Reading the runes on the rouble’s rim —they say ‘In Gold We Trust’

For my birthday, I have been given a gold rouble. It’s the thought that matters, of course — but which would you say was worth more: the rouble, or the gold? The promise to pay, or the precious metal? In the rouble’s homeland this question has always been a no-brainer. Ninety years ago Russia went to war, backed by gold reserves that were the biggest in the world. Five years later, when civil war had supervened, Admiral Kolchak was retreating down the Trans-Siberian Railway with a fleet of special trains, one of which held the reserves. By what may have been a coincidence, this train left the rails and was wrecked, and horsemen swooped out of the night and took the gold away. Some of the missing ingots were later identified on a truck in the Vatican’s private railway sidings. Much the same trick was repeated when the Soviet Union broke up.