The tolkachs ( rus, толкачи, p=təlkɐˈt͡ɕi, ''pushers'') emerged in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

as employees of enterprises whose role was to use informal connections to enable production managers to meet or manipulate targeted outputs imposed by the central economic plan. They evolved in the context of the various Five Year Plans helping them to work by violating their core principles: i.e. as success was determined by meeting the targets, using persuasion to have targets reduced was a means of achieving success. The tolkachs were premier practitioners of '' blat'', a contemporaneous Russian term to describe the procurement of favours. By 1937 the tolkachs had come to occupy a key position mediating between the enterprises and the

commissar Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English transliteration of the Russian (''komissar''), which means ' commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the political commissars of Soviet and ...

iat.

References

Second economy of the Soviet Union {{USSR-stub