arrived in 1865 with his wife Tatyana to master the art of cheese making. In the village of Coppe near Geneva, he studied the production of skinny cheeses, and near Freiburg - fatty cheeses. Four years earlier, Nikolai Vereshchagin, a participant in the Crimean War, retired and entered St. Petersburg University. There were two reasons for the resignation. First, as he explained in a letter to the Minister of Agriculture Alexei Ermolov, naval service made him nauseous—over the years of service he had never gotten used to the motion. Secondly, Vereshchagin had an interest in cattle breeding since childhood.

Returning to his native estate in Cherepovets district (now a district in the Vologda region), Nikolai Vereshchagin discovered that highly profitable cheese factories were operating in the district. The first one was opened here by the Swiss Leuzinger in 1830. He kept 300 dairy cows and brewed up to 1000 pounds of cheese. A pound of cheese cost 5 rubles, a cow - from 9 to 12 rubles. Such income allowed Leitzinger to open another cheese factory three years later - in the village of Pavlovskoye.

In general, the first cheese-making production in Russia was created only in 1795 in the Tver province on the estate of Prince Meshchersky. For quite a long time, cheese factories operated only on rare estates and were managed exclusively by foreigners who were in no hurry to share the secrets of their craft. According to one version, Nikolai Vereshchagin paid 800 rubles. (a very large sum at that time) to learn cheese making from a local master, but realized that he had wasted the money. An alternative idea was suggested by his brother, the famous battle painter Vasily Vereshchagin: we need to go to the homeland of cheese, Switzerland. There Nikolai saw an artel cheese factory: peasants donated milk and divided among themselves the proceeds from the sale of cheese.

He opened a similar farm in his homeland, in the village of Gorodnya, Tver district. Serfdom had just been abolished, and Vereshchagin wanted to give free peasants a profitable business. Fortunately, two local landowners donated capital to the Free Economic Society, which provided him with a loan. The zemstvo government also helped with funds, trying to attract peasants to promising work. A year later, Nikolai Vereshchagin opened an artel cheese factory in the village of Otrokovichi, then in Vigodoshchi. And by 1870 there were 11 cheese factories in the Tver province.

In 1868, chemist Dmitry Mendeleev arrived to inspect his cheese factories. A year later he came again. In 1869, Mendeleev was supposed to give a report at the Russian Chemical Society on the Periodic Law he had discovered, but the scientist entrusted the report to Professor Nikolai Menshutkin, and he himself went to Vereshchagin to study the production of a new mass product for Russia (cheese was then only bought by wealthy people).

In the charter of the "Big Artel" the Decembrists managed to implement the principles that they defended on Senate Square
Photo: Centrosoyuz

In 1869, Nikolai Vereshchagin was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 3rd degree, for his achievements in the development of cheese making. And in 1871, he founded the first dairy farming school in Russia in the village of Edimonovo, Tver province. For several years he worked for the allocation of government subsidies, and while he was waiting for a decision, he maintained the school at his own expense and was even forced to mortgage the family estate. Here, former serfs were trained as masters in cheese making, butter making, and sausage production.

In the eyes of the intelligentsia, the school was an example of labor brotherhood and a bright future. It was chosen by the “populists” and revolutionaries. Thus, the famous revolutionary Alexandra Obodovskaya at one time headed the educational department here. And in the fall of 1878, one of the leaders of the “populists”, Sofya Perovskaya, got a job as a teacher’s assistant at the school.

Vereshchagin's artels showed high profitability. A pound of processed milk brought 51 kopecks. profit from the sale of butter. And when they switched from fatty cheeses to lean ones (to speed up production), the profit per pound of milk was brought to one ruble.

All this happened against the backdrop of the consumer cooperation boom that swept the empire. In 1865, in the village of Rozhdestvenskoye, Kostroma province, liberal landowners Vladimir and Svyatoslav Luginin founded the first savings and loan (credit) cooperative. By January 1871, there were already 73 cooperatives in Russia - rural, craft, industrial and credit.

A national market was emerging in the country, communications, rail and water, were rapidly developing, and from 1864 to 1880, Russian exports, primarily agricultural, grew by 24% annually. The economic recovery stimulated the creation of consumer societies. Prince Alexander Vasilchikov, academician Nikolai Beketov, and professor Nikolai Ziber plunged headlong into consumer cooperation. Colonel Ivan Zherebyatyev, who represented Russia at the founding congress of the International Cooperative Alliance in London, became a prominent figure in cooperation.

