5 Kopeks Arktikugol

Arktikugol — the Soviet state coal trust operating on Svalbard — issued its own scrip for use at the company store in Barentsburg, where Norwegian kroner were theoretically the local currency under the terms of the 1920 Spitsbergen Treaty. The scrip sidestepped that awkwardness entirely, functioning as an internal wage-and-purchase system that kept Soviet currency out of Norwegian-administered territory while ensuring workers had no practical reason to engage with the outside economy.

The 1957 series replaced an earlier postwar issue and remained in use through the late Soviet period. Denominations are small by design — coal miners' canteen purchases, not savings instruments.