“If you don’t take it out yourself, no one will take it out”: the Russians remembered survival in the nineties

Become Uncle Vasya

“In the early 1990s, there were a lot more cars per capita than in the Soviet years, and anyone who owns a car needs to service it,” says Mikhail Dolguntsov, a TV journalist who made money in car repairs for several years in the 90s. – Everything turned out somehow spontaneously: I was a student and just bought my first car for symbolic money – “Moskvich”, I learned to turn nuts, the neighbor guys, a little more experienced than me, also repaired “Moskvichs” in the same Teplostan yard … They started to turn nuts together, and then people began to approach, as they always approached “Uncle Vasya” in the Soviet years: they say, do not look at this or that? Feel, smell, as they say. So we started taking orders.

In those years, the car maintenance market looked like this: at the top of the “pyramid” were “dealer” service stations, such as VAZ on Varshavka or ZAZtekhoobsluzhivanie (yes, it still existed! And let thousands of Zaporozhets pass through it!) in Yasenevo. Below are private services that take on almost everything, but not too cheap and reliable (as a rule, the interlocutor of MK recalls, for some reason the Armenians organized such services). Finally, the yard and garage specialists were the most accessible – they worked primarily with simple and well-known Soviet models and did not undertake complex repairs (body work with welding, engine overhaul).

– We sometimes sorted out engines – the temptation is still great when a client comes to you and gives you good money, – says Dolguntsov. – Once a man came to the “BMW” – the old one, of course, the new ones were almost never seen then – and asked to capitalize the engine, offered $ 400 for the bulkhead. And then it was about 4 average monthly salaries. Of course, we said “cheers” and thought that we could do everything in a couple of weekends. They were transported, however, for a full two weeks – but still they were not at a loss, of course.

Professional education? Direct practice, with a rather meager library (Soviet manuals on Soviet cars). Tools? As a rule, old or even vintage ones (for example, captured German ones were valued), bought cheaply from garage neighbors. Clients? Their own people, “proletarians” from the southwest, owners of Zhiguli, Volga and Muscovites, who are not very versed in the device and do not like to wallow under the car.

The gradual decline of the era of yard services was also associated with this circumstance: there were less and less in the hands of ordinary “riders” of Soviet cars (“eights” – “nines” are already the top league), more and more, albeit old, but foreign cars, to which a different approach and other masters. But even earlier – in the year 1995 – “specific guys” visited the courtyard of the home-made craftsmen.

They arrived, they said: “Are you here, or something, repairing cars?” – “What are we, we’re here for ourselves, friends sometimes out of friendship …” – “Well, look, if you work by order, then you have to pay, who to bring in money – you know!” — and left. But since then somehow less and less we dared to take orders. So gradually things calmed down.

Interestingly, the other two “floors” of that system of car services – dealers and “Armenian” establishments – are still working, although, as a rule, they often change addresses: the renovation of industrial zones is a heartless thing. A new kind of services appeared – “club” ones, designed for fans of a particular brand, where almost equal relations were also established between the client and the master.

But one way or another, with one set of wrenches and enthusiasm, you will not enter this business – so as to earn a living. And not only because it was forbidden to repair cars in the yards (and there are fewer and fewer garages in the city), but also because it will no longer be possible to earn a monthly salary by overhauling the engine.

And now disco

Robert Melikyan ended up in Moscow as a teenager in 1993 – the events in Karabakh, poverty, in general, the history of very many Moscow Armenians. What to do at the age of 15 in a metropolis, when existing relatives are engaged in various kinds of trade? That’s right, to help them and gradually get into business. In the second year after my arrival, I was lucky to be on the “creative front”: to sell CDs with music, though not at the famous Gorbushka, but at the All-Russian Exhibition Center (that was the name of VDNKh then).

“I thought I listened to all the rock in my homeland,” Robert recalls. “It turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. During the first six months of work, I learned so many names, listened to so many bands – and, most importantly, I realized that it was simply impossible to listen to everything. But the most popular things – yes, of course, I knew by heart, since the buyers basically needed them.

Let’s say the full assortment of the tray is about a hundred albums (if you take with cassettes, which were then sold significantly more than CDs, and remove the repetitions – about one and a half hundred). Of these, the most popular were no more than thirty, the rest – for the wealth of choice, as well as for connoisseurs. Despite the fact that the profile of the tray where Robert worked was classic rock – from Elvis to Nirvana, there were enough albums in the “pop” category in the catalog.

“Only a fool would not have some Chris Rea or even Ace of Base when they are constantly asked,” explains the MK interlocutor. – If rock was, as it were, timeless, then pop music was clearly divided into generations: for those over 50, it was familiar to the USSR (not only Soviet, but also French and Italian). Who is middle-aged – along with the classics of rock, also disco. My peers are everything in the world, from Dune to Bad Boys Blue.

The main source of CDs in those years (Russian production had not yet been established) were factories in Poland: the whole assortment came from there, from academic classics to emerging rap. It’s funny, Robert recalls, that at that time buyers who had just tasted digital audio were chasing “three Ds” – so (DDD) were albums recorded, mixed and printed “digitally”. Whereas AAD – recorded and mixed in “analogue” – seemed second rate. Compare with the present times, when this circumstance is usually proud of!