The most popular cooperative industry was the production of butter. In 1894, there were two dairy factories throughout Siberia, and by 1900 there were as many as 1,105. Imported Alfa Laval separators, sealed milk flasks, and laboratory equipment began to appear in remote villages.

What about our hero of cheese making? Nikolai Vereshchagin received a gold and three silver medals at the London Exhibition in 1880. In addition, he invented a completely new method of producing butter from boiled cream with an unusual nutty flavor. As soon as his oil appeared on the St. Petersburg market under the “Parizhskoe” brand, the Swedes became interested in it, who, having studied the nuances of the technology, began to produce it under the “Petersburgskoe” brand. Before Vereshchagin, Russia almost did not supply butter abroad. But already in 1897, oil exports amounted to more than 500 thousand poods worth 5.5 million rubles, in 1905 - 2.5 million poods worth 30 million, and in 1906 - 3 million poods worth 44 million rubles. The sale of oil on European markets brought the treasury in the 1900s as much profit as all the gold mines.

Nikolai Vereshchagin indicated in a letter to the Minister of Agriculture Alexei Ermolov: “... I managed to create an industry that over the course of 30 years has produced completely new products worth approximately up to 200,000,000 rubles.”

Surprisingly, the man who created an entire industry that fed the entire country and made thousands of newly minted cooperators rich, never got rich himself. Until the end of his life, he remained on a modest salary as the director of a rural dairy school. Now they would say: loser. In those days they said: an ascetic.

Nikolai Vereshchagin died in March 1907 on his Pertovka estate, leaving his family, as Professor Kalantar wrote in his obituary, “neither a home nor a means of livelihood.” Now his grave in the village of Lyubets, Cherepovets region, like his estate, rests at the bottom of the Rybinsk reservoir.

And Vereshchagin’s butter is known to everyone in Russia today: in 1939, an order was issued by the People’s Commissariat of the Meat and Dairy Industry of the USSR “On renaming the name of “Paris” butter to “Vologda” butter.”

Fishing and hunting cooperatives, similar to the artel of the Ural Cossacks Sladkov, have operated in Russia since the time of the Moscow princes
Photo: Centrosoyuz

Collective irresponsibility

The cooperative movement quickly showed growing pains. In the 60-70s of the 19th century, officials, officers, teachers, clergy, artists, journalists, and students also had their own cooperatives. The first decline in the cooperative movement occurred in the 1980s. Until 1890, 234 consumer societies were registered in Russia, but a third less actually operated. Many enthusiasts of the movement from among the intelligentsia, nobles and zemstvo became disillusioned with the cooperation and left it.

The reason was the low economic culture of the population. The mass of peasants who were shareholders of savings and loan partnerships turned out to be uncreditworthy. Fraud, embezzlement, forgery, and manipulation of meeting decisions have become common occurrences. Chairman of the Moscow Union of Consumer Societies (MSPO) Nikolai Gibner, colonel, participant in the Russian-Turkish war, military investigator, described the typical state of the Russian cooperative: “Complete indifference to cooperative principles, absenteeism at meetings ... and an overdeveloped interest among the majority of shareholders in dividends."

As noted in the book “Together for the Future,” prepared by the Central Union of the Russian Federation for the 170th anniversary of consumer cooperation in Russia, at the end of the 19th century there was an acute shortage of qualified business managers. Many shareholders used the cooperative as a cash cow, fraudulently extracting funds to the detriment of their colleagues. “Impatience, a focus on instant results, and immediate benefits distinguished not only members of factory and rural consumer societies, but also relatively wealthy strata of civil and bureaucratic cooperatives,” the authors of the book point out.

It was the clerks-managers (and not the board members of the companies) who determined the range of goods, purchasing conditions, set prices, selected personnel, and negotiated with suppliers. Clerk Zaremba recalled: “As a clerk, I will touch upon the issue of bonuses, bonuses and tips received by clerks of all ranks in many, many consumer societies. Bribery, as all these bonuses and bonuses should simply be called, has made a strong nest for itself in our midst... Receiving bribes from a well-known company, we try to bring and sell the goods of these particular companies, regardless of whether the goods are profitable for society, whether they are stale..." The same Zaremba admits that it was the clerks who were the main opponents of their companies' entry into MSPO - they did not give bribes in the union, and it was unprofitable for the clerks.

