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Comment by Artlav | Hacker News Reader

And this was just the first in the long line of hoaxes that included the world's largest pyramid (Ponzi?) scheme and legal homeopatics, which filled the faith vacuum left followed the dissolution of the union.

People had no clue that a TV can lie about "X happened" (rather than "X didn't happen"), what else you can do with money besides earn, buy and sell, and so on.

It was such a rich scam market.

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It was not the first. It was after Allan Chumak made it to the TV. And after lots of other absurdity like teachings of Helena Roerich was thrown in to blow Soviet people's minds. Actually Kuryokhin was making fun of all of this, it's rather a parody than a genuine hoax.

Yep, should have said "one of the first". I was a kid during these times, so i don't quite remember the precise sequences, only that the onslaught worked kind of like a BS vaccine for the younger generation.

What else can you do with money. Save, invest?

Change them to US$ or Deutschmarks, invest them into all sorts of stock that were popping up - everyone got a one-time voucher with a nominal price of 10₽ that could have been used to privatize some property or could be used to buy stock in one or the other "company", most of which were pyramid schemes.

Then debt, loans, bank accounts.

Saving in a bank vs saving under a pillow (former burned up in 1998, latter burned up in 1991).

Even more, it was now legal to sell things at a profit, so you could earn money in more than two ways (job or steal) now.

Things like that - the entire "market economics" was black magic to most.

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