Mayak Collective Farm scrip — possibly collectible forgeries.
The longest series of notes. // Collector’s Shop, 1998, No. 7, p. 3.
Vladimir POLYAKOV
When perestroika began, it became easier for notaphilists—where did the former dreary standard requests to search for rarities from different periods of the past go, when any enterprise had the opportunity to issue rubles and scrip, checks and orders, and all one had to do was keep accumulating information and not refuse offers to acquire new issues. At first, even collectors who had been collecting notes for years easily made mistakes by not buying simple private issues, counting on their easy availability in the future as well. In reality, many of them flashed by like meteors, and finding them now is almost impossible. Today there are few collectors who rushed into researching issues, determining print runs, varieties, and elements of rarity. If some private issues had typographic data on the print run, most did not, and sometimes even the year of issue is difficult to establish. And after some time, when forms of ownership began to break down, abuses of these issues appeared, forgeries appeared, private issues began to cease circulation rather quickly, were withdrawn and destroyed. Nothing remained—neither the notes themselves, nor drawings, nor descriptions. Many of these issues will become rare or even unique, but the true situation will be known only when collectors undertake research.
About three years ago, a series of notes came into my hands, primitively designed, with some variety in the drawings, in which one could trace that they were ordered and produced all at once. We are talking about notes related to agricultural enterprises of the Nizhneingashsky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai. Over the course of a year, bit by bit, I managed to gather some information: they were ordered during one of the zonal meetings held through the collapsing Agroprom system and were prepared in one place for everyone who wished to acquire their own currency. However, subsequent events developed quite differently. In the district (the meeting was not in the district center), all the prepared notes remained unredeemed, and later were partially burned when the premises were cleared for other needs. Part of the notes was saved from destruction by a former collector who noticed the preparations for a bonfire. The elderly man supervising the clearing of the premises said that the register listed either 12 or 15 agricultural enterprises, but he did not remember exactly how many and which ones. He also said that the stamp color mattered. Black was for livestock workers, purple for crop growers, blue for administration and pensioners, and red for those who either did not live in or did not work at the collective farm. There were 17 denominations in total, the same quantities for all, with one thousand pieces of each denomination printed, so there could be no more than 250 sets; how many survived is unknown.
In just two small boxes, notes of seven collective farms and agricultural cooperatives were found. The denominations were: 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 kopeks; 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100 rubles (17 denominations). It turned out that one complete set contained sixty-eight notes! I have never encountered such a long one-time series, although I have been collecting for more than 50 years!
It has been noted that there are no more than ten sets of notes of the Mayak collective farm that bear the stamp of the Svetly Put collective farm (a set in one stamp color, 17 pieces rather than 68 as in other cases). Apparently, when preparing to stamp the notes, they mistakenly used a different stamp, but did not discard the defective pieces because they needed an exact count.
For a number of agricultural enterprises, the names did not correspond to the names of that period. It turned out that the organizations ordering the notes intended to make certain changes not only in names but also in the status of agricultural entities. For example, “Zavety Lenina” was actually “Put Lenina” (village of Sokolovka). They wanted to change the signboard of the branch in the village of Kasnovka from “Verny Put” (board located in the village of Pavlovka) to “Svetly Put”. “Krasny Borets” was going to be brought back from the period of consolidation, although the village with the same name had already ceased to exist. Transforming the Estonia collective farm into the “Sibirsky” cooperative would surely have deprived the district of a stable, highly profitable farm with established traditions and hardworking people.
These series, as if in a mirror, reflect a difficult period in the life of rural districts.
If any notaphilist collectors need these sets (I have several for exchange), write to me; I will definitely reply.
Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Service, retired
Vladimir POLYAKOV,
regional correspondent of “LK”.
“30099, Novosibirsk-99,
P.O. Box 147.
The longest… forgery // Collector’s Shop, 1999, No. 5(14), p. 4
Vladimir CHAGIN
This story began about two years ago, when one collector from the city of Novosibirsk started offering notaphilists who collect modern local monetary issues notes of several Siberian farms: the Mayak collective farm, Zavety Lenina, and others. But since these notes had never been seen anywhere before and contained no concrete information other than the farm name and denomination, doubts about their authenticity arose immediately.
Nevertheless, as later became clear, some collectors did buy these notes, and eventually they appeared in full in the “Catalog of Modern Self-Financed and Private Monetary Issues” (Kyiv, 1998), published by P. Ryabchenko, taking up more than eight pages! In the catalog, the farms that allegedly issued the notes were attributed to the Nizhneingashsky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai; the populated places on whose territory they were allegedly located were also indicated: Sokolovo, Maksakovo, Verkhny Ingash, Aleksandrovo, Kasyanovo, Sretenka. I note at once that some of these villages actually have different, though similar, names: Sokolovka, Maksakovka, Kasyanovka, Stretenka.
So what are these “internal settlement” scrip notes of seven collective farms and agricultural cooperatives?
