Soviet banknotes and coins were produced by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise (or Goznak) in Moscow and Leningrad.

From the 1540s onwards the horseman bears a crown, and doubtless the intention was to represent Ivan the Terrible, who was Grand Prince of all Russia until 1547, and tsar thereafter.

Subsequent mintings of the coin, starting in the eighteenth century, bear instead Saint George striking down a serpent.

The name of the currency in the languages of the fifteen republics, in the order they appeared in the banknotes: Note that the scripts for Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Turkmen and gradually Kazakh have switched from Cyrillic to Latin since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

These coins bore the emblem and legends of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) and depicted the famous slogan, "Workers of the world, Unite!".

These coins would continue to circulate after the RSFSR was consolidated into the USSR with other Soviet Republics until the discontinuation of silver coinage in 1931.

In early 1924, just before the next redenomination, the first paper money was issued in the name of the USSR, featuring the state emblem with six bands around the wheat, representing the languages of the then four constituent republics of the Union: Russian SFSR, Transcaucasian SFSR (Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian), Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR.

After Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power following the death of Lenin, a final redenomination occurred which replaced all previously issued currencies.

The state emblem also went through a series of changes between 1935 and 1957 as new Soviet republics were added or created, this can be noted by the number of "ribbons" wrapped around the wheat sheaves.

1945–1946 1948–1957 1945–1946 1948–1957 1945–1946 1948–1957 1945–1946 1948–1957 1948–1957 1948–1957 1948–1957 In August 1941, the wartime emergency prompted the minting facilities to be evacuated from the Neva district in Moscow and relocated to Permskaya Oblast as German forces continued to advance eastward.

This meant many coins were being produced in only limited quantities, with some denominations being skipped altogether until the crisis finally abated in late 1944.

Following World War II, the Soviet government implemented a confiscatory redenomination of its currency (decreed on December 14, 1947) to reduce the amount of money in circulation.

The main purpose of this change was to prevent peasants who had accumulated cash by selling food at wartime prices from using this to buy consumer goods as the postwar recovery took hold.

In 1957, all these notes were reissued with the old date but modified design: following the abolition of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, the number of ribbons on the state emblem was reduced from 16 to 15, and the nominal in Finnish was removed from the obverse.

Like previous issues, the front featured the state arms and title while the back depicted date and denomination.

In 1967, a commemorative series of 10-, 15-, 20- and 50-kopeck and 1-ruble coins was released, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and depicted Lenin and various socialist achievements.

Initially, commemorative rubles were struck in the same alloy as other circulating coins until 1975, when its composition was changed to higher-quality copper-nickel with zinc excluded.

€4.39 or US$5.09 as of August 2018, resulting in the large scale use of (now worthless) Soviet commemorative coins to defraud automated vending machines in Switzerland years after they have been demonetized.

Although the project was already started in 1988 and was finalized in 1989, it had some potential and intention to be adopted but the Gosbank decided to not put in practice and was cancelled.

Even in 1988, a lot of projects were started with the Tsiolkovsky monument banknotes but were never recovered and was certainly rejected as a proposal and only the 30 note remained while other variations got lost.

It was a very unusual sketch that combines the working man and the Kremlin as the whole unity of the country, the banknotes was drawn by V.K Nikitin.

In late 1991, a new coinage was issued as direct obligations of the USSR State Bank in denominations of 10 and 50 kopecks, and 1, 5 and 10 rubles.

It did, however, continue to be used in several former Soviet republics including Russia and particularly Tajikistan for a short time after the union had ceased to exist out of necessity.

Soviet citizens could freely purchase a set of goods from state shops with rubles, but choice was limited and prices were always political decisions, having no direct connection to manufacturing cost.

Bread and public transport were heavily subsidised, but wages were low and there were shortages of manufactured consumer goods, implementing hidden taxes.

Thus, if they legally received payment in foreign currency, they were forced to convert it to Vneshposyltorg cheques at a rate set by the government.

[19] The opening up of the economy in the late 1980s under perestroika resulted in the recognition of more realistic exchange rates for the ruble, as follows: Official exchange rates Soviet ruble of the time per United States dollar:[25] Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, local currencies were introduced in the newly independent states.

[6] Since it was clear that the situation would not last, each of them used their positions as "free-riders" to issue huge amounts of money in the form of credit (since Russia held the monopoly on printing banknotes and coins).

The final collapse of the "ruble zone" began with the exchange of banknotes by the Central Bank of Russia on Russian territory at the end of 1993.

As a result, other countries still in the ruble zone (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia) were "pushed out".