In the Soviet Union during this period, there happened to be a very strange phenomenon - there was a shortage of goods, the store shelves were empty, and no matter what was bought, in addition to paying, it was necessary to have a "purchase ticket" issued by the civil department. In short, in a word, it is that the common people have money but cannot buy things, and large sums of rubles have no value except in banks. And the only thing they know about the people who run the border trade is that it is easy and profitable to do business with Lao Maozi. Most of them have no cultural background, and some of them only need to speak a few simple words in Russian, such as "Hala Shao" (good), "Oqin Hara Shao" (very good), "Dallas Vijay" (hello), "Davalis" (comrade), etc., and then count their fingers. Those old hairy people are very generous, so generous that they are stupid, and they will be satisfied to spend forty or fifty rubles to buy an inferior down jacket that is not worth twenty or thirty dollars in China; They are willing to take out thousands of rubles at a time and buy the whole pork you just put on the shelf; They will compete for a box of canned fish, and they will fight each other for their heads.

Relying on the mountains and mountains, relying on the water and draught, then relying on the border, it is naturally self-evident, and the shrewd Chinese people have begun border trade smuggling activities.

Compared with their small business of running border trade on the border, Ye Laosi can be said to be generous, but he also has a weakness, that is, his identity is very sensitive. had to get a fake passport, fake identity, and also lost his adolescent rebellion, came into contact with many people, mixed in the three religions and nine streams, full of gentlemen, cynicism, and contaminated with the atmosphere of gangsters, which made Ye Laosi cry and laugh, the temperament of the children of the family and several years of military service career were covered up, otherwise it might have been heroic at the beginning.

As we all know, the more countries prohibit the sale of goods without permission. The higher the profit, the more this will not change at any time. The Soviet Union is located in the far north, tobacco and alcohol have always been indispensable consumer goods in the life of the Soviet Union, and the national policy strictly restricts the sale of tobacco, but it cannot prohibit private trade, so contraband has become the only way for smokers to relieve their addiction to smoking.

On the black market in the Soviet Union, for example, a constant ounce (international standard unit of weight: one ounce = 28.350 grams) of medium tobacco cost between 80 and 150 roubles. In China, if anyone dares to sell ordinary tobacco for 1,200 yuan and tens of grams, it is estimated that they will be beaten to death. As for finished cigarette rolls, the price was even higher on the black market in the USSR. During this period, the largest number of cigarettes were sold on the black market in the Soviet Far East. Basically, they are all from China, and the domestic two-cent-a-pack "Da Qianmen" and "Dafu Zi" have a black market price of 20 rubles; The black market prices of "Beidaihe", "Evergrande" and "Shanhaiguan" for one dollar and one pack range from 120 rubles to 150 rubles; Two five-day packs of "Ashima" and "Five Golden Flowers" range from 400 to 470 rubles on the black market. As for the foreign-made "Sanwu", "Hilton", and "Marlboro", there is no fixed price on the black market, because there is no market, and even if someone has the goods, they do not dare to sell them on the black market -- smuggling Western cigarettes. It's not a matter of fines if you get caught.

Ye Laosi first smuggled tobacco, alcohol and civilian light industrial products, which he did not have to worry about being investigated by his own people in China, because he turned a blind eye to it, and all he had to do was to spread out the route on the Soviet side, and then it was completely unimpeded. When it first started. Ye Laosi is not so ambitious, and for the sake of long-term interests, he is still more cautious in his actions, after all, the Soviet regime is still there. No matter what, he is on other people's territory, but as time goes by, his ambition grows bigger and bigger, and his courage grows bigger and bigger.

With the expansion of Ye Laosi's ambitions, his perception of the whole life feels that this is a game on the table, since he has entered this game, then there is no day to exit, anyone who wants to win in this game, must continue to win, continue to increase the stakes, until one day he becomes a banker.

Take the money to spread out the channel, dare to do anything, as long as you pay the starting price. Ye Laosi came in with a purpose, and he didn't dare to forget his original intention. That is, to approach the military of the USSR for what he needed.

However, he didn't take him to win over the corrosive, and the Soviet GIs were really poor and came to the door themselves. This also allowed Ye Laosi to clearly see how serious the corruption in the military was, and to know the extent of corruption in the entire Soviet Union at a glance.

It was not easy to serve as a soldier in the Soviet Union these years, not only was the salary pitifully low, but also often in arrears, and the large-scale corruption in the Soviet army was not without cause. For an army that is about to become fully corrupt, it is most important to be able to get the money, to get the most money in the shortest possible time, regardless of the origin of the money.

