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| The 5-ruble Bank of Russia note |
Russian Currency 5 Rubles banknote 1997 Bank of Russia
The front of the banknote depicts the monument "Millennium of Russia" and St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod".
On the back of the banknote there is the fortress wall of the Novgorod Kremlin".
The 5-ruble banknote is printed on high-quality cotton paper of a light-green hue. The protective fibres of violet, red and light-green colours are chaotically embedded in the paper. The vertical security thread seen in the transmitted light is embedded in the paper. The banknote has local watermarks on the left and right coupon fields.
The paper has local watermarks on the left and right coupon fields. In the wide coupon field there is a building of St. Sofia’s Cathedral in Novgorod and in the narrow coupon field there is a numeric value of the denomination (value numeral 5). When the banknote is held up to the light you can see various parts of the watermarks, some of which are lighter while others are darker than the surrounding paper.
The predominant colour of the banknote is green.
The banknote possesses several machine-readable security features.
Dimensions 137 x 61 mm.
In circulation since 01.01.1998.
Russian banknotes - Russia paper money
1997-2010 New Ruble "Cities & Monuments" Issue
Millennium of Russia
The Millennium of Russia (Russian Тысячелетие России) is a famous bronze monument in the Novgorod Kremlin. It was erected in 1862 to celebrate the millennium of Rurik's arrival to Novgorod, an event traditionally taken as a starting point of Russian history.
A competition to design the monument was held in 1859. An architect Viktor Hartmann and an artist Mikhail Mikeshin were declared the winners. Mikeshin's design called for a grandiose, 15-metre-high bell crowned by a cross symbolizing the tsar's power. The bell was to be encircled with several tiers of sculptures representing Russian monarchs, clerics, generals, and artists active during various periods of Russian history.
Mikeshin himself was no sculptor, therefore the 129 individual statues for the monument were made by the leading Russian sculptors of the day, including his friend Ivan Schroeder and the celebrated Alexander Opekushin. Rather unexpectedly for such an official project, the tsars and commanders were represented side by side with sixteen eminent personalities of Russian culture: Lomonosov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Karl Brullov, Mikhail Glinka, etc. As for the Russian rulers, Ivan the Terrible is famously absent from the monument due to his role in the 1570 pillage and massacre of Novgorod by the Oprichnina. Alongside with the Muscovite princes, the mediaeval Lithuanian dynasts such as Gediminas or Vytautas the Great who reigned over the Eastern Slavs of the present-day Belarus and Ukraine are represented.
The most expensive Russian monument up to that time, it was erected at a cost of 400,000 roubles, mostly raised by public subscription. In order to provide an appropriate pedestal for the huge sculpture, sixteen blocks of Sortavala granite were brought to Novgorod, each weighing in excess of 35 tons. The bronze monument itself weighs 100 tons.
At the time when the monument was inaugurated, many art critics felt that it was overloaded with figures. Supporters regard Mikeshin's design as harmonious with the medieval setting of the Kremlin, and subtly accentuating the vertical thrust and grandeur of the nearby 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral.
During World War II, the Nazis dismantled the monument, and prepared it to be transported to Germany. However, the Red Army regained control of Novgorod and the monument was restored to public view in 1944. A 5-ruble commemorative coin was released in the USSR in 1988 to commemorate the monument.
Cathedral of St. Sophia, Novgorod
The Cathedral of St. Sophia (the Holy Wisdom of God) in Veliky Novgorod is the cathedral church of the Archbishop of Novgorod and the mother church of the Novgorodian Eparchy. The 38-metre-high, five-domed, stone cathedral was built by Vladimir of Novgorod between 1045 and 1050 to replace an oaken cathedral built by Bishop Joachim the Korsunian in the late tenth century (making it the oldest church building in Russia proper and, with the exception of the Arkhyz and Shoana churches, the oldest building of any kind still in use in the country).
Novgorod Kremlin
Novgorod Kremlin (also Detinets) stands on the left bank of the Volkhov River in Veliky Novgorod about two miles north of where it empties out of Lake Ilmen.
The compound was originally the site of a pagan burial ground upon which the first bishop of Novgorod, Ioakim Korsunianin built the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom upon his arrival in the area in 989 or so. Thus the compound was and remained largely an ecclesiastical site, although many Novgorodian boyars built their houses in the southern part of the Detinets.
The first reference to fortifications on the site dates to 1044, with additional construction taking place in 1116. These were probably earthen embankments topped by a wooden palisade, although stone towers and walls were built in 1302. Archbishop Vasily Kalika (1330–1352) rebuilt the stone wall along the eastern side of the Detinets in 1331-1335. The rest was completed in stone only in 1400. Part of Vasily's walls collapsed into the Volkhov River in 1437 and were rebuilt by Archbishop Evfimy II (1429–1458).
The current fortress was built between 1484 and 1490 by Muscovite builders in the wake of Grand Prince Ivan III's conquest of the city in 1478; a third of it was paid for by the Novgorodian archbishop Gennady, a Muscovite appointee (1484–1504). It is a large oval 545 meters long and 240 meter wide with nine surviving towers (three additional towers have not survived). The tallest tower, the Kokui tower is capped by a silver dome. It was built in the eighteenth century and its name is of Swedish origin. Today it is possible to enter this tower and climb to the top. The walls are 1,487 meters in circumference.