Zlatnik Vladimir the Great, Type I

One of fewer than a dozen authenticated specimens known to survive, the Zlatnik was Vladimir's deliberate imitation of the Byzantine solidus — almost certainly a political act rather than an economic one. Kievan Rus had no meaningful gold coinage tradition, and these pieces almost certainly never entered general circulation. They functioned as prestige objects, possibly diplomatic gifts or ceremonial payments, produced to signal that Vladimir's newly Christianized realm belonged among the recognized Christian monarchies of Europe.

The SS#1-1 designation places this among the earliest catalogued examples in the Spassky-Sotnikova corpus, the foundational reference for early Rus coinage first systematically assembled in the Soviet period.