Scientists are well aware: sometimes small, almost imperceptible, seemingly gizmos, can tell "about time and about themselves" much more than giant buildings or large-scale personalities. The Russian kopeck, which has been paid for by everything in the world for almost 500 years, is just one of such items.
People should not be a great loss
In 1535, Elena Glinskaya, being regent with her young son Ivan (the future Grozny), carried out a monetary reform. In truth, this event happened not so much because of her political sagacity, but out of necessity: in Russia at that time there was complete monetary confusion. The Russian state became unified, but each principality continued, from old memory, to consider itself an independent land with its own appanage power and its own finances.
Elena Glinskaya was distinguished not only by her intelligence, but also by her beauty.
In 1535, Elena Glinskaya, being regent with her young son Ivan (the future Grozny), carried out a monetary reform. In truth, this event happened not so much because of her political sagacity, but out of necessity: in Russia at that time there was complete monetary confusion. The Russian state became unified, but each principality continued, from old memory, to consider itself an independent land with its own appanage power and its own finances.
Every land minted coins of arbitrary weight, size and appearance. Moreover, no money was withdrawn from circulation by the central government, everyone was in circulation, and therefore it was absolutely impossible to establish the exact parameters of the state currency. But the excessive independence of appanages was only half of the problem.
The second trouble was that the coins in circulation were trying to "spoil" a variety of swindlers. The coins were cut to reduce their actual value, or they were melted down by adding various cheap metals. And although the counterfeiters were severely punished, “they whipped their hands and poured tin down their throats,” this did not stop anyone.
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The only method of dealing with “tainted money” was to identify counterfeits right in the bargaining process. Knowledgeable people determined the suitability of money "for a tooth", since teeth left a mark on gold and silver. Sometimes coins were checked "for sound" - when hitting a stone, gold and silver sounded loud, and copper was muffler. However, all these methods gave only an approximate result, and often trading people suffered large losses from "tainted money".
Lance denga
With the beginning of the reform, the circulation of circumcised and counterfeit money was prohibited. And in Novgorod, they began minting new silver coins, called "kopeck". Here is what the chronicler wrote about this: "Prince are great Ivan Vasilyevich, make the banner on the dengas, the prince are great on horseback, and having a spear in his hand, hence the nickname" spear money. " A little later, in Moscow, they began to mint money half as easy as Novgorod kopecks. They depicted a rider with a saber, so in everyday life such coins were called "saber" or "Muscovite". The smallest small change was a half-piece, the cost of which was equal to a quarter of a penny or half of a saber, on its front side a bird was depicted. The denominations in numbers were not put on the coins; they had to be distinguished by their images, which undoubtedly facilitated the calculations for illiterate Russians.
A penny of Ivan the Terrible.
It should be noted that the purchasing power of "kopeck money" in the 16th century was quite high. A pood of rye cost 5 kopecks, an ax - 7 kopecks, a castle from 5 to 10 kopecks. But the clothes were relatively expensive: a simple sermyaga cost from 20 to 40 kopecks.
The decimal account, introduced simultaneously with the new money, also greatly simplified financial matters. From now on, one Russian ruble amounted to 100 kopecks or 200 Muscovites or 400 polushki. The ruble itself, however, was not yet minted at that time; it served as a conventional unit in calculations and setting prices. And for the next 70 years, the Russian state was provided with a coin with high accuracy in weight and size - the pre-reform discord came to an end. It is interesting that with the introduction of the decimal system of the monetary account, Russia was centuries ahead of enlightened Europe - in France, for example, centime as one hundredth of a franc appeared only in 1795.
From silver to copper
Time of Troubles, wars with Poland and Lithuania severely undermined the Russian economy. As a result, by the middle of the 17th century, the weight of the penny dropped noticeably, the purchasing power fell, and the state, in addition, introduced copper money into circulation. In just a few years, their market price dropped by more than 15 times, and the value of goods skyrocketed.
The Copper Riot was effective.
Moreover, taxes to the state treasury at this time continued to be levied in silver, although copper money prevailed in circulation. The peasants stopped bringing food to the markets, because there they paid for them with worthless copper pennies. Famine began in the cities, and after the famine, popular discontent began to grow, which soon resulted in the infamous Copper Riot.