Have you ever seen army smuggling? The scene when Ye Laosi saw the smuggling of the entire division for the first time was really spectacular, it turned out to be carried out secretly, and it was completely made public this year.

The Kremlin's "mainstream" approach of comprehensively negating the Soviet Union's decades-long construction achievements, abandoning Marxism-Leninism, and leaning toward the West has led to confusion in the thinking of the Soviet leadership and the dissatisfaction of the hard-line forces of the "traditional" military. In order to force the Kremlin to back down, the traditionalist military forces began to hollow out the leadership of the Central Committee, and the Soviet Central Committee lost its control over the army, which led to the expansion of the authority of the local military districts. On the other hand, in order to force the "traditionalist" to back down, the Kremlin has tightened its military spending and blocked the military's financial allocations, thus causing financial difficulties in the local military districts and making it impossible to sustain military spending, which has become the most direct cause of corruption in the military. An army with relatively independent authority, but lacking military spending, is terrible, so to a certain extent, the collusion of military and business, wanton corruption, this is already the best choice, at least it is much better than the army riots, smashing, looting, and burning.

In March of this year, the situation in Moscow deteriorated sharply, and the struggle for power between the three factions entered a white-hot level, and at the just-concluded extraordinary session of the People's Congress of the Russian Federation, the "radicals" openly provoked a mass march of 100,000 people in Moscow in defiance of the Kremlin's ban to demand the dissolution of the People's Congress and the Supreme Soviet. The outbreak of this incident completely shook the foundation of the central and local governments of the Soviet Union, and caused panic in all parts of the Soviet Union, and the governments of the states and cities far away on the border were no exception. Nearly every dignitary in the government knows that the time has come to "stand in line." But then again, the Far East's proximity to our borders is not the same as the rest of the Soviet interior, this is the frontier, the place where the army is most powerful, and where the guns in the hands of the GIs are far more powerful than Moscow's policy regulations, so the local government compromises with the local garrisons.

Immediately afterwards, a series of major events occurred in Moscow that were enough to shake the entire Soviet Union, and the occurrence of these events put everyone in danger to the leaders of the Soviet army sitting in the Far East. There is no doubt that these high-ranking generals are more aware of the changes of the world than ordinary people in the country, and the continuous demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people in Moscow have made them sensitive to the fact that the current Soviet regime is in danger. The repeated compromises and concessions of the so-called "mainstream" and "traditionalist" factions in the top echelons of the government to the "democratic program faction" have obviously intensified the sense of crisis among these generals, and they have unwittingly begun to envelop the minds of various military departments with a desire to protect themselves and make a large sum of money in order to plan for the future.

As a soldier, it is his duty to protect his family and defend the country, which is not bad at all, but soldiers also have family members, and everyone has to eat and support their families, and people say that "raising soldiers for a thousand days, and using soldiers for a while", it is obvious that this soldier is to be raised, "only let the horses run, not let the horses eat grass", this horse will also rebel, not to mention that the Far Eastern Military Region is subordinate to hundreds of thousands of soldiers with weapons in hand.

However, in the face of the delay in funding from the Ministry of National Defense, the heads of the major military regions have no choice. Therefore, in desperation, everyone followed the example of stationing troops in various parts of Eastern Europe and issued an order to the commanders of their units at all levels -- "raise their own salaries as much as possible." Once they opened their mouths, they could not hold back.

Of course, from the perspective of the entire Soviet Union, there was no way to solve the problem of arrears of salaries for the troops, and in the face of the financial deficit, it was difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice.

As the saying goes, "Rely on the mountains to eat the mountains, rely on the water to eat the water." "What can this army live by? There is no doubt that it is smuggling and arms trafficking.

At that time, Ye Laosi hesitated for a moment, and finally gritted his teeth, damn it, why don't you do it. At first, it was a small fight on the border of Eastern Europe, and Eastern Europe was the first to be turbulent, so all Western forces continued to infiltrate. However, just this year, the entire territory of the Soviet Union was in turmoil, and the Far East was far from our border, so there was no reason to let go of this piece of fat, so he started smuggling arms.

At the beginning of this year, the financial difficulties of the Soviet government finally broke out in full force, and the ensuing full-scale corruption of the army finally came to the fore. For those ignorant people in the Soviet Union who advocate Western-style democracy and clamor for reform and reform all day long, the disaster they have caused is about to break out in full force, and for guys with ulterior motives like Ye Laosi, a new golden age has shown the dawn.

There are two most profitable things in this world, one is drugs, the other is the smuggling of arms, of course, the good things are kept for themselves, the others are sold, arms smuggling is not only guns, you can resell planes, tanks, artillery, missiles and even nuclear materials. (To be continued.) )