On the other hand, members of the board, especially of factory companies, were disdainful of hired workers. Their working day lasted 12-14 hours, or even more, but factory workers - members of cooperatives rejected requests to make their work easier. Because of this, conflicts arose. In 1908 (after the suppressed revolution of 1905, when the workers seemed to realize what solidarity means), the bakers of the cooperative at the Goujon factory went on strike. The board of the cooperative (the same workers) fired all the strikers. In the same year, a conflict arose between the board of the St. Petersburg Labor Union and the bakers. As Truzhenik magazine wrote, due to the fact that their class brothers, the members of the cooperative, did not fulfill the conditions of employment, “bakers found it possible to bake wood chips and other rubbish, even dead rats, in bread.”

The leaders of consumer cooperation tried to instill a culture of management and financial discipline by creating a single organization with common standards. The first attempt took place in Kharkov in 1869, but it was stopped by the tsarist government, which was suspicious of self-regulatory organizations. In 1897, the first congress of consumer societies of the Baltic provinces was held in Riga. In the same year, in Moscow, the Mutual Benefit society initiated the creation of the All-Russian Union. At the Nizhny Novgorod fair, 60 representatives of 32 cooperatives discussed the Regulations on Unions and the Normal Charter of Consumer Societies and sent these documents to the Committee of Ministers. The normal charter was approved, but the regulations were secretly rejected and lost in the offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But the cooperators outwitted the tsar: in 1898, the aforementioned MSPO was created, which secretly included many cooperatives and consumer unions from all over the empire (in 1917, the Bolsheviks renamed the MSPO to Tsentrosoyuz). It was not for nothing that the tsarist government resisted the unification of cooperators - already in 1905-1906, MSPO began to address political and economic demands and initiatives to the governors, the State Duma, and the Ministry of Finance. In 1906, the chairman of the union, Nikolai Gibner, left his post, whom the military department sent to work in Siberia - in a kind of exile for participating in the democratic movement.

Then the cooperative movement in Russia only degenerated. During the First World War, consumer societies became de facto distribution centers. In 1915, the tsarist government closed the MSPO out of fear that the cooperative movement would develop into a form of self-organization of the people. In 1917, the Bolsheviks took over the cooperative movement. At first MSPO was located in the Perevedenovka area, then in 1916 it bought a six-story house from the publisher Sytin on Maroseyka, and in 1918 Tsentrosoyuz received from the Bolsheviks Titov’s six-story house on Staraya Square, 4. But soon this house went to the Central Committee of the RCP (b), and Tsentrosoyuz moved to house no. 15 in Bolshoi Cherkassky Lane, where he was located until 1991. Since 1918, Titov's house has been the headquarters of the CPSU Central Committee; now the administration of the President of the Russian Federation is located there. On December 14, 1917, by decree on nationalization, the cooperative financial center - the Moscow People's Bank - was abolished. Moreover, including families, 92 million people, or 65% of the country’s population, used the services of consumer societies.

On December 11, 1918, the Central Union received an ultimatum demanding that two-thirds of the board consist of communists. The Central Union strongly condemned this idea as an attack on cooperative democracy. On April 3, 1919, the Council of People's Commissars introduced seven new members to the board of the Central Union - among them were Viktor Nogin, Otto Schmidt, Leonid Krasin. A year later, three legally elected members of the Central Union board were arrested and convicted, the rest were expelled. Lenin saw consumer cooperation in his own way - as labor communes, where peasants grow grain and send it to the city for the workers who produce seeders and winnowing machines for them.

The policy of war communism crushed consumer cooperation, but during the NEP years it was the cooperators who restored the country’s supply of goods
Photo: Centrosoyuz

Debt is like robbery

The leaders of the consumer cooperatives believed that war communism was a temporary phenomenon. And the moment came when the Central Union was very useful to the Bolsheviks.

