A denga (, ) was a Russian monetary unit with a value latterly equal to kopeck (100 kopecks = 1 Russian ruble). The denga was introduced in the second half of the 14th century during the reign of Dmitry Donskoy.
Etymology
The Russian word
denga is borrowed from
Tatar language (cf. Chagatay:
täŋkä; ; ; ). Other proposals made are:
Middle Persian:
dāng,
New Persian:
dānag ('coin'), whereas other authors saw the word close to the Turkic word
tamga ('mark, stamp').
The plural form of denga, dengi (деньги) has become the usual Russian word for "money".
History
Production of
dengi as minted coins began in the middle of the 14th century, during the reign of
Dmitry Donskoy.
In their earliest form, they were imitations of the silver coinage of the khans of the
Golden Horde, usually bearing blundered or meaningless . Weighing about a gram, they were prepared by cutting silver wire into measured lengths, beating each length flat, and then striking the resulting
Planchet between two dies. This resulted in slightly elongated coins, often showing traces of the original wire from which they had been taken. From Dmitry Donskoy's time onward, the coins began to take a more Russian form, with depictions of people, animals and Russian legends, although legends partly in
Arabic (the official language of the Horde) persisted on some coins until the time of
Ivan III.
Dengi were made only in the Russian princedoms; the state of Novgorod and the city of Pskov made their own slightly larger coins. In the Pskov Judicial Charter, the general court fee ( podsudnichye) is set to 10 dengi. 220 dengi were equivalent to one Russian ruble and 30 Grivna in Pskov.
In 1535, a reform took place, with the northern "novgorodka" being valued at twice the southern denga or "moskovka". In the 1540s novgorodkas depicting a horseman with a spear (Russian kop'yo копьё) began to be made, and novgorodkas were thenceforth known as kopecks. The minting of silver dengi seems to have decreased after the 16th century, as they are found less often in hoards, but they are known until the reign of Peter the Great. By that time the coinage had devalued so far that dengi weighed only about 0.14 grams, and were of little practical use. In the coinage reform of 1700 they reappeared as much larger copper coins, and mintage continued, off and on, until 1916, just before the Romanov dynasty was overthrown in 1917.
Coins minted in the 18th century invariably showed the denomination as denga, but during parts of the 19th century this was replaced by the word denezhka, the diminutive form of denga. Later still the denomination was shown simply as kopeck.
Post-reform silver denga mintage
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Ivan IV (1535–1584)
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Feodor I (1584–1594)
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Michael (1613–1645)
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Alexis (1645–1655, 1663–1676)
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Feodor III (1676–1682)
-
Ivan V (during joint rule with Peter the Great) (1683–1696)
-
Peter the Great (includes joint rule with Ivan V) (1683–1717)
Silver dengi were not minted during the last years of Feodor I's rule, nor during the Time of Troubles, though silver wire kopecks were minted throughout this period, including emissions by False Dmitry and invaders.
Copper denga mintage
During the time of Peter the Great,
dengi transitioned from silver to copper, and from undated to Byzantine dates in Cyrillic to
Julian calendar in Cyrillic. After Peter's reign, dates were denoted using the common notation of
Arabic numerals.
-
Alexis (1654–1663, production ended in the aftermath of the Copper riot)
-
Peter the Great (1700–1718)
-
Anna Ioannovna (1730–1731, 1734–1740)
-
Ivan VI of Russia (1741)
-
Elizabeth Petrovna (1743–1754, 1757–1760)
-
Peter III of Russia (1762)
-
Catherine II of Russia (1764, 1766–1775, 1783–1796)
-
Paul I of Russia (1797–1801)
See also
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Glossary of Russian currency
-
Tanka (coin)
Notes
Sources
-
-
Uzdennikov V., Монеты России (1700—1917) Coins. Издание третье. — М.: Collector's Books; IP Media Inc., 2004.
External links
