By Bob Reis, World Coin News November 30, 2009

The Seven Years War. In the early 18th century two Russias came out of diplomatic and military nowhere to become major players in Europe. One Russia is the enormous and complicated country I’ve been writing about. The other one? Prussia.

Before Prussia got pulled together Austria was the Germanic top dog, numbers two and three being Bavaria and Saxony, I guess. The unification of Prussia by modern army proponent Friedrich Wilhelm I was carried out by force to create a nation that bore some resemblance to that of Peter in Russia, but less bloody and more efficient. In both countries every reform was justified in terms of military preparedness. People were forced to be educated to make better soldiers. Roads were built for military transit purposes. And so forth. Stuff got done.

By 1740 the Prussian army was the biggest and best-trained in Europe. Friedrich Wilhelm I was a peaceable guy who never started a war. But he was mean to the son who succeeded him. That was the guy who became Frederick the Great. Frederick, true to his severe upbringing, was a hard guy. He considered his job to be the acquisition of the lands that separated the many little bits of Prussian territory scattered like islands in a sea of Austria. Immediately he invaded the Austrian province of Silesia. It took two wars over five years to nail down Silesia, but notice had been given to the rest of Europe that there was a new dude on the scene.

By the 1750s the diplomatic alliances had been rearranged. It had been England-Austria-Russia, etc. against France-Spain-Prussia, etc. Because Britain developed a bad opinion of Austria as a result of the Silesian War it made a deal with Prussia, so Austria had to go with France, there being nowhere else to go. That was 1756. Prussia signed with the British and immediately invaded Saxony. Before it was over battles had been fought all over the world between various belligerents. That was the Seven Years War.

Russia got involved because the British-Prussian deal hurt Russian interests of all kinds, so empress Elizabeth sent troops against Prussia. In the normal Russian combat method, Elizabeth’s troops ground away at Prussia. Berlin was briefly occupied. The war would have ended with the obliteration of Frederick’s kingdom had the Russian empress not died after long illness in 1762.

You would not necessarily deduce the Seven Years War from any changes of Russian domestic coinage, though one could imagine a political allusion in the new St. George and dragon type of the copper Kind of fits the particulars of the new war. There were coins issued in “East Prussia” with Elizabeth’s portrait from 1759 to 1761 during the campaigning. East Prussia was part of what is now Poland. It was a region that was a patchwork of ownership, mostly Prussian and Polish, and Russian activity there interfered with Polish interests no matter what they did. Poland became progressively weaker through the 18th century, encouraging predation by neighbors. Constant irritation of each other by Poland and Russia is a long term factor in European history.

Well, so Elizabeth was dead. Childless herself, she had proclaimed as heir a nephew who became Peter III. Peter was basically a German except that his grandfather was Peter the Great. Empress Elizabeth married him to a second cousin of his, Sophie Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, who was also German with a bit of Romanov connection. Sophie converted to Orthodoxy and changed her name to Catherine. There was a son, paternity later denied by his wife. The couple did not otherwise get on.

Peter was something of an odd duck but his big problem was that he ardently admired Frederick the Great. He immediately switched sides in the Seven Years War and backed Prussia. That was a tough pill for everyone to swallow, not just Russia. Plus, he annoyed the bureaucracy by caving in to the nobles on compulsory national service. Plus he annoyed the guards by imposing additional disciplines according to his foreign tastes. Like in first Rome, the third Rome had an ongoing problem of palace guards getting involved in successions. A guards unit arrested him, abdication papers presented and signed, then off to jail. A month later he was dead. Killed. No paperwork on that. The guy who did it was not charged.

Peter was on the throne only six months, but he shook things up. He also messed with the coinage. It had to be done; the war was causing financial problems as wars are wont to do. Back then money was metal or numbers in books, there was no paper to swell the supply. When finances were tight, the normal “adjustments” would have been debasement or exchange rate manipulation if there happened to be a bimetallic currency, which there was in 18th century Russia. Theoretically 100 copper kopeks made a silver ruble, but in the shop it was whatever it actually was that day. A silver ruble was not the same as a copper ruble.

Perhaps, thought the finance ministry, it might be possible to halve the weight of the copper coinage. The market would hit the new coinage eventually and drive it to its proper value. The losers would be the lower classes, but losing was their job, wasn’t it?

Please recall that Russian finance ministries had had this thought before, had actually tried it and had been burned. They went ahead anyway, during the short reign of Peter III, turning old 2 kopeks into 4 kopeks and old 5 kopeks into 10 kopeks. They were serious, and made more than a few of them. They circulated for a while and then they were recalled and made illegal by the new empress Catherine. Most of them were recoined into the restored “full weight” coins. So look carefully at all of your 1762 and 1763 coppers to see if there is an undertype. The 4 and 10 kopeks of 1762 are rare.

