By Bob Reis, World Coin News February 16, 2010

Let’s see, from the time of Alexei Feodorovich Romanov in the 17th century, I think every succession of a new monarch was some kind of problem involving conspiracy and violence. The death or “death” of Alexander I continued the grand operatic tradition. Alexander wanted so badly to help the Greeks get free from the Ottoman Turks, he went down south. It was announced that he was accompanying the ailing wife to take the airs. People imagined that he would raise an army to invade Turkey in aid of the Greeks. Instead it is put out that he died of fever. It was immediately rumored that he had actually abdicated and become a hermit monk.

I have to keep reminding myself that there were no newspapers back then in Russia. Word of mouth, private courier. The average person knew nothing about anything for their entire life. No invasion of Turkey happened. The fact that Alexander’s tomb was later found to be empty proves nothing, I suppose. If it was an abdication, it turned out pretty messy. There was no document. Blood, as usual in Russian successions, was shed.

A rider came back to Saint Petersburg with the news: Alexander dead in the town of Taganrog, Nov. 19 old style calendar, Dec. 1 new style. There were no (legitimate) children, so next in line for the throne was assumed to be Alexander’s next younger brother Constantine. Nobody outside of the family knew that Constantine had renounced his succession rights on the occasion of his second marriage to a Polish lady. He was all wrapped up in a love-hate relationship with Poland and did not want to leave. Very complex guy, Constantine. Very military all his life. Pretty much not officer material but thanks to his birth always in charge of big things, like Poland.

So, because only the family knew of Constantine’s recusal – and not even all of them – the populace of St. Petersburg, including the guard, the army, and even younger brother Nicholas, publicly swore allegiance. It took another few days for the riders to get to Poland to tell Constantine and a few more to get back with his thanks-but-no-thanks. Then Nicholas came forward to take the oaths of the people, Dec. 14 old style.

There is that numismatic relic of Constantine’s non-accession: the portrait pattern ruble in several iterations. Many words have been written about the Constantine rubles over the years. Only a few were made at the mint, probably 1826 or so. Constantine has been a popular figure in Russia, where he has been thought to be a romantic liberal (while in Poland he is considered a ruthless tyrant). I think there are a few “original” strikes and some more later “novodel” restrikes. A few years back, one of the originals was purchased at auction by an unknown person in Russia for what seemed at the time to be an enormous five-figure sum. It must be well along into the six-figure zone by now.

The situation still was not complicated enough for Russian history. There had to be an armed uprising, too. A group of nobles in the Imperial Guard had formed a liberal advocacy group in 1816, while liberalism was, at least in theory, part of the government’s program. It is written that emperor Alexander knew about them but did not interfere, commenting that they reminded him of his idealistic youth. The group became more radical over time until a mutiny in which they had a hand in 1820 demanded a crackdown. The group got quiet but did not go away.

In the succession crisis of 1825, some of these liberals saw a chance for something, though I have to admit that I can’t see it. The guard had sworn for Constantine. When the call came to switch to Nicholas, some of them refused. Liberal officers got about 3,000 guards to stand in Senate Square and proclaim again for “Constantine and Constitution,” meaning some version of the Polish constitution, there being no Russian constitution at the time. But no one else joined them, so they stood there in the icy square, soon to be surrounded by 9,000 troops loyal to Nicholas. Talks were held, the rebels shot a few people, Nicholas ordered a cavalry charge that failed because of ice, and finally he had cannons brought in and shelled them. The rebels fled to the ice on the Neva River, artillery was used again and there was a great slaughter. The liberals became known as Decembrists. Nicholas had five leaders tried and hanged, and many others were sent to Siberian exile. Very romantic, apparently hopeless, but their memory lived on and they were called forerunners of the Revolution later.

In the aftermath, Nicholas established a commission to look into what made the Decembrists tick. The report pointed to the need for reform in all sorts of areas, serfdom especially, education, military affairs, law, you name it. The Russian laws were still not completely codified, meaning, you know, people could just make things up and if they were sufficiently well-placed they could get away with it. So they did some of the easy stuff, like actually writing down the laws in one place, and fiddle-faddled about the hard stuff like the serfs.

