 "gambling industry, Online gambling, gaming industry")
In the 1930s, contract bridge maven Ely Culbertson, who also owned a playing card manufacturing business, went on a tour of the Soviet Union. He was told that sales of cards in the USSR were down 40 per cent year-on-year, and the commissars hoped sales would fall by at least 20 per cent annually until they dropped to zero.
When he asked why, it was explained that Comrade Stalin wished to eradicate gambling and, therefore, shut down all card games. But it had been discovered that if local cards were unavailable, Russians would play with smuggled Swedish ones. Hence, the
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