3 Roubles A. S. Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye

Issued in the year marking the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth, this coin belongs to a broader commemorative program the Bank of Russia ran throughout 1999 across multiple denominations. Mikhailovskoye, the family estate in Pskov Oblast, was where Pushkin spent two years of internal exile between 1824 and 1826 — banished there by Alexander I following the interception of a letter expressing sympathy with atheism. The enforced isolation proved unexpectedly productive: he completed much of Boris Godunov there.