Ruble’s Wars

Abstract

Abstract After the end of the Russo-Turkish War, the Ministry of Finance, which pursued financial austerity and the ruble’s restoration, was attacked by conservative and nationalistic journalists who enjoyed the patronage of the tsar and succeeded in removing the minister of finance, Nikolai Bunge. In the absence of political parties, newspapers and their editors assumed the role of leaders of public opinion. Among the various components of state national identity, the nationalists singled out currency as a symbol of Russia’s distinctiveness, turning the ruble’s inconvertibility into a virtue. Conservative criticism of “Western” financial principles revealed not only growing discontent with the government’s stringent policy among the nobility and commercial elites but also anxiety among the elites over the prospect of joining the monetary realm of Western Europe, which in the 1870s had switched to the gold standard. In the 1880s, the government resumed preparation for the introduction of the gold standard, while the representatives of the nobility and commercial circles spoke against the reform.