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The ruble or rouble (рубль) is the currency of the Russian Federation (and formerly, of the Soviet Union). One ruble can be divided into 100 kopeks (копе́йка). The ISO 4217 currency code for the ruble is now RUB; the former code, RUR, is now obsolete.
In Russian, an archaic name for "ruble", tselkovyi, is known, which is a shortening of the "tselkovyi ruble".
The ruble has been the Russian unit of currency for many centuries. The word "ruble" is derived from the Russian verb rubit, i.e., to cut. Historically, "ruble" was a piece of a certain weight cut off a silver grivna ingot, hence the name.
Later, the name "ruble" was applied to new Russian coins. Over the time the amount of precious metal in a ruble varied. Peter I standardized the ruble coin in 1704 to 28 gram of silver. While ruble coins were mostly silver, sometimes they were minted of gold, and some 19th century coins were platinum. The gold ruble introduced in 1897 was equal to 0,774235 g of gold. The Soviet ruble of 1961 was theoretically equal to 0,987412 g of gold. Rubles are no longer linked to a gold standard.
Ten ruble coins are sometimes informally named chervonets (черво́нец). Formerly it was a 3-ruble gold coin and later a 10-ruble bill.
All Russian paper money is currently printed at the state-owned factory Goznak, which was organized on June 6, 1919 and has continued to operate ever since.