Russia's Cashless Economy

"Having failed to pay its workers any cash wages for 13 months, the Akhtuba
factory in Volgograd decided to pay them for February in kind.  Unfortunately
for the workers, the kind of product Akhtuba had to hand was "the Adam", a
rubber dildo, into the making of which the firm had diversified in 1993 when
it ran out of customers for its marine navigation equipment.  Workers who
tried to sell their Adams to the local sex shop found out in ten minutes what
it had taken their superiors four years to twig: that the market had moved on
to electric vibrators, and inert dildos were unsalable even in Volgograd.

"The Akhtuba case ranks, for the moment, as the most bizarre payment-in-kind
story to have emerged from Russia's benighted labor market, displacing
January's tale of Siberian workers who were paid in coffins and the plight of
workers in another Volgograd factory who were paid last year in bras."

                                                The Economist, March 15th 1997