Chervontsy in Manchuria and the Russian East: Soviet Money and the (Re)Construction of Empire in the NEP Era

• In Event: Commerce, Empire, and Difference in Eurasia

Abstract

Toward the end of the Russian Civil War, the reconsolidation of the former Imperial Russian territory by the Bolsheviks was in part a monetary feat, as local and civil war currencies in many peripheral regions depreciated even faster than Soviet money. Such Soviet currencies as the sovetskie znaki, depreciating just a little less rapidly, became the preferred money of these regions, thereby enabling what Bolshevik economists called the “monetary unification” of the Soviet Union from the Northwest to the Far East. In North Manchuria—which had been until 1917 part of the ruble bloc created by the imperial government, as its foreign trade and major exports were conducted in ruble—Soviet attempts to reintroduce the ruble using chervontsy met with determined opposition, however. This paper examines how the chervonets, a Soviet NEP-era banknote based on gold that achieved a highly stable foreign exchange rate, was regarded by Chinese businesses and traders in Manchuria. While monetary nationalism contributed to Chinese efforts to keep chervontsy from circulating in Manchuria, my paper argues that Chinese objection to this money lay more in the type of gold reserve backing its issue, which consisted largely of foreign gold-standard currencies, rather than gold specie, as was that of the imperial ruble.

Author

• Chia Yin Hsu, Portland State U