- It is hard to pinpoint the exact date of the rouble’s emergence. But the word is mentioned in birch-bark letters dated early XIV century. There are several versions of where the name comes from.

When we were at school, we were taught that “rouble” comes from “roubit” (to chop) verb. A Novgorodian grivna was chopped into pieces, and the result was a rouble. At the time it was not a coin, but a strip of silver. There is even a version that “going for a long rouble” is derived from the same root: long strip — long rouble, just as long as they chopped it.

Later on, in the XVI century there was a monetary reform. The rouble remained a unit of account, but they started minting coins, equal to its one hundredth part – a kopeck. The starting point for this was a decree of 1535. Since the future first czar of All Russia, Ivan the Terrible, was only five years old at the time, the reform was carried out in his name by his mother, Grand Princess Yelena Glinskaya.

The silver rouble was introduced into wide circulation much later— in 1704, under Peter the I. So what date should be chosen as the rouble’s birthday for celebration? I, for one, like March 20, 1535: it was the first centralized monetary reform. Just in ten years our currency will be precisely five centuries old! 

— What is the competition for the rouble in the contest for the oldest existing currency in the world?

— The British pound sterling is customarily considered the oldest of the currently existing currencies. They started minting one pond silver coins in the VIII century AD, during the times of King Offa the Great. However, the pound became the official currency of the country four centuries later, under King Henry II. During his time, they started using the so-called standard sterling silver.

The name of the British currency is ascribed to the term Easterling Silver (“silver from Eastern lands”) — this meant Northern Germany. Up to 1971 one pound consisted of 12 shillings, each containing 20 pence. And then they decided to depart from the tradition, and now the pound counts 100 pence. In this regard, academic circles are still arguing, whether the British had “nullified” the history of the pound. In all fairness it should be said that all currencies have been changing over time one way or another, so let’s keep the pound on the top of the oldest currency ranking.

— What are other currencies with the longest history on the list?

— The Serbian dinar. It was a silver coin as well. They started to mint it in 1214 under the first Serbian king, Stefan the First-Crowned. Then the country had several monetary reforms, but even today the dinar — the name of this monetary unit has Ancient Roman roots — is the national currency of Serbia.

— Then, it appears, comes the Russian rouble. What’s next?

— Then we could move to Asia. There is an outstanding currency called Indian rupee. The first silver rupees were minted in 1542 during the reign of Farid al-Din Khan ibn Khasan — the very same ruler who bore the Sher Khan title. But after him several types of rupees were circulated in the country, each region had its own coins. The rupee was unified only in 1835. Thus, the rupee is currently viewed as a relatively young currency.

— What can you say about the American dollar?

— The dollar is of considerable age. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Its “life” as the official currency of the USA began in 1785. And the name itself has a longer history and goes back to the European taler. European talers were in circulation in Russia for some time as foreign currency – for example, under the rule of the very same Peter I. Though they had a different name in our country. The thing is that initially these silver coins appeared in a town called Joachimsthal (now it is in the territory of the Czech Republic) and were named accordingly, Joachimsthalers. In Europe they reduced the name Joachimsthaler to taler, which became dollar in America, and in Russia they dropped the second part of the word that seemed too long, and this is why the Russian version of the name of Joachim, “yefimka”, took hold.

— Well, and if we take a look back to old times, has anything really archaic survived to the XXI century?

— Many would find it simply unthinkable, but in our time in one of Papua New Guinea regions they still use seashells as money. The Tolai tribe uses shells for settlements. The money is called Taboo: a unit of this currency is 300 shells on a string. Scientists believe that this currency is several hundred years old. Today tribesmen can exchange Taboo for Kina — the legal tender of the country. Could it be the oldest currency, that has lived up to our time?

— Going back to our roubles, did they appear at the same time with kopecks or not?

