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