10 Roubles Tug of War

Part of the large USSR Olympic series issued for the 1980 Moscow Games — the first Summer Olympics held in a socialist country — this piece belongs to a program that became politically fraught almost immediately. The United States led a boycott of the Moscow Games following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, ultimately joined by over 60 nations. The Soviet mint continued production regardless; the full commemorative program had been planned years in advance and was not curtailed.

Tug of war, notably, had been dropped from the Olympic program after 1920.