292 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
liquidation of Torgsin had not altered in the slightest the system
of exchange operating in the case of remittances sent to the
distressed in Russia. Here we had before us again one of those
clever, psychologically well-thought-out moves of Moscow,
whose aim it is, by the change or complete abolition of the
name of a department greatly discredited abroad, to give the
impression that the department itself has ceased to exist. (One
has only to recall the various designations of the Soviet secret
police—Cheka, Ogpu, Narkomvnudel, etc.—which, in spite
of the change of name, remains ever the same.) Simultaneously
with the announcement of the liquidation of Torgsin there
appeared in the press of various countries, even in the Russian
emigre press of Paris (Vozrejdenie of December 14, 1935) the
advertisement of different banks which undertake the trans-
mission of remittances from the public to relatives and friends
in Russia. So that the system remains fundamentally the same,
except that the Soviet representative abroad, contrary to his
former practice, from now on will demand that his clients send
their remittances in Soviet instead of in foreign currency. This
means that anyone who hitherto has sent remittances in dollars,
pounds, francs, etc., now carries through this transaction in
Soviet roubles at the rate arbitrarily fixed by Moscow. It is
obvious from this that the most important result of the liquida-
tion of Torgsin is a substantial increase in the cost of the
operation to senders of help, and a correspondingly increased
profit to Moscow.
As a result of these developments, culminating in a direct
threat to all colonists who received Torgsin supplies or any
other kind of help from Germany, the German Government,
on March 15, 1935, took a drastic step to check the sending
of help from Germany to the Soviet Union. The Reichsbank
issued a notice referring to the persecution, imprisonment and
banishment of the recipients of supplies through the Torgsin,
and announcing that it would no longer give the senders of
these remittances the usual authorizations to send German