How the meme about the “chipmunk people” is connected with the safety of bank deposits of Russians

Chipmunks mostly live in forests, they are arboreal animals, living in their burrows under trees. The chipmunk does not look for easy ways and prefers places littered with windfall and deadwood, along the banks of rivers and streams. To make it harder to get.

In the dwelling of an earthen squirrel, in addition to rooms, there are always one or two large closets and one or two toilets. In winter, as usual, chipmunks hibernate, and wait out rainy weather in burrows. There, using large cheek pouches, they drag supplies.

Chipmunk cubs live in parental nests for quite a long time and begin to go outside already grown up. A chipmunk is not that afraid of a person, but communication with him is not welcome.

Pantry animals are filled with wheat, oats, buckwheat, flax, sunflower, nuts, apples, mushrooms. The number of reserves in the hole, and chipmunks usually have several of them, reaches 6 kg or more. It is not surprising that chipmunks have many enemies, mainly small predatory animals and birds, but the number one enemy is bears, who hunt not for the chipmunks themselves or their holes, but for supplies.

Doesn’t it remind you of anything?

In Russia, chipmunks live mainly in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East, so oral folk art about them is found among the Asian peoples of the country: Altaians, Evenks, Nanais. In all fairy tales, anonymous authors, extolling the economic qualities of chipmunks, try to reconcile the animals with their main enemy, the bear.

Altai storytellers inform that chipmunks (people) many times saved bears (rulers of the forest) from starvation in hard times, and those in “gratitude” tried to stroke their backs with their fingers, after which the chipmunks appeared and left five characteristic brown-black marks . All matches with the logo of the ruling party hereinafter are random.

As they say in an Evenk fairy tale, having found the supplies of a chipmunk, the bear pounced on the food and immediately ate everything. Then he stroked the back of the animal with his paw and praised him: “You are a small animal, but you fed me, an old man.” The chipmunk has five stripes on its back. Since then, all chipmunks have five black stripes on their backs.

Although it was hardly gratitude. Rather, the bears tried to mark them – they say, their own, but they slipped away.

In general, the bears liked that the chipmunks always have hidden supplies, which only the animals themselves know about. However, all bearish attempts to find caches on their own, as a rule, ended in failure. “A chipmunk is a diligent owner,” they say in Altai. “He stocks up on nuts for three years ahead.” “Wait, wait, wait! the bear said to himself. “We need to find his hole, he has bins and in the spring they are not empty.”

No, what is on the surface is sweet berries, pine nuts, edible mushrooms, and so on. – this is all clear, but what else? Treasures, stash, unaccounted for investments – that’s what the bear rulers are interested in. What to do: clubfoot cannot live honestly – these are the laws of the forest.

Having devastated the chipmunk reserves, the bears in fairy tales, at least every time, pretended to be nobility: “Thank you! Let your bins not be empty. You are so kind, always be happy. Let me shake your honest paw from the bottom of my heart!”

Does it remind you of anything again?

There are a lot of bears in the forest, there are not enough Chipmunk supplies for everyone. Therefore, a Russian person has always turned to such a type of property preservation as treasures. For many centuries, professional treasure hunters and just random people (builders, public utilities, summer residents) find, first of all, in the ground, caches of coins, precious utensils, jewelry dated from various historical eras.

The land for a Russian person has always, at least until monastic deposits appeared (public banking institutions were established in the 1860s), was a kind of bank cell. As the Russian economist Iosif Kulisher wrote, people, “carefully burying their property near the house or on the banks of the river, made a secret sign – they laid a stone or planted a tree and tore off their treasure along them. But in the event of their death, their “unrequited banker” forever kept the secret entrusted to him.

The Russian people did not get rid of this habit even in the 20th century. In the late 1990s, the author of these lines accidentally discovered a bag of silver coins hidden behind the battery of a house built in 1914, the most valuable of which was a silver ruble of 1818.

Over time, people began to pool capital, creating a parallel financial system. Yes, yes, we are talking about common funds (informal insurance funds), but not about thieves, but primarily about Old Believers.

When, in the middle of the 19th century, the leader of the Bespopovsky Preobrazhensky almshouse, Semyon Kuzmin, was arrested, and the local prayer house was closed, money (common fund) was found in large quantities under the floorboards.

Without a doubt, it was a common fund of Preobrazhensky bespopov consent. The obshchak, to which the state had nothing to do, but considered it possible to profit from it. And not only to them, but also to other property of the bespopovtsy.

Chipmunks have tried and are trying many times to play honestly with the bears, but every time it turns out – in one state tune.

One of the first steps of the young Soviet government was the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of December 14, 1917 “On the nationalization of banks.” However, the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee “On the revision of steel boxes in banks” signed on the same day, which meant the confiscation of valuables from bank cells in credit institutions, is much less known.

As the Soviet economist Zakhary Atlas wrote, “the nationalization of the banks deprived the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie of its financial centers and handed over to the proletariat a powerful means of control over production and circulation … in Moscow alone, as a result of cutting 22,000 safes, gold was found for 300,000 rubles, silver for 150 000 rub. and 450 million rubles. valuable papers”.

Yes, yes, deprived, handed over, found. On average, as much as 13.6 rubles in gold and as much as 6.8 rubles in silver per cell. For comparison: Russia’s gold reserves at the time of the October Revolution amounted to 1.3 billion rubles. We will keep silent about securities: by that time, enterprises had already been nationalized.

During the monetary reform of 1947, the deposits of individuals in the State Bank amounted to 3210 million rubles. and were discounted by 640 million rubles. Moreover, the deposits of the most prosperous chipmunks suffered: deposits of 3,001–10,000 rubles. were discounted by 237 million rubles, and deposits from 10,001 rubles. – by 403 million rubles. At the same time, a fixed deadline for applying for an exchange was set, which is why the heirs of the missing and dead Red Army soldiers lost tens of millions of rubles.

Under the curve of Khrushchev’s denomination of 1:10 in 1961, the only winners were those chipmunks who kept their savings in coins. Coins for a long time went on a par with new kopecks and five-kopeck pieces.

I don’t even want to remember about freezing deposits in Sberbank and Gosstrakh. Then the bears grumbled 318 billion rubles. in Sberbank and 42 billion rubles. in the State Insurance.

The fact that little chipmunks have no confidence in huge bears is obvious. As well as the fact that in Russia the earth is full of rumors. In particular, about the upcoming denomination, approximately 1:100, so that the dollar would cost “as it once did” 60 kopecks. It is not for nothing that the deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Sergei Belov, recently announced the resumption of printing banknotes of five and ten rubles at the end of this year.

Where should the poor chipmunk go? Probably nowhere. Unless in a dwelling, which, as we have already found out, bears are not interested. They need our supplies, stash, and gutting apartments, depriving the animals of shelter, is not included in the plans of the authorities.

But what is most interesting, the chipmunks will survive again, although they will again come out of another hassle with a battered bear. And with all the same five marks on the back.