Torgsin — Season 1, Episode 1: Episode 1
Crime, Drama • 45 min • 1 season, 8 episodes
Episode synopsis
It's 1934. Lida Sokolskaya, who is brilliantly speaking several foreign languages, moves with her brother Aleksey, an employee of the Academy of Sciences, a specialist in precious stones, from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Lida almost does not remember anything about her childhood and knows about it only from the stories of her brother. During the move, Lida finds a precious antique pendant in the things of her deceased father. Meanwhile, bandits Girya and Chinarik are scouring the city in search of an emerald jewelry collection. In the center of Moscow life is Torgsin. Torgsin's director, Viktor Serebrov, is a former officer. The dark history of the distant past prevents him from returning to the service.
About Torgsin
It's 1934. The USSR lives brightly. The famine of 1932-33 is already over. The era of the Great Terror has not yet begun. And no one can even imagine a war approaching. It is urgent to buy equipment abroad but where to get gold and currency for industrialization? For these purposes throughout the country work Torgsins - shops for trade with foreigners - oases of prosperity and abundance, which Soviet people have not seen since pre-revolutionary times. In exchange for gold, precious stones, antiquities or currency, wealthy Soviet citizens can buy here delicacies and inaccessible imported goods. The poor come for sweets and cakes for the holiday. And the "disenfranchised", classed in the bourgeois class and deprived of food cards, carry the last rings and earrings to the Torgsin, in order not to die of hunger.