W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 357
V. RUSSIA
The earliest introduction to our knowledge of Russian
monetary economy brings us into contact with a system of
barter, under which whole skins of squirrels, martins, and
other fur-bearing animals, with the claws and teeth intact,
were admitted as equivalents for a metallic medium. A
modification of this primitive and inconvenient policy at a
subsequent date lay in the use of strips of the leather so
obtained, stamped with certain characters and the same
;
material also assumed the circular form. But the denga,
which preceded the kope'ika as the Russian unit, may perhaps
furnish us with some justification for the surmise that
the prevalent shape of the second period of skin-money was
similar to the small, irregular oblong which we find current
from the time of Ivan the Terrible down to the general
reform of the coinage in the latter part of the reign of Peter
the Great (1707-17).
The most ancient metallic coinage of Russia or Muscovy
was of two distinct classes : I. The currency of the grandduchy
of Kief or Kiev, bearing various Christian symbols,
but copied as to fabric and character from Byzantine prototypes
2. The
; tribute-money exacted on repeated occasions
by the Crim Tartars, and carrying on its face an inscription
or token (tamghd) significant of its
purpose and origin. 1
The
latter scarcely fall within the category of currency, as there
is little doubt that the value struck merely represented the
amount of this levy enforced by the invader and the ;
probably
limited production at Kiev of Gra^co- Muscovite pieces in
silver and gold, not unlike those in the Bulgarian and
Servian mediaeval series, and of the succession of deugai,
must have continued down to the seventeenth century to
answer all demands outside those met by exchange. In
1852 a find occurred at Nejine
of an assortment of silver
1
See what is said below of a similar token on the Genoese colonial coinage
at Caffa in" the Crimea, and its apparent identity with the so-termed portal or
chatel on the French gros tournois.