150 years to Soviet penny

What is the bad sign of the “Dining room No. 1” network (Fig. 1)? The fact that a non -existent object is shown on it: a coin, according to the drawing (taking into account the visual conventions), which is a Soviet cockered model of 1961–1991 (Fig. 2), but with the date “2003”.

And the better the sign of the already disappeared network of the “penny” universals (Fig. 3)? It depicts a modern Russian penny (Fig. 4), which does not contradict anything.

It is clear why such anachronisms arise - out of the desire to perpetuate the date of the base on the logo (similar Soviet pennies with Russian dates are present on the logo of the newspapers "Kopeika" from Noyabrsk and a useful penny). The Russian penny does not give such an opportunity, the date on it is located on the wrong side that the face value. The situation with the Pharmacopopei pharmacy network is funny: on some versions of the logo for the (distant) basis, the Soviet coin was taken (Fig. 5, left), on others - Russian (Fig. 5, on the right).

The history of the Soviet penny began not a hundred years ago, but in 1867, when Tsar Alexander II introduced a new example of copper coins, preserved before the 1917 revolution (Fig. 6). The weight of the cents was 3.28 g, the diameter was 21.6 mm. They were minted at the Yekaterinburg (“EM”-“Yekaterinburg Coin”, until 1876) and St. Petersburg (“S.P.B.”) Mint, in 1896-1898 in Birmingham (but with the preservation of the letters “S.P.B.”), in 1899-1901 of the Rosenkran factory in the factory St. Petersburg. With the renaming of St. Petersburg to Petrograd, the designation of the monetary yard completely disappeared. The last coins of this type were minted in 1916; Someone claims to have seen a penny with the date “1917”.

The RSFSR did not mint a copper coin - inflation made this lesson completely meaningless. In the newly created USSR, old tsarist equipment was first used for minting, and the first Soviet pennies in 1924-1925 coincided with pre -revolutionary (Fig. 7).

However, copper was needed for industry, and in 1926, minting of light cents of copper-aluminum bronze began (Fig. 8). Their weight (exactly 1 g) and diameter (15 mm) survived until the collapse of the USSR. The drawing was first the same as that of heavy copper cents; At auctions there is a trial version (Fig. 9), but, apparently, this is a fantasy. At the back side, he changed only after the 1961 reform, but the front drawing was significantly changed in 1935 (Fig. 9); In addition, after 1936, the number of tapes on the coat of arms changed with the formation and accession of new union republics. Because of this, sometimes there were erroneous options, for example, a very rare penny of 1957 with sixteen ribbons instead of fifteen: in 1956, the Karelian-Finnish SSR was transformed into the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and the tape with the inscription in Finnish was removed (Fig. 10).

During the Great Patriotic War, in 1942-1944, cents were not minted. Only single pennies in 1947 with a new coat of arms, adopted on June 26, 1946, were preserved: millions of coins minted at the Leningrad Court were sent to remelting. There are no reliable information about why this happened; A variety of stories come across on the Internet, for the most part obviously implausible (authors are confused among the staples on the coats of arms). The memoirs of the Minister of Finance A. G. Zverev, published in 1973, only the following said:

“As you know, before the war in the USSR there were 16 union republics. But on the coinage coin of 1937 and later the number of turns of the tape on the ears of the State Emblem of the USSR, denoting the republics, along with the lower liga, until 1946, since there were no suitable conditions for renewing a stamp. <...> In the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the question of the mint sample of the country's administrative-political division was raised at that time. However, things did not go further than talking. Once, in the midst of the war, an exchange of views on this subject was held by I.V. Stalin. Responding to the proposal to change the stamp, V. M. Molotov said that there was no sense; Only after the war it will be completely clear how many union republics we have. Someone exclaimed indignantly:

“Do you believe that we can partially lose them?”

Stalin, interfering, noticed with a smile:

- Let's not guess now, life itself will show which sample will need.

Indeed, in 1948, we minted coins with 16-lented turns. As for the 1947 monetary reform, which I will talk about below, the coin dated this year was not released. ”

We note, however, that the monetary stamps reproduced the state emblem, so that the question was much more serious, and it was raised earlier: September 3, 1940. The Secretariat of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to amend the coat of arms, and the Presidium of the Supreme Council approved the preliminary project on March 3, 1941.

In the preparation of the 1961 reform, many versions of coins with a variety of dates were minted, in particular, a penny with the date “1953” (Fig. 11). They can see how the appearance of a new Soviet penny was gradually formed. The large circulation of the new sample coins was minted in 1958, but the reform was deposited, and they were mainly re -melted, only single specimens are known (Fig. 2).

During the reform, an exchange of money was carried out in a ratio of 10: 1, thereby one penny with new money was equal to ten kopecks old. The cartoon “Dear penny” was devoted to the reform (Fig. 12), the plot of which was that no one needs an old penny, and after melting new pennies are building cities and launching missiles, one of which the heroine flies with the words that it would soon be possible to buy a box of matches on the moon. The composer of the cartoon was Nikita Theological, one of the animators - Vyacheslav Kotyonochkin (“Well, wait a minute!”), And the roles were voiced, among others, Erast Garin, Sergey Martinson and Georgy Vitsin. A caricature similar in style was published in the magazine "Youth" (presumably, 1961): the signature read: "Happy Birthday, dear penny!"

Small denominations did not remove from circulation and did not exchange, and therefore the old penny really rose ten times. Contrary to legends, it is unlikely that someone made a large thing on this. The heroes of the 1992 film “Channel”, who, according to the script, tried to exchange sixty thousand rubles with paper money for small coins, ultimately had to carry six tons of metal in the passenger car.

The first penny of the Russian Federation were released in 1997. They were minted at the Moscow and St. Petersburg mint made of steel covered with Melchior; They had a weight of 1.5 g and a diameter of 15.5 mm. Since 2010, kopecks have not been minted due to the unprofitability and lack of need for them, but in 2014 the circulation was minted, as they say, for an accurate transfer of hryvnia calculations into rubles in annexed Crimea. Such a penny, if desired, can be found on sale in newspaper kiosks and in carriers in electric trains. Catalogs also mention rare pennies in 2011 and 2017.

The heirs of the Soviet penny also became the Ukrainian kopeca (Fig. 13; it has been addressed since 1996, but the earliest date on the penny of Italian coinage - “1992”; in 1996, pennies were minted at the Lugansk cartridge plant, and in 2000-2013 they minted in Kyiv); The Belarusian cap (Fig. 14; the date “2009” is the year of minting in Sharp (Lithuania), and these coins were put into circulation during the 2016 reform); and Azerbaijani q ə pik (Fig. 15; date "2006" - Austrian Chekan, "2011" - Ukrainian Chekan). All of them are minted from steel; Belarusian and Azerbaijani - with copper coating; The trial Ukrainian pennies with the dates “1992”, “1994”, “1996” from various metals, from aluminum to silver are known.

But Soviet cents also have other relatives. On the same royal equipment and workpieces as the first Soviet pennies, the copper monga of 1925 were minted for Mongolia (Fig. 16).

In 1934, a penny for Tuva, which was then an independent state, was minted at the Leningrad Mint; They turned until 1944 (Fig. 17). In the USSR, in circulation, Bulgarian stalls often came across, which were not different from the cents neither in weight or the size and had a similar pattern - in 1951 they were minted at the Leningrad Mint (Fig. 18), and since 1962 they minted in Sofia (Fig. 19).

M. G.