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Adenga (Russian:деньга,[a]pl.деньги,dengi) was a Russian monetary unit with a value latterly equal to1⁄2kopeck (100 kopecks = 1Russian ruble). The denga was introduced in the second half of the 14th century during the reign ofDmitry Donskoy.
The Russian worddenga is borrowed fromTatar (cf.Chagatay:täŋkä;Kazakh:teŋgä;Mongolian:teŋge;lit. 'small silver coin'). Other proposals made are:Middle Persian:dāng,New Persian:dānag ('coin'), whereas other authors saw the word close to the Turkic wordtamga ('mark, stamp').[1]
The plural form ofdenga,dengi (деньги) has become the usual Russian word for "money".
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Production ofdengi as minted coins began in the middle of the 14th century, during the reign ofDmitry Donskoy.[2] In their earliest form, they were imitations of the silver coinage of the khans of theGolden Horde, usually bearing blundered or meaninglesslegends. Weighing about a gram, they were prepared by cutting silver wire into measured lengths, beating each length flat, and then striking the resultingblank between twodies. This resulted in slightly elongated coins, often showing traces of the original wire from which they had been taken. From Dmitry Donskoy's time onward, the coins began to take a more Russian form, with depictions of people, animals and Russian legends, although legends partly inArabic (the official language of the Horde) persisted on some coins until the time ofIvan III.
Dengi were made only in the Russian princedoms; the state ofNovgorod and the city ofPskov made their own slightly larger coins. In thePskov Judicial Charter, the general court fee (podsudnichye) is set to 10dengi.[3] 220dengi were equivalent to oneruble and 30grivny in Pskov.[3]
In 1535, a reform took place, with the northern "novgorodka" being valued at twice the southern denga or "moskovka". In the 1540s novgorodkas depicting a horseman with a spear (Russiankop'yo [копьё]) began to be made, and novgorodkas were thenceforth known askopecks.[citation needed] The minting of silverdengi seems to have decreased after the 16th century, as they are found less often in hoards, but they are known until the reign ofPeter the Great. By that time the coinage had devalued so far thatdengi weighed only about 0.14 grams, and were of little practical use. In the coinage reform of 1700 they reappeared as much larger copper coins, and mintage continued, off and on, until 1916, just before theRomanov dynasty was overthrown in 1917.
Coins minted in the 18th century invariably showed the denomination asdenga, but during parts of the 19th century this was replaced by the worddenezhka, the diminutive form ofdenga. Later still the denomination was shown simply as1⁄2 kopeck.
Silverdengi were not minted during the last years of Feodor I's rule, nor during theTime of Troubles, though silver wire kopecks were minted throughout this period, including emissions byimposters and invaders.[4]
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During the time ofPeter the Great,dengi transitioned from silver to copper, and from undated toByzantine dates inCyrillic toJulian dates in Cyrillic. After Peter's reign, dates were denoted using the common notation ofArabic numerals.