How much was a rouble worth in 1880?

[Alina Makin]

It depends on what kind of ruble you mean here.  If the inheritance was 
calculated in paper rubles, we could estimate it as follows: 

In 1880 the paper ruble fell again - it was worth 0.648 gold rubles in January 
1880, compared to 0.76 gold rubles in January 1875.  
(http://som.yale.edu/~drey/rusbonds/rus_ms.htm).  By the end of the 18th 
century and through 1885, the gold ruble was set to almost exactly equal to 
1.2 grams of pure gold. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_ruble).  Thus, in 
terms of gold content, the paper ruble in 1880 “contained” 64.8% of gold, 
which equals 0.78 grams of pure, 24 karat gold.  According to the precious 
metal calculator (http://dendritics.com/scales/metal-calc.asp), in today’s US 
$$ that amount of gold would be worth $16.84.  Thus, if we multiply 3500 
paper rubles that Ivan Ilyich’s wife got after his death by that amount, today 
it would be worth $58,940 – a decent, but not very large inheritance in 
today’s economy.


Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Alina Makin
University of Michigan

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