Down at Kursk Station

Private enterprise is rather fiercely discouraged in Russia. Nevertheless, a thriving underground capitalism persists. It is carried on by daring entrepreneurs who--often with astounding ease--divert materials from government factories, turn out products in clandestine shops and sell to luxury-starved consumers on the black market. In 1961 Khrushchev decreed death as the penalty for such "economic crimes," and at least 163 accused violators have died before firing squads.

Last week another herd of defendants, 23 in all, faced a Moscow court --charged with having organized the biggest wheeler-dealer operation yet reported, a flourishing textile business that netted $3,300,000 in four years. The Russian press gave this account: one Bentsion Roifman, a public-health functionary in a Moscow workers' district, bribed his way into a job overseeing several physical therapy workshops for mental patients. Enlisting some aides, Roifman proceeded to convert the workshops to his own use. He brought into the scheme state factory executives from as far away as Leningrad and the Ukraine, and they shipped him 58 knitting machines--ostensibly for the rehabilitation of the mental patients. From a Moscow hosiery factory Businessman Roifman cadged a starting supply of 25 tons of waste thread; from collective sheep farms he found a way to import 50 tons of wool.

The operators parceled out piecework to fast-knitting cohorts in the capital's Pushkin Dry Goods Factory, even to patients in his mental institution. Before long, Roifman's enterprise involved 52 factories, workshops and collective farms, was turning out sweaters, shirts and kerchiefs. Business was so good that Roifman had to expand into rented basements. After that, production increased rapidly. His total output, 460 tons, was retailed clandestinely at Moscow's busy Kursk Railroad Station through the collusion of two stationmasters, and at street markets.

But alas, the empire collapsed when one of the alleged ringleaders, Shaya Shakerman, a widowed physician, began making overtures to the wife of a relative, and the latter told all to the secret police. To many Westerners, the resulting arrests had an anti-Semitic ring, for Jewish names were clearly involved. Protested Izvestia: "It is not Jews, Russians, Tartars or Ukrainians who will stand trial. 'Criminals will stand trial." In the courtroom last week, Roifman, Shakerman and three others--two members of the economic police and a men's wear factory official --were sentenced to be shot, their accomplices in capitalism to long prison terms.

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