Socio-economic prerequisites for the emergence of a shadow economy in the USSR during the “Khrushchev's thaw” (on the example of the BASSR)

The study analyzes the socio-economic factors that created the prerequisites for the emergence of a shadow economy in the USSR during the “Thaw” using the example of one of the country’s large regions - the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On the basis of published materials of the central and republican press, as well as documents of the National Archives of the Republic of Bashkortostan, the article examines manifestations of a wide range of trade fraud, theft, embezzlement, bribery, speculation and illegal private entrepreneurial activities. As a result, it is shown how the trends of the country’s shadow economy, which subsequently seized many of its industries, originated in a regional context. Conclusions are drawn that the main prerequisites for the emergence of a shadow economy in the USSR during the “Khrushchev Thaw” were the commodity deficiency of daily necessities in the context of rising cash incomes, resulting in speculation in industrial and food products; inadequate recruitment of personnel, causing mass theft of state and cooperative property; further bureaucratization of the management system, enabling the development of such negative factors as localism, corruption and bribery.