The «vouchers» («ваучеры») Zhorik wants to trade in were privatization checks, issued to every Russian citizen starting in October 1992 as part of Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais’s mass privatization program: each voucher, with a nominal face value of 10,000 rubles, could be exchanged for shares in a formerly state-owned enterprise, sold outright, or pooled into investment funds. In theory it was meant to turn every citizen into a shareholder in the new market economy; in practice, most people, uncertain of the vouchers’ real worth and desperate for cash, sold them for a fraction of face value to speculators, fund operators, and outright con artists who then used the pooled certificates to gain control of valuable factories and enterprises for a pittance. By mid-1993, when this scene takes place, voucher trading was already one of the fastest, least regulated ways to make (or fake) real money in Russia — exactly the kind of ground floor Zhorik wants in on.