Bonds are debt obligations issued by the state Treasury, institutions, and enterprises and used as a means of purchase and payment. Bonds are also called state banknotes and treasury notes that have fallen out of use and become collectible. Both of them are original historical sources. In this capacity, they are studied by an auxiliary historical discipline - bonistics. Paper banknotes, like coins, are government documents. By putting them into circulation, the issuer (i.e., the issuing entity) expresses its ideology in them in part by means of emblems, mottos, texts, seals, drawings, ornaments, etc. According to the main elements - signs that the issuer provided with paper money, bonists determine the place and time of their issue, the territory of circulation, and the class belonging of the issuer.

Paper money in Europe was first introduced in Sweden in 1662. These first bills contributed to the success of paper money circulation. In Russia, paper money-assignats appeared in circulation in 1769, in connection with the Russo-Turkish war. Since the end of the 18th century, the flow of paper banknotes has overwhelmed European markets, and by the beginning of the 20th century, there was no state in the world that did not use paper for printing banknotes.

At the beginning of the First World War, the exchange of banknotes for gold was discontinued. Metal exchange coins (silver and even copper) were thesavored (accumulated) by both the state and the population. There was a crisis in the exchange of large bills. Instead of small coins that disappeared from circulation, they began to resort to printing paper coins. In Russia, treasury exchange paper signs were issued in denominations from 1 to 50 kopecks. In August 1914, the Austro-Hungarian government was forced by the exchange crisis to issue special "money notebooks" depicting small-denomination coins. Such" notebooks " were purchased by merchants and entrepreneurs to settle accounts with customers. In the course of the war, the Governments of the belligerent States were forced to use the printing press even more widely to cover the growing military expenditures. The mass of paper coins that were not provided with material values began to flow into circulation, and their purchasing power plummeted catastrophically. 1

Due to the" money famine " (lack of money, especially small denominations - small change), increased local printing of banknotes began. Local and private money appeared in circulation - bonds. They were issued by municipalities and cooperative unions, shops and enterprises, schools and theaters, voluntary societies and tramway departments, pharmacies and small shopkeepers, railways and military units. Such bonds were issued in circulation both with and without the consent of the authorities. In Russia, temporary local and private paper money for the most part was constantly referred to as "bonds". But there were also other names for this money: mark, countermark, temporary sign, change sign, settlement sign, in Germany - notgeld (forced money), in France-treasury bonds, etc.

After the First World War, European states unified and stabilized their monetary systems. Withdrawn from circulation during the monetary reforms, the masses of paper money became collectible.

In our country, a huge number of ob-

1 In Russia, by October 1917, the purchasing power of the ruble had fallen to its previous value of 7 kopecks. Approximately the same situation has developed in other European countries (Finance and Credit of the USSR, M. 1964, p. 63).

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mandatory banknotes and non-mandatory ones (local and private bonds) appeared during the years of the civil War and the restoration of the national economy of the USSR. According to incomplete data, over 20 thousand of them were produced during that period.2 items. Along with the RSFSR, banknotes were issued by other Soviet republics, local authorities, organizations and enterprises. During the monetary reform of 1922-1924, not all Soviet paper money was exchanged: a significant part of the mandatory, as well as local and private ones, also remained with the population3 .

During the years of the imperialist military intervention and the civil war, the interventionists 'money was also in circulation - German marks and military "ost-rubles", Austrian crowns, Japanese yen, British pounds sterling, American dollars, etc. A large number of banknotes were issued by various counter-revolutionary governments-Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, Wrangel, etc.Some issues reached amounts amounting to billions or even trillions of rubles, others existed only in trial copies. Some were produced on paper with filigrees and artistically decorated, others - on cardboard or wrapping paper of primitive manufacture. Issues of money issued by counter-revolutionary bodies were later annulled by the Soviet authorities. A small part of this money was taken abroad by the White Guards and interventionists, the bulk remained in the hands of the population. Now these paper banknotes are preserved as documents of the past in archives, museums and personal collections.

There are no fundamental studies on the history of paper banknotes and bonds circulating in our country yet. Meanwhile, immediately after the civil war, an amateur collection of paper banknotes appeared among a part of the population. In 1923, a voluntary All-Union society of collectors (VOK) was formed, which included a separate section of bonists. VOK began publishing magazines that published information materials on bonistics 4 . This was a period of accumulation of factual material. By the mid-1920s, Bonists already had the first catalogues available .5 In 1924, a more detailed catalog of domestic banknotes was published under the editorship of F. G. Chuchin6 . Bonists raised questions about the methods of selecting banknotes, classifying them, creating reference books, catalogs, etc .at the WOC congresses. 7 This marked the beginning of the systematization of Soviet bonistics materials. In the mid-1930s, the Bonist Voluntary Society folded its activities. Only a few enthusiasts continued to study bon 8 . In the 60s, due to the general development of special historical disciplines, interest in paper banknotes increased again9 . A section of bonists is being created at the All-Union Society of Philatelists (VOF), which began to promote Soviet paper banknotes as historical sources and cultural monuments of the past10 . Increasingly, magazines, central and local newspapers publish information about domestic banknotes. Along with amateur notes, a number of research papers are published.-

