Rezension: Magnus Feitelberg, Das Papiergeldwesen im Räterußland, Berlin 1920

Emil Lederer: Review of Magnus Feitelberg’s Das Papiergeldwesen im Räterußland (1922)

Lederer’s short review presents Feitelberg’s 1920 pamphlet as a documentary account of Soviet paper-money issuance, based on official figures and explicitly foregoing theoretical analysis. It moves from emission practices and circulation estimates to the ruble’s residual exchange value and the future of the monetary system.

Irgendeine Beschränkung hat sich die Sowjetregierung danach in ihren Emissionen nicht auferlegt, und sie hat ja in der Tat alle ihre Staatsausgaben im Wesen durch Notenemission gedeckt.

English translation: The Soviet government, according to this, imposed no restriction whatever upon its issues, and it has indeed in essence covered all its state expenditures by the issue of notes.

This unrestricted financing is the review’s central finding. The government printed both tsarist and Duma rubles, where technically possible, alongside Soviet rubles. Feitelberg estimates circulation at 337 billion rubles in April 1920 and approximately 640 billion in October. Lederer asks why such monetary abundance, coupled with scant opportunities to buy goods, had not extinguished the ruble’s exchange value.

Das erklärt sich wohl aus der Tatsache, daß eben doch für Käufe in Rußland, zumal in den Randgebieten, russische Zahlungsmittel erforderlich sind.

English translation: This is no doubt explained by the fact that, for purchases in Russia, especially in the border regions, Russian means of payment are after all required.

The explanation rests on continuing transactional necessity, especially in peripheral regions. Lederer then cautiously interprets massive issuance as suggesting that the Soviet government envisaged either overcoming the money economy or creating an entirely new currency. His conceptual move is from emission statistics to the limits of monetary continuity: even restored production and political consolidation would scarcely permit conversion to a reasonable standard.