Thalers in the Russian State during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (V. Potin)

The author uses, for the first time, Baltic and Western European sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as his basic material (these include foreign dictionaries of Russian); use is also made of recent publications of Russian sources and information concerning monetary hoards. The facts drawn from these sources indicate clearly that the development of the Russian currency system, despite its specific nature, is similar in its basic features to the development of the systems of other European states. This was reflected in the manner in which foreign thalers were used in Russia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The article gives the precise date for the beginning of thaler imports into Russia as the end of the 1520s, i. e. earlier than was suggested by other authors of numismatic research into the history of Russian currency trading. There is evidence pointing to a connection between the beginning of thaler imports and the Russian currency reform of 1534/35.

The author states what forms of thaler were introduced into Russia and also explains various Russian names under which they circulated. The material accumulated confirms the supposition that thalers were brought into Russia both as silver and as units of currency, which were drawn into the Russian currency trading system. This can be seen not only in the existence of two exchange rates for the thaler, the official ("decreed") rate and the market rate, but also in the direct evidence of trade and financial transactions. This thaler rate from the middle of the sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries is listed in a special table consisting of 61 entries.

The facts given in the paper enable us to appraise the role of thalers in the Russian state more accurately.