Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I overhauled Russia's coinage system beginning in 1698, introducing machine-struck coins to replace the hand-cut wire money that had circulated for centuries. The tiny silver kopeck occupied the lowest rung of the new decimal system — a denomination so small that its weight was dictated by the practical floor of what a silver flan could sustain. 1709 places this coin squarely in the year of Poltava, the crushing Swedish defeat that effectively ended Charles XII as a military threat and freed Peter to consolidate his western reforms.