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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 114246, member: 25&quot;]<i>if the production cost changed, the next batch would be priced and marked accordingly...</i></p><p><br /></p><p>Probably not. More likely they would send the production manager to clean toilets in a tractor factory in Novy Sibersk. The system depended on all input and output prices being controlled.</p><p><br /></p><p>One way of doing this was to lie about your finances. Many Soviet era enterprises had accounts that were largely works of fiction. Other ways were to degrade the product or fail to pay the workers. It is really not surprising it all fell apart&nbsp; so fast when it did.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some raw material producers were in fact selling into the system well below market prices. It is not surprising that when these state emterprises were sold off after the Soviet era, the commisars who bought then for a fraction of their value in world prices suddenly became the Russian billionaires we know and love today. </p><p><br /></p><p>It is also not surprising that when you have had 50 years of trading for profit being a criminal activity, many of the new traders were former criminals and the ones that did best from it were the former biggest criminals.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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