— No, they did not, not at the same time. Rouble as a notion had emerged two and a half centuries earlier. However, by mid-XV century they had stopped casting rouble bullion and had started minting kopecks at the times of Glinskaya. Initially, kopecks were minted in Novgorod, by this time the Novgorod lands had just joined the Grand Principality of Moscow, and it was decided that a common Russian coin was required. One of the sides of this coin featured a horseback rider with a lance, hence the name. The rouble was used just as a unit of account for some time. It made its first appearance as a coin only during the reign of Czar Alexei Mikhailovich, during the XVII century. The roubles at the time were minted by flattening out European coins, but that did not last long: the coins were big and very inconvenient. Later on, under Peter I the original silver roubles were introduced. So, the rouble is older than kopeck as a notion, but it is just the reverse for the coins.

— How often do states change their monetary units?

— It does happen, but not very often.

— Which events could trigger such changes?

— The most “revolutionary” option is when a new national currency is introduced, even under a different name. By the way, this is what happens most often after revolutions or establishment of new states. For example, a colony gets its independence – it needs a new currency. The USSR fell apart — each of the new countries needed their own currency, and it is all the same when a political regime is changed. There are also ruler ambitions: a new emperor decides to introduce a coin under his own name. Sometimes it happens in the opposite way, when countries decide to unite, at least economically, the most familiar instance is the Euro. As an aside, but for the euro, the Greek Drachma would be the oldest currency today, I need hardly tell you, what a long history this currency has.

It also happens that states abandon their own currencies in favor of stable currency circulation. Today several countries are using the US dollar as their national currency, for example, Ecuador or Salvador. Yet another reason for money change could be a monetary equivalent change, let’s say, the transition from copper coins to silver ones in the Ancient Rome, or a transition from bimetallic to monometallic standard, or from silver to gold. But there are less radical monetary reforms, one of which is denomination, when banknotes “lose” some zeros and a different price standard is introduced. This reform was carried out in our country in 1998. By the way, this reform led to a change of the currency letter code for the Russian rouble: it used to be RUR at the international market, and it is RUB today.

Other monetary reforms could target confiscation of money, acquired by criminal means, it is often connected to the very same denomination, when only some money is exchanged for new banknotes, and the rest is withdrawn from circulation. History also knows reforms with purely economic underlying reasons: old worthless money withdrawn from circulation, and new money would have gold or silver backing, inspiring greater confidence. This happened in our country during the reign of Nicholas I, when paper money was replaced by treasury notes, convertible into silver. Usually a new or an “upgraded” currency is more stable – in any case, it is conceived as such.

— How, do you think, the monetary circulation in our country would change going forward?

— Now we have two key forms of money — cash and non-cash. Naturally, there have been much more of non-cash money for a very long time, and this is irreversible. The share of non-cash retail payments in our country as at the end of 2023 amounted to 83,4%. And this is a high number, though the leaders in this field, Sweden and China, demonstrate even more impressive numbers: 98% and 96,3% correspondingly. As for cash money in circulation – banknotes are being printed, by all means, and coins are minted too, but it is much more complex with coins, especially with our costly kopeck. This coin today is expensive in every sense of the word, minting the kopeck costs much more than its face value.

—  Could the kopeck be completely withdrawn from circulation?

— Officially, today there are 1 kopeck, 5, 10 and 50 kopecks in circulation, but they stopped minting the former two coins back in 2009, and the latter two — ten years ago. The Bank of Russia says it is ready to resume minting if necessary, but today the kopeck is actually a unit of account, and speaking of coins — they are of interest to coin collectors mostly.

Speaking of coin collectors: this year the Bank of Russia will mint a million of 80 Year Victory Anniversary 50 rouble coins. There will of course be precious metal coins too, but you will not get any of these as change in a store.

— Could the digital rouble succeed to the regular, paper rouble in future?

— It does not matter what is the form of the rouble’s existence. The digital rouble is the third form of our national currency along with the common paper rouble and non-cash one. One rouble is still one rouble, and according to our laws, it consists of one hundred kopecks. The digital rouble is not a cryptocurrency, it is issued by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in the same manner as cash and non-cash money is issued today, for which the Bank of Russia is liable as the issue. Each digital rouble has its unique electronic code, a digital identifier (as does the kopeck, by the way), similar to a unique number on each banknote. For this reason, the currency issuer, the Bank of Russia, will always be aware of any money movements – for legal entities and private persons, by minute and hour. This will at least be instrumental in tracking fraud schemes.

