Abstract
Along with South Africa, the former Soviet Union was traditionally one of the biggest gold producers throughout the world. Historically, the bulk of the Soviet Union’s gold reserves were considered as a strategic commodity to be used as a source of hard currency to pay for imported goods or finance balance of payments deficits. Western analysts were shocked in 1991 when the former Soviet Union government revealed that only 240 tonnes of gold remained in government vaults. Previous estimates ranged from 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes; the new figure represents a loss of billions and billions of dollars.
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An earlier version of this chapter was presented as a paper at the Financial Times “World Gold Conference” held in Montreux, June 1992.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Murray, S. (1993). New Perspectives on an Old Gold Mining Country. In: Dorian, J.P., Minakir, P.A., Borisovich, V.T. (eds) CIS Energy and Minerals Development. The GeoJournal Library, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2012-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2012-8_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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