الكاتب
The Russian ruble is the official national currency of the Russian Federation, and a branch unit called the kubik, where every ruble equals one hundred kopecks. The ruble is denoted by the drawing or by the symbol "RUB" approved by the International Organization for Standardization.
History
The origins of the Russian ruble date back to the 13th century, when the word ruble was used for the first time in the Novgorod principality (one of the northwestern cities of Russia) to denote ingots made of silver (about two hundred grams, which were divided into several pieces for circulation among people as cash, instead of leather. And animal furs used before that date.
The name of the ruble was derived from the word "rubelli", which means cracks, due to the fact that the silver ingots had slits that allowed them to be easily split into pieces and used in performance operations.
The ruble remained poorly traded among the people due to its high value, as one bar was enough to buy an entire herd of cows, for example. Most people were forced to use foreign coins as a substitute for it until the beginning of the 18th century, when Tsar Peter I (or the Great) issued small silver coins in 1704.
Bank papers
The ruble was issued in the form of bank notes at the beginning of the nineteenth century in order to facilitate monetary circulation, and the Russians used silver coins and bank notes together in their financial dealings. However, the massive issuance of these notes by the Central Bank for the purpose of financing the growing spending of the state led to a rapid collapse of the value of these notes after the middle of the nineteenth century.
In 1897, like the rest of the European powers, the authorities replaced the silver ruble with other coins minted in gold. But the gold ruble disappeared from circulation at the start of World War I, and bank notes were no longer convertible into gold or silver.
In the time of the civil war, after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Russia knew an unbridled inflation that led to the collapse of the value of the ruble again, so the Communists tried to cancel money, believing that continuing to use it impedes the establishment of a society free of class, and thinking that people can dispense with it.
But the emergence of several local currencies in different parts of the country prompted the ruling regime to carry out monetary reform and restore the ruble to circulation starting in 1932, and it became known as the Soviet ruble until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Russian ruble was adopted as a new official currency for the Russian Federation in 1992, and its value was very weak compared to the Soviet period, when one dollar was equivalent to more than five thousand rubles, and the price of a newspaper, for example, was up to eight hundred rubles.
Russia passed through a severe economic crisis during 1997 and 1998, which deepened the ruble problems, so the authorities were forced to issue a new ruble equivalent to a thousand old rubles.
Crises
The ruble has lived through a crisis since 2014, when its value began to collapse against other currencies, where the euro, for example, reached 100 rubles on December 16, 2014.
The value of the ruble fluctuated over the following months, between high and low. After the euro fell to less than seventy rubles in November 2015, it rose again to more than ninety rubles in February 2016, and then decreased again after that.
On the one hand, the causes of this crisis are due to the economic sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, following the conflict in Ukraine and the secession of the Crimean Peninsula from it. These sanctions have negatively affected Russian exports to the European Union countries and on foreign investment flows to Russia.
These sanctions also contributed significantly to the decline in the amount of hard currency entering the country in exchange for an increase in the amount of money that left the Russian soil (withdrawal of investments and bank deposits).
The ruble crisis in 2016, on the other hand, is due to a significant drop in oil prices since mid-2014, in a country whose exports are mainly based on the hydrocarbon sector (oil and natural gas) and whose economy suffers from lack of diversification.
This has negatively affected the state’s foreign exchange earnings, against the increasing need to develop foreign exchange reserves to meet the increasing demand due to the increase in Russian households and companies ’imports of consumer and equipment goods.