The policy of war communism plunged the country into extreme poverty. The situation was aggravated by the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with the Germans, after which the former Entente allies introduced an economic blockade of Russia. Bread was issued on ration cards: the norm for workers was 400 g per day, for employees - 200 g, for "non-labor elements" (children and the elderly) - "ocmushka", 125 g. In December 1918, the Supreme Economic Council had to enter into an agreement with the Central Union on the purchase food abroad. The fact is that the Entente countries, where England played the leading role, did not recognize the Bolsheviks and refused to deal with them. Another thing is the Central Union, which was considered an independent organization, and even a participant in the international cooperative movement.

In January 1919, a delegation from the Central Union, led by Chairman of the Board Alexander Berkenheim, left for the United States to establish trade and obtain loans. This delegation never returned to Russia - people became aware of the beginning of repressions. However, it was she who managed to break the economic blockade.

Berkenheim's comrades began by opening an office of the Central Union in Stockholm on the way, and upon arrival, an office in the USA. In addition, they held negotiations with English Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French President Georges Clemenceau about restoring trade with the Central Union. They agreed. But Lenin insisted on linking the trade agreement with political recognition by the Council of People's Commissars. The Entente refused, and negotiations dragged on for a year and two months. Then the second delegation of the Central Union headed by Maxim Litvinov went to London. In April 1919, a group of functionaries consisting of Leonid Krasin, Viktor Nogin, Solomon Rozovsky, Lev Khinchuk stopped in Copenhagen and agreed on trade with a number of Italian cooperatives and Danish companies, as well as with the Swedish concern Nydqvist & Holm AB (a contract for 100 million Swedish crowns on the supply of locomotives and consumer goods). The implementation of all these agreements depended, however, on England.

London did not greet the “cooperators in civilian clothes” kindly - they knew that all members of the delegation, except Khinchuk, worked in the Council of People's Commissars. The British wanted to talk to Berkenheim and did not want to deal with Krasin (who soon replaced Litvinov). The negotiators are stuck in London in complete isolation. Krasin opened a representative office of the Central Union in London - ARCOS (All Russian Cooperative Society). And he sent instructions to the Central Union: to break into Europe with the help of smugglers.

Leonid Krasin was a unique character. Originally from Kurgan, he was a brilliant engineer and manager, and at the same time he dressed and behaved with European polish. “Krasin gives the impression of a man with an iron will. He is self-possessed, sincere, full of dignity, proud, self-confident and not vain. He has a scientific approach to events and people,” Claire Sheridan, a journalist, writer, sculptor and cousin, wrote in her diary Winston Churchill's sister.

In 1904, Krasin (aka Nikitich, aka Horse, aka Yuhanson, aka Winter) led the modernization of power plants in Orekhovo-Zuevo at the factory of Savva Morozov. And at the same time he charged him 2 thousand rubles. per month for the needs of the party. On May 13 (26), 1905, Savva Morozov was shot dead in a hotel room in Cannes. According to one version, Krasin was the killer. Subsequently, he successfully worked in the engineering field, while simultaneously conducting illegal activities: he was a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, organized expropriations in the interests of the revolution (the most famous raid was the Tiflis expropriation, when the raiders led by Kamo stole 250 thousand rubles), participated in the preparation Sveaborg uprising. At the same time, he conflicted with Lenin and did not enjoy much confidence among his party comrades due to his “bourgeois manners.” In 1908, he left politics, went to Italy, then joined the Siemens-Schuckert company, rose to deputy director of the Berlin branch, in 1913 became the general representative of the company in Russia, and after the outbreak of World War I continued to manage the nationalized Siemens enterprises.

And now, in 1920, Leonid Krasin from London tried to establish trade between the Soviets and Europe through illegal means. The Central Union followed his order: in December 1920, board member Shchepetov secretly arrived at the port of Batumi - it was not completely blocked by the British fleet. There he chartered the Italian ship Ancona, whose owners the Sacconi brothers secretly traded with Transcaucasia. On December 23, 1920, the Ancona sneaked through a minefield at night past English patrol ships to Novorossiysk. There she took on board astrakhan, carpets, corn grain, cement, tobacco, ropes and three Soviet citizens - the deputy chairman of the Central Union Kissin, who spoke perfect English, Shchepetov and his wife-secretary. The composition of the mission was agreed upon with Lenin, Chicherin and Krasin.

