"Sell shares? They've started selling shares? Should we buy?"
"You think they'll sell to you just because you want to buy? From the sound of it, there's something fishy going on."
"Damn, it's only been a few days since they changed dynasties! They're selling off Grandpa's fields without a pang of heartache!"
"Shh. Got any cigarettes? I'll go sound some people out."
"There's liquor in the trunk, but they're at work right now! Would that be appropriate?"
"More than appropriate. I'll grab a few bottles first and dig up some intelligence."
"."
The moment Li Ye and the others entered the Kamaz Automobile Plant, they ran into a minor snag. The reception staff questioned them bluntly: "What assistance can you provide us?" Back home, that would have been an extremely undignified thing to do.
Fortunately, these Big-Hair people were very straightforward. Sun Xianjin and the others used a few tricks and discreetly asked around, quickly learning the people's "hardships."
It turned out that when Gorbachev had begun reforming things several years earlier, calls for collective worker shareholding had already emerged. After Soviet Russia collapsed, those calls swiftly became reality.
Now, the workers at the Kamaz Automobile Plant all held more or less some shares in their own workplace.
It was actually similar to the "pooled-fund shares" that later appeared back home. The difference was that some domestic units required workers to spend their own money buying shares in their own workplace, while the Kamaz Automobile Plant did not. Shares were distributed directly according to seniority and position.
Then people began waving cash around and buying up the shares held by workers.
That left the workers caught between advancing and retreating.
Shares sounded nice enough—if you held shares in your workplace, you were one of its owners and shared its profits.