The revolt was being prepared in advance, in Moscow there were a lot of "anonymous lists", where the boyars and merchants were accused of collusion with the Poles and the ruin of the country, the tsar called to reduce exorbitant taxes and abolish copper money. A crowd of ten thousand went to Kolomenskoye to see Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, demanding that several boyars be handed over for reprisals. The insurgents behaved so boldly and decisively that only the forces of the rifle regiments loyal to the tsar managed to suppress the revolt. More than 7 thousand people were subjected to severe punishments, but the most curious thing is that less than a year later the "copper yards" in Novgorod and Pskov were closed and minting of silver kopecks resumed. The Copper Riot is one of the rare examples in history when popular unrest led to the result for which they were started.
The fate of the penny
The next changes in the fate of a penny fell on the reign of Peter the Great. The sovereign contemptuously called the silver money inherited from his ancestors "lice" and at the first opportunity he took up monetary reform. It must be admitted that by the end of the 17th century, a penny turned into a tiny piece of silver, worth almost nothing and, as a result, completely useless for calculations. Peter decided to repeat the experience of his father and return the copper penny into circulation. Copper minting was to satisfy the need for bargaining chips and free up silver for the minting of larger banknotes.
Petrovskaya penny.
Russia did not have its own silver mining, and therefore was forced to save the scarce metal. This time copper kopecks were introduced into circulation gradually, for almost 15 years they were in circulation along with silver ones, and therefore people gradually got used to the new money, especially since 100 kopecks were still equal to one ruble. Under Peter I, two innovations appeared: they began to put the year of minting and a double image of the denomination on coins (for the literate - in numbers, for the illiterate - in dots or dashes).
Peter's successors did not bother to observe the weight and size of a penny, which is why the most curious coins were minted in the first half of the 18th century. The largest kopeck was minted during the reign of Catherine I: its size was 23x23 mm, and its weight exceeded the weight of the 16th century Novgorodka by 24 times. The penny was even heavier in the days of the "daughter of Petrova" Elizabeth - she weighed as much as 30 times more than "Novgorod".
Later, for almost two centuries, the penny remained copper, and its purchasing power gradually decreased over time. Once again, the fate of the coin hung in the balance at the beginning of the 20th century, during the reign of Nicholas II. Military spending forced the government to dramatically increase the issue of paper money, and even issue paper pennies. Bills of 1, 2, 3 and 5 kopecks were adorned with the inscription "is in circulation along with a copper coin", bills of 50 kopecks - "is in circulation on a par with a silver change. In addition, it was planned to issue copper coins twice as light as the then denomination, but these plans were prevented by the revolution.
New penny time
The first Soviet pennies were minted in 1924 using copper billets from tsarist Russia. But after 2 years, the consumption of copper for minting coins was recognized as excessive, copper was allowed into industrial production, and kopecks were made from a copper-zinc alloy with the addition of aluminum. From that moment on, the weight of the coins coincided with the denomination: 1 kopeck weighed exactly 1 gram, 2, 3 and 5 kopecks at 2, 3 and 5 grams, respectively, and in the ruble there were 100 grams of a small coin. At this time, the cost of minting 1 kopeck was 8 kopecks, therefore, the coins were not withdrawn from use under any monetary reforms. In the last years of the existence of the USSR, a kopeck actually cost almost nothing, but even then it was possible to buy a box of matches or drink a glass of sparkling water without syrup.
In our time, a penny has already turned into a simple souvenir.
Inflation that hit in the early 1990s ate not only a penny, but also much larger banknotes. However, formally, it remained in circulation until 1998, when, as a result of the denomination, it seemed to have returned its purchasing power. On new kopecks, as centuries ago, a horseman with a spear flaunted, almost indistinguishable from the image on the old "Novgorods". But the new life of the penny was short-lived. The next waves of inflation continued to devalue the bargaining chip, and the cost of its production was constantly rising in price.
From a bargaining chip, the penny has become a symbol of Russian money. Today it is actively used only as a concept in proverbs and sayings, and if our descendants do not find a penny as a means of payment, they will inherit, in any case, "penny" folk wisdom. "A penny saves a ruble", "a penny to a penny - a family will live", "a working penny lives to a century" - these and many other proverbs and sayings are still alive and will live for a long time in the people's memory. To prevent the people from forgetting the historical coin, they even erected several monuments to it: in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl.
In 2012, they stopped minting a penny, and it finally went out of circulation. However, this does not mean at all that the well-deserved money has left our wallets forever. It is quite possible that she will return yet, and will serve a lot of commercial affairs, as she had served before for almost five centuries.
Ekaterina Kravtsova