At the end of the 1920s, the Soviet Union started industrialization with no gold and currency reserves. The government feverishly sought gold to pay the tremendous foreign debts acquired to purchase equipment, materials, and technologies abroad. State-run stores called Torgsin (1930-36), which sold food and goods to the Soviet people at inflated prices in exchange for their heirlooms – foreign currency, gold, silver, and diamonds, became an important source of revenues to finance industrialization and the major strategy of survival for people during the mass famine of 1932-33.  

Elena A. Osokina is  Professor of Russian History at the University of South Carolina. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at Moscow University, Russia (1987).  She has authored 5 books published in Russian, English, Italian and Chinese, and numerous articles published in the major journals in Russia, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Finland, and Italy. More specifically her research focuses on the impact that the Soviet industrialization of the 1930s had on everyday life, social hierarchy, transformation of the economy, and the nature of Stalinism.  The most recent book came out in 2021 by Cornell UP Stalin’s Quest for Gold. Also available in English: Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927–1941 (2001). Elena Osokina received two book prizes: the Makariev book prize and the Prosvetitel’  book prize (both in 2019).  She is a recipient of the fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Kennan Institute-Woodrow Wilson Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Hoover Institution Archives, Davis Center for Russian Studies (Harvard University), La Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris, France),  Aleksanteri Institute (Helsinki, Finland), and others.  Before coming to USC, Elena Osokina taught at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Oberlin College, and Missouri State University, and internationally at the Donaueschingen Academy (on the invitation of the Council of Europe) and Leuphana Universität Lüneburg (both in Germany).