There are silver Peter portrait poltinas and rubles, gold 5 and 10 rubles, and gold ducats. They’re all rare in various degrees.

Catherine became empress. She concentrated on expanding her territory, mostly by military means. Crimea was acquired, and so was Lithuania, Belarus and Courland. And Poland, not to ignore Central Asia, Siberi, and the Far East. It was a very interesting 34 years. But evidently the first thing that had to be addressed was the financial situation. We know this because the light coppers were immediately recalled and the silver ruble made both lighter and baser. This change of strategy can be seen as sort of “progressive” in that to some extent people were made to pay the government’s expenses who could actually afford to pay rather than concentrating on those who could more easily be forced to pay. It’s right there in the coinage.

That done, she embarked on her illustrious and controversial career: encouraging science, art, industry, that kind of good stuff but also tightening the screws on serfs, Jews, normal unpleasantness at that time. Only in retrospect do we find it nasty. Probably everything she did was a matter of political necessity. She repressed Catholics in general (Poles in particular) but invited the Jesuits to hide out in Russia when they were being persecuted in Western Europe. Everything is so complicated.

For coinage there was the main Russian series, an exotic coinage for Siberia, some coins for newly conquered Crimea and military coins for occupied Moldavia and Wallachia.

Homeland copper restored the weights and types of empress Elizabeth with new monograms, of course. A number of mints struck copper. Some, but not all of them, put their marks on their coins. The big 5 kopeks from Ekaterinburg are actually common and cheap in ordinary grades, which can typically encompass a bit of porosity acquired from their sojourn in damp basements if not the ground. It is not impossible that one could make a date set of these coins, maybe even from some of the other mints: Anninsk, “KM” (for Kolyvan, where the copper came from, the actual mint being in a town called Suzun). But not “TM,” Feodosia mint in Crimea. “T” is for “Tauric,” from ancient Greek Tauric Chersonessos.

Catherine acquired Crimea somewhat in the way the United States got Texas. She went to war with Turkey and got an “independent” khan of Krim in the peace treaty of 1774. (It was during that war that the Moldavia-Wallachia coins were struck.) Nine years later in 1783 Crimea was annexed. The Turks went to war to get it back in 1787. The Russians beat up the Turks. While they were at it they struck the complete set of normal copper coins with “TM” mark and a few special silver coins that evidently did not circulate. The “TM” coppers are rare. I’ve seen fakes.

For silver there are 10 kopecks, new denominations 15 and 20 kopeks, traditional quarter and half rubles and rubles. Used to be the smaller silvers would emerge from time to time, especially the 10 kopeks, quarter rubles, too. Poltinas were scarcer. The rubles were more common by far than any other 18th century rubles. But now anything interesting from Russia is either sky high or not around. Put any price on them and they’ll probably sell.

Same with Catherine’s smaller gold. Like Elizabeth, Catherine had special gold rubles and poltinas made for use in the palace, and those are common enough that I’ve actually had two of them. Stupid prices. No bargains ever. Her larger gold is similarly the most available of the century, but the prices are still way too high.

There were several experimental issues made at various mints. Most interesting in my opinion were the copper Sestroretsk rubles of 1770 and 1771. The government had introduced paper assignat notes. They had a problem with the backing for the notes. Note issuers always want to issue more notes than the value on hand. It was imagined that the copper rubles might serve as a reserve of value. But there was machine trouble – more expensive than it was worth. They made about five of them, maybe.

I saw one once, 1990 I think. Mme. Melnikova came to the New York International Numismatic Convention and brought one to display. Someone in Raleigh, N.C., where I live, told me he had one, and someone else claimed to have seen it, but I never did. Safe to say that any such you might run into is apt to be a novodel at best.

The Siberian coins were made because they needed some aid to commerce there. Normal coinage flowed out. There were so many things they had to import. In an attempt to keep the coinage home, they were stuck light. Siberian coins are not particularly rare but they are not cheap either. There are plenty of fakes around in all denominations.

Catherine died in 1796 shortly after the final partition of Poland. She had supported the United States against Britain but the French Revolution had been a real scare. It knocked the enlightenment right out of her and turned her into a reactionary. But then she died, so she wasn’t around for the next turn of the screw, which was Napoleon.



To be continued.



Contact Reis by mail at P.O. Box 26303, Raleigh, NC 27611, or by e-mail at reisbiz@earthlink.net.

More Resources:

• Standard Catalog of United States Obsolete Bank Notes 4-CD Set, 1782-1866

• Fascinating Facts, Mysteries & Myths About U.S. Coins

• 2010 Standard Catalog of World Coins 2001-Date, 4th Edition

• State Quarters Deluxe Collector's Folder