3 Roubles Arktikugol

Arktikugol — literally "Arctic Coal" — was a Soviet state trust established to mine coal on Svalbard, where Norway's 1920 treaty granting sovereignty left a specific carve-out permitting other signatory nations to conduct commercial operations. The trust issued its own scrip for use at the Barentsburg and Pyramiden settlements, entirely cut off from normal Soviet retail supply chains. Workers were paid partly in this currency and could spend it only at the company store.

The 1957 series replaced an earlier postwar issue and remained in use through the 1960s. Because the scrip never circulated beyond the archipelago, surviving examples in any condition tend to come from the same small pool of notes brought home by departing workers as souvenirs.