Epilogue

Abstract After the end of the New Economic Policy, the Soviet ruble remained inconvertible. With the creation of the planned command economy, money lost its economic meaning as a measure of value. However, its political role became even more significant. The government used the ruble as a means of political control and class struggle. The monetary reforms of 1947 and 1961 repeated the patterns of imperial reforms because they pursued the interests of the state and confiscated the private wealth of Soviet citizens. In the late 1980s, the Soviet government tried to fix its monetary system without changing the principles of political organization and economic governance. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the ruble turned into the currency of sovereign Russia, but even in the reforms of the 1990s, one could see the legacy of the imperial and Soviet past. The ruble remained the tool of state governance and political control.