The interlocutor of MK will not remember any conflicts with the “brotherhood” – according to him, most likely, relations with them were built by older relatives and comrades. But simple gopniks and thieves were present. “Sometimes you can’t keep track – and when there are a lot of buyers, 1-2 discs were dragged away,” Robert recalls. “I paid from my earnings, but where to go.” Cassettes – which, we repeat, were the majority – were not popular with crooks.

– There were a couple of unpleasant episodes when skinheads fell to “show” for rap albums and punks on sale, and at the same time by the nose, of course, – says the interlocutor of MK. – I had to fight, and, of course, I was not alone there – ours approached. In general, well, a normal life was considered – especially compared to what was going on at home. They didn’t shoot at me in Moscow, but there they didn’t shoot at me.

Prices for audio products were rewritten regardless of the date of receipt of the batch – that is, they were always “relevant”: after all, you have to buy new discs, but they already cost in a new way. In different years, this price was, of course, different – Robert no longer remembered the order of prices – but a CD has always cost about twice as much as an audio cassette.

– I left this job in 1998, when I entered the university, – says the interlocutor of MK, now a researcher at one of the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Well, after a couple of years, this whole era ended by itself. First, stalls and trays were pressed, all the sellers were driven to Gorbushka and a couple of other places. Then they began to fight especially hard against the “unlicensed”, the Polish press was practically gone by the beginning of the 2000s. Well, then the Internet killed everyone, but everyone already knows this.

To whom stones?

For many of the past 90s, this was the era of constant and distant – but not entirely voluntary and certainly not carefree – travel. The shuttles traveled to places rich in inexpensive clothes like China and Turkey in every possible way – by bus, train, plane, even ferry, and, well, in private cars too. And all because it is cheap to buy and then sell expensive – whatever one may say, the fastest way to earn money, and the speed of money turnover in those days was a very critical parameter.

“For many years I traveled as a sales representative of one of the jewelry companies in the regions,” says Victoria Aristova, who switched to this job from engineers at a defense research institute. – I can’t say that the work of a dream, but in general I rather liked it, and even the memories are completely “loaded”.

At the very beginning of the nineties, Victoria found herself in the position “if you don’t take it out, no one will take it out.” Two children who are not yet earning money (one is a student, the other is a schoolboy), a husband who is not an entrepreneur, who did not immediately “fit into the market” … Even the perestroika experience of the cooperative in home knitting somehow adapted to new realities, but did not pull on the source income: Turkish consumer goods outperformed expensive hand-made “one-gate”.

– Friends suggested trying to distribute jewelry – at first not jewelry, but expensive jewelry – for a commission. I got involved in the work, then I started working with jewelry, with semi-precious stones. The main share of sales was in the regions – moreover, oil and gas regions, such as Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug of the Tyumen Region. In fact, I traveled, and more than once, almost the entire country.

It is interesting that in the nineties, as Victoria recalls, the distribution of income between the capital and other regions seemed to be more even: there were enough of those who could afford expensive jewelry in the provinces. And the oil-bearing Nizhnevartovsk, Nefteyugansk and other cities lived, if you look from the point of view of an ordinary person, much more luxurious than Moscow.

– I come once to one of these cities, and they ask me: “Do you want to go to Maya Plisetskaya tonight?” I am like? Where?” “Well, he is performing with us today, come!” I come to the local Palace of Culture – large, good, built in the eighties – and indeed: Plisetskaya. I would never have been able to get into Moscow in my life, especially since by that time she had already left the stage. And they also tell me: stay for a couple of days, Patricia Kaas will come! In general, the oilmen lived well. Now, they say, life is worse than then.

Popular among the oil ladies (and their cavaliers, of course) were first of all win-win options: gold, diamonds, emeralds. What is easy, if anything, then turn into money is a habit. But it was much more profitable for the agent to sell not this “certainty” (its cost did not leave room for large fees), but beautiful ornaments made of ornamental stones: if you manage to persuade, charm the client (here it is a woman) – you will get more.

Wasn’t it scary to carry significant valuables right with you in your purse or suitcase? No, it’s not scary, says Victoria: firstly, you still have to fly, and secondly, incognito usually helped out (random people did not know what the “modest-looking aunt” was doing, who flies to another Salekhard with a suitcase). But there were also unpleasant moments – once, already at the beginning of the 2000s, a meeting with bandits still cost her to go to the hospital. As for the valuables, their company, from which Victoria traveled, had already insured by that time.

Everything ended somehow by itself – when the children not only grew up, but also made decent careers, and the family no longer needed money. So the case of Victoria is perhaps the only one in our selection that can be called a successful retraining: she successfully worked in this role until retirement age and felt quite comfortable in it.

Can the experience of the nineties be useful today? On the one hand, it seems that times are too different: the legislative overregulation of everything in the world now makes almost impossible all the “works” and “businesses” we have described. Without a lot of money and, preferably, administrative resources, trying to organize your business in the “material” sphere is a utopia.

But at the same time, the main thing remains: when a calm and measured career becomes impossible due to some global circumstances, a person can almost always find an opportunity, a way out, a way to first survive, and then get back on his feet. Unless, of course, the person himself is active.