3 Roubles Russian soldiers from the Patriotic War of 1812

Issued as part of Russia's long-running commemorative program marking the Napoleonic campaigns, this coin references the conflict Russians still officially call the Otechestvennaya Voyna — the Patriotic War — a term coined deliberately in 1812 to frame the struggle as a national rather than dynastic cause. The distinction mattered: Alexander I needed mass mobilization, not just professional armies, and the language of fatherland rather than tsar proved effective in drawing irregular militia and peasant partisans into the fight.