From the early 1960s, the USSR began developing active cooperation with socialist and developing countries. Thousands of Soviet specialists were sent abroad to work. The government faced the question of how to "protect" them from foreign currency.
A practical need arose to create a system in which citizens would not receive foreign currency in their hands and would spend the funds earned in foreign currency at home.
The most important parts of the new system became the USSR Bank for Foreign Trade (Vneshtorgbank of the USSR) and the all-Union association Vnesposyltorg. In the former, citizens were required to keep foreign currency in the form of "foreign-currency rubles," and through the network of Vnesposyltorg stores and firms, to spend it.
It is important to note that, unlike other socialist countries, "substitutes" for currency in the USSR were issued not for foreigners, but for the country's own citizens.
The detachable cruise check of Vnesheconombank (Vneshtorgbank) of the USSR is a monetary obligation of Vnesheconombank (Vneshtorgbank) of the USSR to pay the amount indicated on the check. The checks were bound into checkbooks of the corresponding denomination. The detachable checks were intended for payments by certain categories of citizens for goods and services on Soviet cruise ships operating on international routes. All checks were printed by GOZNAK.
The check depicts the motor ship "Shota Rustaveli".
The history of the motor ship "Shota Rustaveli" began with its construction in 1968 at the Mathias Thesen Werft shipyard in Germany. On board the liner there was a splendid interior: paintings, tapestries, and ornamentation in a Georgian style, bright spacious cabins with shower stalls, most of which were equipped with safes.
For comfortable conditions, the vessel was fitted with stabilizers to reduce rolling. For passengers' leisure, the ship provided two swimming pools and saunas, a gym, a massage room, a sports area on the upper deck, a cinema hall, a disco, seven bars with a menu for every taste (one of them a night bar), a casino, a slot-machine hall, a children's club, shops, a hairdresser, and a medical station. The motor ship was built by order of the USSR Ministry of the Merchant Fleet for the Black Sea region and was considered the fourth in a series of five sister ships.
From July 1968, the passenger liner "Shota Rustaveli" began operating sea cruises between the ports of Odessa and Batumi, and two months later reached the shores of the United Kingdom. In the port of Southampton, the ship took tourists on board and departed on a three-month round-the-world cruise. The route passed through the ports of Las Palmas, Sydney, Auckland, Papeete, and Panama. During such a long voyage, the vessel left almost 26,000 nautical miles astern and crossed the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Tasman Sea and the Caribbean Sea.
The passenger vessel was chartered by various foreign companies: Grandi Viaggi, Italnord, Orienturist, Transtour, and others. Guests of the comfortable liner included tourists from the republics of the Soviet Union, including prominent figures: on August 20, 1973, Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Vlady, and her two sons, Pierre and Voldemar, traveled on the ship.
In 2002, after completing extensive repairs in the port of Sevastopol, the motor ship, under the new name "Assedo" (spelled in reverse, it means Odessa, the ship's home port), as the property of Kaalbye Shipping Ltd Ukraine, began operating cruise voyages in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean, and also calling at ports in Western Europe.
Soon after prolonged passages, the technical condition of the liner "Assedo" deteriorated and no longer met the constantly increasing international requirements, and on November 28, 2003, the ship was sent to be scrapped in the Indian port of Alang.