2 Roubles N.E. Zhukovsky

Nikolai Zhukovsky, the aerodynamics theorist whose work on lift directly underpinned early Soviet aviation doctrine, was commemorated here on the 130th anniversary of his birth. The choice of .500 fineness — rather than the .900 silver used in Russia's more prestigious commemorative series — placed this squarely in the lower tier of the Bank of Russia's mid-1990s collector program, a period when the state was issuing commemoratives at an aggressive pace while still navigating post-Soviet monetary instability.