Word: caviar
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...together, two things seem certain: they will bicker vociferously among themselves, and then they will raise the price of their precious crude. That is precisely what happened at the OPEC oil ministers' 57th meeting last week at the El Aurassi hotel in Algiers. After lavish feasting on caviar and couscous, the oil ministers argued until 3 a.m. but then reached a compromise that allowed some of them to push the price of oil still higher. The 13 countries decided to set a price ceiling of $32 per bbl. on crude. For certain higher quality grades of oil, the price...
...Caviar and limousines for a Communist nobility...
These political leaders, along with other Soviet elitists, enjoy the use of country dachas, yachts and Black Sea vacation resorts. While ordinary Soviet citizens queue up for scarce consumer goods, members of what one Soviet journalist calls the "Communist nobility" shop in special stores for caviar, French cognac, Swiss chocolates and Japanese stereo sets. They patronize tailors, hairdressers and cleaners who serve them exclusively. Lesser privileges are enjoyed by thousands of middle-level managers, local party cadres and other important citizens...
Tyntareva and her customers were part of the Soviet Union's thriving underground economy. This involves more than just the familiar black marketeers, dealing in Levi's and ballpoint pens, icons and caviar, who greet Western visitors around the main tourist hotels. It is, in fact, a second economy, parallel to the official state-controlled one. In a thriving permanent network, illegal and quasi-legal entrepreneurs, speculators and thieves sell hard-to-get goods and services to workers, peasants and even state officials...
...illegal Soviet economy. "It is an extremely corrupt society where graft and bribery of officials is enormously widespread and where stealing on the job is commonplace and far more sophisticated than crude break-ins or thefts at state warehouses." One of the biggest frauds of the 1970s was the caviar caper, in which officials of the Soviet Ministry of Fisheries shipped expensive black caviar abroad in large cans marked "smoked herring." Western firms cooperating in the fraud repacked and resold the caviar. They put the Soviet conspirators' share of the profits into Swiss bank accounts. The swindle is still...