5 Kopeks Arktikugol

Arktikugol — the Soviet Arctic coal trust — operated the Svalbard mining settlements under the terms of the 1920 Spitsbergen Treaty, which granted Norway sovereignty but allowed other signatory nations to conduct commercial activity on the archipelago. Because Svalbard sat outside Soviet territory proper, ordinary Soviet rubles could not legally circulate there in the usual sense, which gave rise to these trust-issued scrip notes, redeemable only within the company's own settlements at Barentsburg and later Pyramiden.

The 1935 series was printed during a period of aggressive Soviet expansion of the Svalbard operation, as Stalin's government sought to maximize coal output from the High Arctic. Workers were paid in this scrip and could spend it only at the trust's own stores — a closed-loop system that gave management complete control over purchasing.

The NP#AR13A designation places this among the lower denominations of the 1935 issue, where surviving examples tend to show heavier wear than the higher values.