Nicholas didn’t believe in all that liberal claptrap. He liked to censor, prescribe, proscribe, forbid, command. As people were evidently beginning to think more in his 19th century, he was all about telling them exactly what to think and not think. He set up what we have come to call, generically, the “secret police,” a network of uniformed and ununiformed internal spies and armed agents dedicated to enforcing loyalty. There was also a healthy dose of ethnic prejudice going on as often occurs in police state situations. Russians good, everyone else suspect.

In Poland his repressions sparked a rebellion in 1831, which he crushed with joyous vigor, abolishing thereafter the Congress Kingdom and reducing Poland to a province. He had some more fun in 1848, when he joyously crushed the Hungarian rebels.

Then he got in trouble. He had fought a war with the Turks early in his reign, but an opportunity arose a few years later to aid the legitimate Ottomans against upstart Egyptian dictator Muhammad Ali. In the event, the Egyptian pretty much won, and Russia came away with a treaty of mutual defense with the Ottomans.

Britain and France didn’t like that treaty. They thought it might give Russian ships privileged access to the Dardanelles, a matter of some interest because, for example, Britain and Russia had tangled over Malta and other Mediterranean real estate during the Napoleonic unpleasantness. Britain hosted a conference of all the “important” European nations which in 1841 declared the Dardanelles closed to all non-Ottoman warships. That was a major hit for Russia, which thereafter had no access to the Mediterranean.

Russia’s justification for Mediterranean access was protection of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and they had a couple of 18th century treaties granting them various powers in places of interest like Bethlehem and Jerusalem, not to mention all of what would one day become Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia.

Well, Napoleon III came to power in France and immediately pushed the Ottomans to dump Orthodox Russia as protector of Christians and to take up with Catholic France.

Nicholas was not going to take it lying down. He diplomatized all over the place, especially toward Britain, meanwhile building up his military in the south, a high level negotiation with the Turks coming to nothing much in a hurry. The British gambit failed, Nicholas marched into modern Romania, intent on annexation of that largely orthodox region. Britain was displeased, sent a fleet to the Dardanelles, where it met up with a French fleet and they prepared to violate Ottoman territory together. A proposal for a compromise was made. It was accepted by Russia but rejected by the Ottomans, who declared war on Russia in 1853. Some military shilly-shally ensued until one day some Russian ships destroyed some Turkish ships in harbor at the Black Sea port of Sinop. Claiming that violated existing treaties, France and Britain declared war on Russia and sailed through the Dardanelles.

They were really interested in keeping Russia from taking over, as they saw it, everything. You’re in the British Foreign Office. There’s a globe. You’re looking at India and there’s Russia over there, British Columbia, there’s Russian Alaska. They’re right there in Iran, they’re at the Chinese border, watching the opium and the silver trade. It looks like they’re expanding in all directions.

Russia found itself completely isolated in this conflict that we call the Crimean War. It showed the Russian military to be substantially obsolete, its economy shaky. Then Nicholas got sick and died in the middle of the war, leaving his son Alexander to pick up the pieces. It is reported that he apologized to Alexander for the mess he was leaving. Wikipedia quotes one of his employees: “The main failing of the reign of Nicholas Pavlovich was that it was all a mistake”.

Nicholas’ coins follow the some of the precedents of his father, but as time went on some innovations were introduced. There were no portraits on the circulating coinage, an Alexandrine habit, and “3” was introduced as a multiple for both kopeks and rubles, an innovation. Then of course there are the platinum coins.

But let’s start with the copper. Looking at the fabric of the coins, we see that they put in new machinery for the 1840 coinage. The new coins are distinguished by differences in weight, size and design, and another change in 1850 reduced the size further. I have an 1841 1/2 kopek that weighs 5.1 grams and another of 1852 that weighs 3.4 grams.