However, there are no plans to accrue interest on digital rouble account balances, so this will be less attractive for private customers. But, for instance, retail companies will find the use of the digital currency by the CBR beneficial in terms of service: acquiring fees will be gone. Generally, when the Bank of Russia finally introduces the third form of our currency, and it has been postponed just recently, we will all see how it works. But, let me repeat myself, the rouble isn’t going to disappear!

— What will happen to global currencies in the future? Will they grow bigger within macro regions, as it happened with the euro, or will they follow a different path?

— These questions have been on the agenda for many decades in terms of discussions of the future of the international Jamaica currency system, under which we all have been living for almost half a century. One of the proposed ways to transform this system is creation of regional currencies. But this path is very thorny. Well, today neighboring countries or countries-members of various unions are thinking about currency integration. But currency integration, both in theory and in practice is the final stage of an integration process. This would require prior harmonization of financial laws, customs integration should be done, relevant payment infrastructure should be in place. And it would be nice for the countries, musing over this process, to have at least comparable level of development. In the very same Europe there are leading countries, pulling those who are weaker. And this obviously does not make the euro any stronger.

— A longer path could be tested, the euro did not appear straight out of the blue sky. Before the euro, Europe had used its own artificial supranational currency ECU for international settlements. Later on it was replaced by the euro at one to one exchange rate, and national currencies of eleven countries ceased to exist. Could other countries do the same?

— Yes, they could, there are multiple cases. Certainly someone would recall or read somewhere that back in the day there was the transferable rouble, also a supranational currency for settlements within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). And now there are several similar projects in existence across the world. 15 years ago in Latin America it was proposed to use the sucre, a supranational currency, for cross-border settlements between a dozen countries, during its peak use, the annual amount of payments in the currency went over one billion in dollar equivalent, but as soon as in 2016 the project was actually scrapped: there had been too many controversies. There are similar attempts today in Africa and in Asia. I would not be able to name any obvious successes though.  

— It turns out that downsides of this “future of global currencies” outweigh upsides?

— A common regional currency, certainly, has many potential advantages: no need to spend money on conversion of one currency to another, operational risks for payments are much lower, and overall, one “big” currency is better than several smaller ones, it has a better chance to win a reserve currency spot. The euro is an example of this. But it is important here to have strong countries backing this common currency. The regional currency idea has the right to exist in and of itself, but I think it is too early to speak about it, even if the IMF and its members, or any other new international financial organization support the idea. Now there are proposals to create something similar under the auspices of the New Development Bank for BRICS countries. These proposals don’t sit well with the current American leadership, but it is a very long way to implementation of these plans, even with strenuous efforts. And would it be really necessary?

And overall, if we try to imagine and assess various ways to reform the international currency system, then yes, regional currencies are one of possible ways. But it seems likely that a different path will be chosen — linking national currencies to gold or to a selected basket of goods and services.

The latter seems to me personally to be more viable and fair. And countries, even with strict regulation of the process, would be able to keep their national currencies at least as national symbols. And their exchange rates could be reviewed from time to time in a centralized manner, or it would be done by the market, as it is today.

— Let us go back to Russian realities. What future do you see for the rouble? And would the kopeck live up to its five hundred years’ anniversary?

— I think that the name of our currency will stay the same. I also have no doubt that they will keep two digits after the decimal point, meaning kopecks. As for the form of money, there are options. Currently there are about 18 trillion in circulating cash. But going forward, only paper money will remain in cash circulation, gradually “washed away”. However, let us be honest, these will hardly be abandoned in the following few years.

Many people still favor paying with banknotes and prefer keeping some cash for a rainy day. Indeed, it is possible that the Bank of Russia, just like central banks of other countries, will make an attempt to transform all money if not into digital, then into non-cash format. But I suspect that even in ten years this will meet resistance of a certain part of the population. However, changes in the financial sphere are accelerating. Just five years ago we could hardly imagine how many transactions would go online, and we could not imagine the speed, with which Russia will break into the ranks of advanced digitalization countries. Life is bigger than our views of it. To put it simply, let’s wait and see.

Anna SOLNTSEVA