2 The calculation was made by the author on the basis of catalogues on domestic paper banknotes and bonds.

3 This is due to the fact that for various reasons, not all amounts of paper money were presented for exchange. Thus, banknotes of the 1918 model were not presented for exchange in the amount of more than 160 billion rubles, and the 1919 model -568 billion rubles. The same applies to other issues (Our Money Circulation 1914-1925, Moscow, 1926, pp. 98-101, 103-109).

4 In the 1920s, the VOC and its branches published more than 10 journals; they published articles on issues of domestic bonistics.

5 Brailovsky A.M. Denezhnye znaki russkoy revolyutsii 1917-1922 gg. Tiflis, 1922; Katsitadze V. Catalog of monetary signs of the Russian Revolution. Tiflis 1924; Kobyakov A. Review of bonds, cheques, etc. issued on the territory of the former Russian Empire. - Russian Collector, 1922, NN 1-4

6 Paper banknotes issued on the territory of the former Russian Empire during the period from 1769 to 1924 Moscow 1924. In 1927, this catalog was reissued with additions and changes.

7 See the resolutions of the Bonist section at the First Congress of the WOK in 1924, at the Second Congress in 1925, and at the third Congress in 1927.

8 Thus, in 1938, V. M. Sokolov attempted to compile a complete catalog of banknotes and bonds issued on the territory of the USSR in 1914-1925. Issues 6 ("North Caucasus"), 7 ("Transcaucasia"), 8 ("Central Asia") are known. V. M. Sokolov's catalog was kept by the Leningrad bonist Ya. L. Schreiber.

9 See: Metz N. D. Our ruble. M 1960; Elizavetin G. Money. M 1965; et al.

10 See the collection "Soviet Collector" for 1963-1983, NN 1-21, and the journal "Philately of the USSR" for 1966-1970.

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on the issues of bonistics". Information about banknotes now appears more frequently on the pages of historical novels and memoirs: writers and memoirists pay attention to the history of paper banknotes 12 . Currently, sections of bonists, as well as local branches of the SAI and the Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, museums and archives conduct comprehensive work on the study of bon. Exhibitions are organized, individual materials on Soviet money issues are published, and relevant data are included in museum guides.

Bonistics has long had a different approach to determining monetary documents based on their validity. In some cases, such a document was understood as a generally binding monetary sign, while in others the same document was considered as a non-generally binding one, such as a bon. This made classification difficult. Thus, V. Solovyov referred to nine types of monetary documents as generally obligatory monetary signs, among which are issues of "factories, factories, mines, mines"," prisoner-of-war camps","cities, villages, towns" 13, i.e. money that is not generally obligatory, since the issue of paper money by a factory was its internal business, and such "money" served only the workers and employees of this enterprise; the issue of "cities, villages, towns" is already a local issue.

The Central Bureau of the Bonist section published a draft selection of banknotes in 1926. The author of the project proposed to divide all paper banknotes into two classes and distinguish between them according to the following criteria:" If the issued sign was intended for circulation among citizens of the entire locality, the sign is generally mandatory; a sign intended for circulation among any group of the locality is not generally mandatory " 14 . This selection of banknotes was even more confusing, since the definition of "circulation between citizens of the entire locality" gave some researchers the right to include in the concept of "banknote" such documents that were understood by others as bona. For example, only in Sevastopol in 1918-1921 there were about 400 types of paper money in circulation, which were circulated throughout the city, but only two dozen were generally binding, while the rest were local and private.

The situation was no better with the proposals of other bonists .15 The method of selecting paper money according to its validity, the principle of classification, the terminology itself, and other issues of bonistics were not solved at that time and remain partially open to this day16 . In this regard, we will have to-

11 Senkevich D. Soviet national paper money signs. In sat. Soviet Collector, No. 1, 1963; E. Gribanov. What is numismatics and bonistics? - Philately of the USSR, 1967, N 4; Navolochkin N. Primorsky ruble fights. In sat. Soviet collector. 1970; and others.

12 Paustovsky K. Vremya bol'shikh zhidaniy [Time of great expectations]. Odessa. 1961, p. 22-24; Dubinsky I. Trumpeters sound the alarm. Moscow 1961, p. 78; Selvinekiy I. O, my youth! - October, 1966, N 7; Meyener D. Mirages and reality. Moscow, 1968, pp. 100-101; et al.