At any rate, the first “Alexandrine” copper type had half, 1 and 2 kopek denominations, variously with EM, KM, IM and SPB mintmarks. Scarcity models that of the actual Alexanders: 2 kopek least uncommon, half kopeks quite hard to find. Overall, the Nicholas issues are scarcer than the Alexanders.

The second copper type introduced the wings-down eagle type, rather handsome in my opinion, though crude planchets are normal for the series and for grade bugs you need to be careful that the St. George on the shield is struck up on your otherwise XF coin. I would lower by at least a grade for weak George Wings-down eagle that appears on clunky 5 kopek coppers last issued in 1810, and copper 10 kopeks not tried since 1762. Mints are EM, CM (Suzun, previously KM) and SPB. EM would be most common, but everything is scarce these days.

The third copper module has crowned letter “N” (Cyrillic “H”) in a beaded border and dates in the 1840s. Denominations are 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2 and novelty 3 kopeks. Mints are EM, SPM, CM and MW for Warsaw in recently annexed Poland. There are some extremely common dates in this series: 1840-EM 1 kopek for example, which means today that you might run into one every now and then. Amazingly, I think, there was a time in the late 1990s when people were making counterfeits of these very common coins. I tell Russians about this and none of them believe me. Too cheap, they opine. But I saw several of them. You know what you think you know, I know what I think I know.

The final Nicholas I copper issue began in 1850. Smaller and neater coins, no beads around the edge. Mints are EM and BM for Warsaw. BM coins are lower mintages and twice the demand because Polish collectors want them, too. So, scarce. Denominations are polushka (1/4 kopeck), denezhka (“little 1/2 kopek”), 1, 2, 3 and 5 kopeks. Little ones have crowned “N.” Two kopeks and higher have a “wings-up” eagle. If they are worn enough it gets hard to tell which mint it is.

Silver has that same old machinery/new machinery thing as the copper, the changeover in 1831. The 1826 coinage has old style “wings-up” eagle and new-style “wings-down” eagle varieties. Circulating denominations are 5, 10, 20, 25, 50 kopeks and ruble, a few struck in Warsaw (MW). I’ve had, relatively speaking, plenty of these Nicholas I silvers in grades up to superb, back in the pre-now period, when everything is bought and tucked away and you have to wait until someone dies and then its in Russia anyway so forget it. Uncirculated rubles I had.

I even had one of the commemorative rubles – innovation of the reign. There were two types of rubles: 1834 with the Alexander column, and 1839 with the Borodino column. I had the Borodino, of course. Good old days.

You see in the Standard Catalog several 1.5 ruble “family” coins and a note about another “ruble” considered to be a medal. But you have these odd denominations that make sense only in Poland, teeny mintages. Call them whatever you want, I guess, they are so rare. Similar large coins with Borodino monument are theoretically more available, but do not hold your breath. Gold is only the 5 ruble denomination. Some from Warsaw. There are three successive types and a special issue of gold from the Kolyvan mines. The Kolyvan, mintage 1,000, is truly rare. So are the Warsaw coins. The other “common” ones are merely unavailable.

And now about the platinum coins. Native platinum was found in the Urals from the start of the 19th century in connection with gold mining. A state monopoly industry. The platinum was sent back to St. Petersburg with the gold and began to accumulate. At some point the suggestion was made to strike coins. It was difficult. They couldn’t even smelt it properly – couldn’t attain melting temperature at that time – so they couldn’t make normal blanks. They sort of half annealed granules and then compressed the resulting sponge to form the planchets. You can see the structure with a microscope and it will distinguish the originals from later restrikes, novodels and fakes.

I have bought and sold precisely three 3-ruble coins and one 6-ruble. None of them were what could be called “nice.” They evidently did circulate. A lot of them were cleaned at some point, and I’ve run across several that were deliberately damaged in various non-jewelry ways, as if some people back when had nothing better to do than scratch up platinum coins.

A final innovation: Proofs started being made, and I have proved to my satisfaction that they exist.

Next episode will be the (partial) freeing of the serfs.



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