INTRODUCTION 
The recent refusal of the Assay Office to accept a $5,000,000 
shipment of Soviet gold brings up the interesting question of the 
Russian gold reserve. Among the various studies of this subject 
the basic and most authoritative appear to be a survey by V. No- 
vitzky, former Assistant Minister of Finance in the Imperial Rus- 
sian Government, and the chapter on the dissipation of the Russian 
gold reserve in the volumes on European Currency and Finance 
orepared by the United States Senate Commission of Gold and 
Silver Inquiry. These two studies, which we reprint in this booklet, 
indicate that about two-fifths of the Russian gold reserve amounting 
lo 1,600,000,000 rubles in 1914, was transferred by the Imperial 
Government to the Allies during the war period, approximately one 
bith was disposed of by the “white” generals fighting the Bolshe- 
viki and in payments under the several peace treaties to Germany 
and some of the independent states created on the western border 
of Russia. This left only about 680,000,000 rubles in the hands 
of the Soviet Government at the beginning of 1920. The Senate 
Inquiry, on the basis of customs statistics of various countries, 
proves that this Soviet gold reserve of approximately $350,000,000 
during the following three years found its way by various channels 
to the United States. Corroboration of this conclusion is also found 
n contemporary press statements which are also reprinted in his 
vamphlet. 
As stated by Mr. Scheinman, Chairman of the Soviet State 
Bank, and corroborated by statistical data, (see pp. 37, 67) the 
present gold reserve of the Soviet Union represents either gold 
newly mined within the Soviet territory, or else has been acquired 
by the State Bank of the U.S.S.R. on the Russian and foreign 
markets. The $5,000,000 shipment of gold which the United States 
Assay Office refused to handle, came from the newly created reserve. 
The gold reserve held by the Soviet authorities in 1920 was ex- 
ported to pay for its purchases abroad at the time when the situation 
in Russia did not permit of any exports of Russian products to for- 
eign countries. This gold ultimately found its way to the United 
States for the reason that currencies in Europe were depreciated 
and the United States during these years was the only country with an