Fartsovka

Fartsovka (Russian: фарцовка) is a slang term for the black market profiteering, illegal in the Soviet Union, that consisted in resale of goods manufactured abroad, which were hard to find and inaccessible to an average Soviet citizen. Clothing and fashion accessories were the overwhelming majority of supply and demand for fartsovka. Also popular were audio media (vinyl records, cassette tapes, and reels), cosmetics, household items, and books. Fartsovka items, or the phenomenon itself, was generally called fartsa. The traders of this type were called fartsovshchiki.

==Etymology== The exact origin of the term fartsovka is uncertain, but one account suggests that it was derived from an archaic word from the Odessa dialect of Russian, "forets" (форец): a man who bought cheap items and sold them at dishonestly expensive prices.