![]() Where else would Russia get money? If the tsar couldn’t print it as needed, he’d have to take it from foreigners in exchange for Russia’s sovereignty. Since the people bore the cost of the tsar’s excessive money printing, and they lacked political representation, the “people’s ruble” should be convertible-to gold, silver, or something else-and the state should not issue money beyond this wealth. If money truly represented the nation’s wealth, as Nicholas I claimed, then the tsar should be prevented from destroying that wealth. Inevitably, a monarch succumbs to the temptation to generate revenue by printing more money, leading to inflation. Liberal economists and intellectuals in Russia took issue with this lack of monetary independence. There was no way to actually redeem the entire nation’s wealth under these conditions: Unlike the gold reserves in Europe’s central banks, which were independent from their state’s treasury, Russia’s bullion reserve-representing the bulk of its tangible wealth-was the only one in Europe directly controlled by the state. When Nicholas I reformed the system in 1839, replacing assignats with silver-based bills backed by the “entire patrimony of the state” rather than a mere personal promise, he intended to maintain this autocracy indeed, the state’s wealth was not nearly sufficient to provide this support, given that it only had sufficient silver to back up one-sixth of the rubles in circulation. ![]() At a time when the rest of Europe was demanding monetary accountability, Russia backed its currency’s value with its monarch’s “sublime power” rather than any material collateral. She vouched for assignats even amid inflation, and with no independent central bank to hold her accountable, their value depended on the sanctity of the sovereign’s word.Īssignats thus became Russia’s initial form of autocratic money, projecting Catherine’s absolute authority. Before long, the expanding Russian empire demanded more paper, and Catherine supplied it in excess of the state’s stock of metal-that is to say, on credit. Catherine the Great implored Russians to trust the state, and so made these bills exchangeable for copper and silver coins stored in Assignat Banks. When Russia first issued paper rubles in 1769, nobody considered these assignats to be real money. Whether that will also involve greater financial cooperation with other autocratic powers, including, as many anticipate, increased denomination of its trade and investment in China’s renminbi, depends on the Russian government’s conception of its own currency-and the related strength of its own autocracy. The ruble also emerges, amid political and financial crisis, as a potential instrument of Russian democracy-yet its history ultimately demonstrates how a currency can become a primary tool for creating and maintaining an autocracy.Īnd while Russia’s singular monetary history has earned its economy a “backward” reputation, better known for profiting from geopolitical chaos than sound policy, it has also made the country a pioneer, leading it in a direction that many autocracies are headed today-namely, toward greater isolation from the West’s financial ecosystem. ![]() A 200-year “biography of a currency,” the book positions the ruble as both an important part of imperial organization and an unexpected anchor of Soviet influence. Ekaterina Pravilova’s The Ruble: A Political History persuasively offers Russia’s currency as a case study in the entanglement of money and power, and in so doing, encourages us to understand what catalyzes these global trends. Societies have always created currencies with a political function in mind-but the qualities of a currency, in turn, can also shape politics, both domestic and global. ![]() And yet punditry inevitably misses some crucial context-context that only fine-grained case studies can provide. The Ruble: A Political History, Ekaterina Pravilova, Oxford University Press, 560 pp., $40, June 2023 The book cover for The Ruble: A Political History by Ekaterina Pravilova. ![]()
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