Russia Will Default

23.02.2026, 11:24
13,704

Remember the story.

Will there be a default in Russia? Of course there will be. The entire history of the country is a history of deception and refusal to fulfill its obligations. Everyone has been cheated. Often allies have been cheated, but they have almost always cheated their own. There has not been a single generation of Russians that has not been cheated by the authorities. This is the national staple that holds everything together.

To find the money to annex Ukraine during the Polish campaign, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich thought of nothing better than to replace silver rubles with copper rubles at a nominal rate of 1:1. From a pound of copper it was planned to "chop" coins for 10 rubles, while its market value was only 12 kopecks.

Sobornye silver mines in Russia in the XVII century was not, silver coins - yoahimsthaler (in common speech efimki) received from Europe, and then minted into rubles at the Moscow money yard. During this operation the weight of the coin was reduced, and the state earned about 28%.

At the end of 1653 the battle for Ukraine began - war was declared against Poland. Money was urgently needed. The budget was on the verge of default. It was decided to issue new silver money. "Ruble efimok", issued in 1654, was lighter than the previous one, the income from minting increased to 100%.

The first projects of transition to paper money appeared in the reign of Peter III, but actually began to be realized already under Catherine II. From 1769 to 1800 the money supply in assignments grew from 2.5 million to 213 million rubles. This led to the depreciation of paper money - what a surprise.

By the early 60s of the XIX century in Russia the state debt reached astronomical values. Up to one third of all budget expenditures were for military needs. In these conditions, the government developed a project of peasant reform, as a result of which both peasants and landlords lost. The financial gain of the state amounted to about 700 million rubles.

In 1914 they stopped paying debts to private investors from Germany. The war, they said.

In 1918, the Soviet authorities canceled the obligations of the Russian Empire. Foreign holders owned papers for about 12.5 billion gold rubles. One gold ruble contained about 0.77 grams of gold at the time. That's almost 1,000 tons of gold. Today's value is about half a trillion dollars (that's without interest). Millions of people in Europe went bankrupt back then. Almost all of them were from allied countries: Britain, France, Belgium. But twice that amount came from domestic borrowing.

And then the robbery of the country was set in motion. Forced loans - at least two or three monthly salaries each year. In 1936, the USSR authorities forcibly exchanged government bonds of 8 percent loans for bonds of 3 percent, and the repayment was postponed for 20 years.

Will there be a default in Russia? Of course there will be

Siphoning gold from hungry people through the looting system of Torgsin - this brought the state 287 million gold rubles (ten times more than the looting of the Hermitage vaults). The sum was comparable to the cost of equipment for ten giants of socialist industry: the Gorky Automobile Plant (43.2 million rubles), the Stalingrad Tractor Plant (35 million rubles), the Stalin Automobile Plant (27.9 million rubles), Dneprostroy (31 million rubles), Gospodshipnik (22.5 million rubles), the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (35 million rubles), and the Chelyabinsk Automobile Plant (27.9 million rubles).), Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (23 million rubles), Kharkov Tractor Plant (15.3 million rubles), Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (44 million rubles), Kuznetsk (25.9 million rubles) and Uralmash (15 million rubles)

After the war, not only the Allies with their colossal lend-lease supplies, which saved the USSR from imminent defeat, were screwed. 11 billion dollars in 1940s prices is crazy money. They screwed their own.

The monetary reform of 1947 was accomplished in one week. People's cash was devalued 10 times. Front-line soldiers were also screwed, canceling payments for battle orders. In the resolution of the Council of Ministers it was reported: "The monetary reform requires known sacrifices. The state takes most of the sacrifices. But it is necessary that part of the sacrifices should be assumed by the population, especially since it will be the LAST sacrifice.

In 1957, almost the entire population of the country, holding bonds - 65 loans - was thrown out. Khrushchev proposed "not to pay off the bonds, but let them remain in the hands of the holders as a sign of their contribution to the common cause of building socialism." It was decided to postpone payment on the loans for 20-25 years.

"We put these questions before the workers of the plant "Krasnoe Sormovo" and did not hear a single voice against. Now all we had to do was to show the West. They do not know how to get out of financial problems so cleverly. Comrades! The capitalist, that peddler who would slaughter his own father for half a percent, if it is profitable for him, will never understand the soul of our Soviet man. He will never believe that you are willingly doing this."

In 1961, people were robbed once again during the monetary reform. The Soviet officialdom presented the reform as "increasing the gold content and exchange rate of the ruble." Allegedly it was just denomination - instead of 10 rubles there would now be one. We'll just remove the zero and that's all. But the authorities, as usual, lied: the official ruble-dollar exchange rate was raised not by 10 times, as the money of the population changed, but by 4.44 times. That is, the real value of the money savings of Soviet people was reduced almost 2.3 times. Prices in the Soviet markets were reduced in nominal value also not 10 times, but about 5 times. That is, a Soviet citizen could buy 2 times less with the new money on the market.

You know all about Pavlov's monetary reform, about how hundreds of billions of rubles burned up in Soviet people's savings accounts, about the defaults of 1991 and 1998.

Russia Will Default

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