The train has stopped in the night. It is the end of winter, 1920; it is very cold, about 25 degress below zero, some hundred kilometers west of Irkutsk. Along the train soldiers mount guard; ahead, a party of the detachment is clearing the track. Many of the soldiers have makeshift bandages around their wrists and feet: the Siberian frost has taken its toll. There is no question, however, of withdrawing the guard or stopping the work. This train is the (...) most precious treasure of the Soviet. Republic, transporting the greater part of the State gold reserves: 355 m. tons. Previously housed in the vaults of the Kazan Bank in Tartary by the Tsarist government, it was removed in 1918 by admiral Kolchak; the greatest coup in history! Not that it brought the admiral any good luck: in Siberia, at the height of the civil war, the richest man in the world was only able to get a few shipments of gold through to Vladivostok, to pay his debts to the Americans and buy arms from them. And then Kolchak died: he was shot on February 7th, the gold now returning to Kazan. (shrink)

The special links between money and history transcend that routine course of events with which are associated the great - majority of the works of mankind. It is rare to come across articles that since their initial manufacture have preserved their form almost intact for twenty-five centuries, and thus for almost the entire historical span of the civilized world, while playing an identical role in the lives of societies as diverse as those of Europe and the whole of Asia. It (...) is rare, furthermore, to find articles that are of such generalized use and interest, often even the source of common feelings. Finally, similar articles are rare, if they exist at all, which—as is the case with money—may be just as closely connected with the great currents of the political, economic and social history of entire nations and continents as with the personal fates of individuals and families: in other words, articles whose presence might equally well record the succession of epochs as the passage of days. (shrink)