Russia's Gold

Abstract

How many lives this metal has ruined! Over and over again, passions have boiled around it, and this is true even now. At the peak of the election campaign to the State Duma, the Russian president ordered the state's debts to pensioners be paid by selling part of our precious metal reserve. Precious metals means, first and foremost, gold. In early 1995 Russia's gold reserves amounted to 321.9 tons, according to Evgenii Bychkov. Russian Precious Metals and Gems Committee [Roskomdragmet] chairman. In an address to the State Duma, the first deputy minister of finance of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Petrov, reported that this reserve had dropped to only 115 tons by 1 October 1995. But the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security, Viktor Iliukhin, immediately announced that Russia had spent almost all of its gold reserves: 900 tons have been taken out of the country in the last few years, whereas 8,200 tons of the "despised metal" lie stored in the underground coffers of Fort Knox (the U.S. Treasury depository).