The ship sold cement in Constantinople, left part of the cargo in Naples, and on March 1, 1921, appeared at the mouth of the Thames. There was an unprecedented scandal, in the British press - headlines “Breaking the Blockade”, “Reds on the Thames”, “Bolsheviks at the Gates of Britain”. The ship was searched by the police, members of the mission were forbidden to appear even on the deck of the ship. But Krasin raised the British public in defense of the “rights of Russian cooperators,” and after three days of unrest, the government allowed the Ancona to approach the pier and sell the cargo. And on March 16, 1921, the first trade agreement was concluded between the RSFSR and Great Britain. The blockade was broken.

The Bolsheviks thanked the cooperators in their own way. The very next day, March 17, Lenin signed a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars on a state monopoly on foreign trade. The names of the mission participants have been erased from Soviet history. Many of them - Kissin, Khinchuk, Lezhaeva, Rozovsky and others - were shot in Stalin's camps. The country owes Leonid Krasin another epoch-making initiative - it was he who proposed mummifying Lenin and erecting his Mausoleum on Red Square. But two years later, Krasin himself died in London as a plenipotentiary at the age of 56. He was cremated there; the urn with his ashes rests in the Kremlin wall.

In the hungry post-revolutionary years, the canteens of the Moscow Consumer Society became especially popular
Photo: Centrosoyuz

Unbending consumer cooperation

The entire subsequent history of Soviet consumer cooperation is consistent strangulation. Yes, there was a short burst of activity during the NEP, when the Central Union exported goods to 17 countries (42.3% were supplied to England), with exports exceeding imports. By the end of the NEP, in 1930-1931, the share of consumer cooperation in the country's trade turnover amounted to almost 70%. But after the NEP, its trade channels turned into distribution points. At one time, the military section of the Central Union was headed by Marshal Semyon Budyonny. Consumer cooperation played an important role during the Great Patriotic War - for example, it established the local collection and production of food and consumer goods.

In 1960, the fishing cooperatives were liquidated and its enterprises were transferred to the state. This is over 114 thousand workshops and enterprises, where 1.8 million people worked. They produced 5.9% of the gross industrial output - up to 40% of all furniture, up to 70% of metal utensils, more than a third of outerwear, almost all children's toys. The industrial cooperation system included 100 design bureaus, 22 laboratories and two research institutes.

As a result, only consumer cooperation and folk crafts survived, and by the early 1990s, only consumer cooperation.

And in the world, cooperation continues to develop, sometimes acquiring outlandish forms. Cooperatives of football fans have emerged, owning shares in football clubs that are traded on stock exchanges (there are more than 40 such clubs); cooperatives that operate exclusively online, such as translator cooperatives. Finally, there are cooperatives for child care, to help the disabled, the elderly, the poor, the homeless, and drug addicts. For example, in Italy there are more than 2 thousand specialized cooperatives that take on 13% of the country’s expenses for the social sector and provide 6 thousand workers. places The volume of cooperation in China is enormous.

In Russia, the reforms of the 90s crippled consumer cooperation. In 1990, its share accounted for 25% of retail trade turnover, up to 50% of potato procurement, a third of vegetable purchases and bread baking. The decline in production in the system by the end of the 90s reached 90%. But after the default, an upswing began; in 2000, the trade turnover of agricultural cooperatives increased by 6.7% and continues to grow steadily, outpacing the average economic growth rate.

According to the Chairman of the Council of the Central Union, Evgeny Kuznetsov, in Soviet times, 25% of all retail sales in the country, as well as 80% of trade turnover in rural areas, passed through his organization. Today, Centrosoyuz serves 54 thousand settlements with a population of less than 100 people.

There are, however, a lot of problems. The system's stores located in hard-to-reach and remote places, as a rule, are planned to be unprofitable despite all their social significance. It is obvious that we need to look for new work patterns - with greater profitability and taking into account modern realities. Or take blanks - here, too, not everything is in order. “We are ready to take small volumes,” says Evgeny Kuznetsov. “But sometimes, in order to collect a ton of milk, you need to travel around 15 settlements, as a result, costs increase significantly. Moreover, under the USSR it was possible to guarantee price and sales. Now there is a problem with sales. There are regions where during the season a schoolchild can earn 1–2 thousand rubles a day from collecting wild plants. We are ready to invest in processing, but we need volumes of at least 10 tons of cranberries, not 100 kg. The population needs to be more active in collecting wild plants in good quantities.”

Action-packed cooperative – Money – Kommersant