13 V. Solovyov What should bonist collect? - Soviet philatelist-Soviet collector, 1926, N 3.

14 To all sections of WOK bonists (Section's request for project B. Vyazelshchikova). - Ibid., No. 6.

15 Sokolov V. Bonds of non-obligatory treatment. - Soviet Philatelist, 1927, N 9; his wife E. On the work of the bonists ' section at the IV Congress of the SAI. - Soviet Collector, 1929, N 4-6; Sitnikov D. It's time to stand on a solid path. - Monthly Bulletin of the Southern branch of the Soviet Philatelic Association, Kharkov, 1927, N 6; Ushkov B. K voprosu klassifikatsii bon. - Soviet Collector, 1930, N 7; NICKNAME of the Ural branch of the Higher Education Institution. What kind of folder we need. - Ibid.; Vigelev S. Catalog of bonds of non-mandatory circulation (private, issued on the territory of the USSR in 1914-1925). - Soviet Collector, 1928, N 5.

16 The scheme proposed by D. A. Senkevich for the classification of paper banknotes, bon and published in the collection " Soviet Collector "(1983), has a number of positive aspects. The author tried to approach the classification of domestic banknotes from a class perspective. However, this scheme also does not solve the problem due to the lack of a clear distinction between Soviet and non-Soviet issues, as well as between the categories of money according to their competence in circulation. For example, the author includes in the category of local money issues of the Soviet governments (uk. soch., p. 142, item 2-a), and in the explanatory part of the classification (p. 145, item 2-a) refers to them the money of the Azerbaijani, Armenian and Georgian SSR, which is incorrect, because these issues were not local, a generally binding. In the third group of local (and not private, as is customary in specialized literature) issues, the author does not separate Soviet and non-Soviet issues included in the category from "different enterprises and organizations" (p.142, item 3-a). Artificially

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it is advisable to divide domestic paper banknotes into three parts, according to their validity: state issues, which are generally binding; non-generally binding, temporary bonds that appeared in circulation as a result of inflation, wars, revolutions (these include local issues: bonds that were issued under the security of currencies of central or local banks, goods, property large enterprises, institutions, cooperatives), as well as bonds of small divisions of the national economy; private bonds (it is better to replace the term "private" with "internal", since they serve workers and employees of organizations and enterprises or consumers of small cooperatives). The treatment of private bonds was based on mutual trust, without any guarantees and security.

In addition to the above-mentioned categories of banknotes, bonds and their surrogates, there are "fantastic" bonds: issues of non-existent issuers. They were designed specifically for collectors. These paper signs are of limited interest.

As for the classification, it should use three categories for domestic banknotes: Russian banknotes from 1769 to October 1917; Soviet issues from October 1917; and banknotes of the internal and external counter-revolution. This division is not random. After all, each issue is an instrument of economic and political domination of certain classes. The features found on paper banknotes can be really studied primarily only on the basis of class analysis. The study of such features with the involvement of documentary materials, scientific, reference and memoir literature helps to reveal the political nature and economic purpose of this issue, makes it possible to establish the goals and reasons for its appearance, and identify the class position of the issuer. The so-called main features of bon are also investigated.17: emblematics (emblems, coats of arms and symbolic signs); paleography (texts, written signs, orthography); sphragistics (seals, perforations, congreves, stamps); chronology (dates); metrology (the ratio between a large bill and its fractional parts); ornamentalism (graphic and pictorial decorations); iconography (portrait images); filigree (watermarks and the material on which the base of the banknote is made); philatelic (stamps on banknotes); epigraphy (overprints of later origin).

The nature of a paper currency sign is that it is inextricably linked to the functioning of the state. Therefore, any change in the main attribute indicates changes in the socio-economic and political nature. It is precisely this aspect of the matter that bonistics serves as a historical science. With its specific methodology and comprehensive analysis of elements on paper banknotes, bonds and money surrogates, it helps to identify additional information about the issuer, reveals such details of the historical process that may not be known from other sources.

he created the group " Special Purpose Signs "(p. 142, fig. 1, item C), which includes" Camp issues in Russia for prisoners of war of the First World War "and" Traveler's Checks of the State Bank of the USSR " (p.151, items b, e). However, they differ in class characteristics. Such bonds should be included in the section "Private (internal) bonds", but the author covers only the signs of "Private firms and enterprises" (p. 142, fig. 1, item 3-b).

17 Тхоржевський Р. паперові грошові знаки (бони) як історичне джерело вивчення радянського суспільства періоду 1917 - 1925 pp. - Український історичний журнал, 1971, N 12.

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