Shuttle traders (russian: челноки, lit=shuttles, translit=chelnoki; ) were people engaged in the practice of shuttle trading in late
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
and
post-soviet states
The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...
in which traders shuttle backwards and forwards in and out of the country buying goods and then selling them within the country. Originated during the ''
perestroika
''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wit ...
'' times, it extended well beyond time of the
collapse of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
.
The
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
defines shuttle trade as "the activity in which individual entrepreneurs buy goods abroad and import them for resale in street markets or small shops. Often the goods are imported without full declaration in order to avoid import duties."
See also
*
Bag people
Bag people (russian: мешочники, ''meshochniks'', or "people with bags") is a term in Russian and other Slavic languages that refers to people doing small trade for personal profit, recognizable by their large sacks.
Some of them were p ...
External links
Jamestown.org articleOECD ''Glossary of Statistical Terms'' definition* Zabyelina, Y. (2012).
Costs and Benefits of Informal Economy: Shuttle Trade and Crime at Cherkizovsky Market” ''Global Crime'', Volume 13, No. 2, pp. 95-108.
Economy of Russia
Second economy of the Soviet Union
References
{{econ-stub