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20 Kopecks
| Issuer | Arktikugol Trust (Государственный трест «Арктикуголь») |
|---|---|
| Year | 1979 |
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| Value | 20 Kopecks (0.20 SUR) |
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| Obverse description | Orange guilloche underprint covers the entire note field. Two purple rosette vignettes bearing the numeral '20' are placed at left and right. Central text in Cyrillic identifies the issuing authority as the USSR Ministry of the Coal Industry and the State Trust 'Arktikugol', with a serial number printed in red below the word 'ТАЛОН'. The denomination 'ДВАДЦАТЬ КОПЕЕК' appears in large bold Cyrillic lettering across the lower portion, above a note of intended use for internal settlements at Arktikugol enterprises. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | СССР МИНИСТЕРСТВО УГОЛЬНОЙ ПРОМЫШЛЕННОСТИ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ТРЕСТ «АРКТИКУГОЛЬ» ТАЛОН № ДВАДЦАТЬ КОПЕЕК ДЛЯ ВНУТРЕННИХ РАСЧЕТОВ НА ПРЕДПРИЯТИЯХ «АРКТИКУГЛЯ» |
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| Comments |
Arktikugol — the Soviet state coal trust operating the mines at Barentsburg and Pyramiden on Svalbard — issued its own scrip currency because the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 prevents any single signatory from imposing its currency as the exclusive medium of exchange on the archipelago. The Soviet Union's solution was to create a parallel internal economy: workers were paid partly in this trust scrip, which was only valid within the Soviet settlements and could not leave them. It kept hard currency inside the system.
The 1979 series replaced an earlier issue and continued the same functional logic. These notes circulated in the trust's shops, canteens, and facilities at Barentsburg until the settlement's population declined sharply after the 1996 Vnukovo Airlines crash killed 141 people, most of them mine workers and their families.