In the Soviet Union, vending machines appeared on a mass scale by the mid-1950s at the initiative of N.S. Khrushchev, who wanted in many ways to copy the U.S. experience.
Some Soviet machines used special tokens instead of coins. There were two reasons for this: first, it reduced the chance that the means of payment would get stuck in the machine; second, it made cheating during a purchase more difficult.
The number on the front side indicated what could be bought with that particular piece. Tokens with values from 1 to 4 were used to buy alcoholic beverages—mostly wine or beer.