5 Kopecks Arktikugol

Arktikugol — the Soviet coal-mining trust operating on Svalbard under the terms of the 1920 Spitsbergen Treaty — issued its own internal scrip because Norwegian law governed the archipelago while Soviet enterprises operated there under treaty rights. Norwegian kroner were technically the legal currency, but the trust ran a closed company-town economy at Barentsburg and Pyramiden, and paying workers in rubles would have created foreign-exchange complications Moscow preferred to avoid. The scrip solved this neatly: denominated in kopecks and rubles, accepted only at trust-run shops and facilities, and worthless outside the settlements.

The 1961 date aligns with Khrushchev's currency reform, which redenominated Soviet money at 10:1. Arktikugol updated its scrip series accordingly.