Their complete set (according to the catalog) totals no less than 493 notes! This huge figure came from 17 denominations of each issue (from 1 kopek to 100 rubles), multiplied by four stamp-color variants, plus 17 Mayak notes bearing the stamps of the Svetly Put collective farm. The notes are of the same type, which, according to the owner, is explained by the fact that they were all “ordered at some meeting” at the same time.
But it was not even this incredible quantity of notes from a remote district of Krasnoyarsk Krai that suddenly appeared on the collectors’ market that raised suspicions... First, in 1991, the year in which the notes were allegedly issued, there was no particular need to print kopek denominations (from 1, 2, 3, 5 up to 50 kopeks) (and a year later, due to inflation, kopeks lost any meaning at all). It is no accident that kopek notes in local issues of Krasnoyarsk Krai from that time simply do not exist. For example, the earliest, 1989, self-financed checks of the Krasnoyarsk medical preparations plant already had the smallest denomination of 1 ruble.
Second, the very method of producing all these agricultural notes (using a computer and modern duplicating equipment) clearly does not match the time of their supposed issue. Practically all notes of enterprises and farms of Krasnoyarsk Krai at the beginning of the newest period of monetary creativity (1989–1992) were printed in the old, typographic way.
The most curious thing in this whole story is the explanations given regarding the names of the farms indicated on the scrip and their location.
At first, it was cautiously claimed that the scrip was issued in Khakassia. It was pointed out that in Khakassia, which was part of Krasnoyarsk Krai, there were, strange as it may seem, not a single collective farm (see the information reference “Krasnoyarsk Krai. Enterprises and Organizations.” Books 1, 2. Krasnoyarsk, 1991)!
But then, fortunately for the Novosibirsk collector, it was discovered that in the vast territory of Krasnoyarsk Krai there is a Nizhneingashsky District, in which there really are collective farms named Mayak and Pobeda—in the villages of Verkhny Ingash and Aleksandrovka. Now it was necessary to tie the remaining five collective farms/cooperatives to the district—and all sorts of explanations were put into play.
Where, for example, did the “Sibirsky” agricultural cooperative suddenly come from in the Nizhneingash area? It turns out it was renamed from the collective farm (or perhaps state farm) “Estonia,” though unsuccessfully: this renaming “caused no less than national outrage!”. (All quotations are from the written explanations of that very Novosibirsk collector distributing the scrip.) But—such is reality—in the Nizhneingashsky District there has never been and is no collective farm/state farm “Estonia.” There is a village called Estonia, which is not the same thing at all. So there was nothing from which to rename the “Sibirsky” cooperative. Another example: “Zavety Lenina” is “Put Lenina,” but since Lenin ended with paralysis, they wanted to reword it, and “Svetly Put” seems to sound better than the “correct path,” but it appears in the village of Kasyanovka they still have not emerged from poverty... Do any comments to all this even seem necessary?!
However, regular readers of “Collector’s Shop” can now get acquainted with similar explanations regarding the “Nizhneingash” notes themselves—in the article “The Longest Series” (“LK,” No. 7, 1998). The article is signed with the name of that very collector from Novosibirsk and enriches our knowledge of the “Nizhneingash” notes with new, sometimes dramatic details. It turns out all these notes were doomed to be burned, but (oh, a miracle!) “part of the notes was saved from destruction by a former collector who saw the preparations for a bonfire.” Another kind person became the source of invaluable information about the notes themselves: “The elderly man supervising the clearing of the premises said that the register listed either 12 or 15 agricultural enterprises.” The old man was also initiated into the secret of stamp colors: “He also said that the stamp color mattered. Black—for livestock workers, purple—for crop growers, blue—for administration and pensioners, and red—for those not living or not working at the collective farm...”.
Attaching such great significance to each stamp color—this, it seems, has never happened in the entire history of monetary emissions! Yet what practical need there could be for such color-based separation of livestock workers and, say, crop growers is impossible to guess! The category of “not living or not working at the collective farm” also remains mysterious. If they do not live or work at the collective farm, why stamp special money for them?! In short, the deeper one goes into the Nizhneingash forest, the more firewood there is, as the saying goes...
... The article provides precise information on all denominations of the “Nizhneingash” scrip, meticulously counts their number, and gives other details. But at the same time, not a word is said about where and when the “zonal meeting through Agroprom” was held, at which the scrip was allegedly ordered, or where it was printed (“in one place”). And all the heroes of the action to “save” the scrip also remained unnamed—“a former collector,” “an old man”... The secret of these omissions, in my view, is obvious and simple: all precise information (dates, surnames, and so on) is easy to verify, and such verification will expose the makers of the scrip completely...
So what is the conclusion?
All these so-called collective farm scrip notes of the Nizhneingashsky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai are nothing other than forgeries for collectors, made, apparently, at the very time they began to be offered to notaphilists, i.e., in 1997.
Moreover, to multiply their number without any additional significant cost, each series was stamped with the same stamp in four different colors. The farm names were taken as the most commonplace ones—maybe it would slip through... But after collectors who were offered the scrip raised questions about the place and time of issue, they were eventually tied to the Nizhneingashsky District. As we can see, not very successfully...
Yes, the “Nizhneingash” scrip is indeed the longest series of notes—but of counterfeit notes.