ANTI-WAR MESSAGES ON BANK NOTES
Coins and bank notes have been useful tools through which political messages and protests have circulated since ancient times. The EID MAR gold and silver coins issued by Marcus Junius Brutus in 43 to 42 B. C. brags about his participation in the assassination of Julius Caesar. Brutus paid the price for this propaganda message, later committing suicide rather than being captured by his political enemy Marcus Antonius.
Today the Feminist Anti- War Resistance movement is finding Russian coins and bank notes a useful way to protest Russia’s war on Ukraine from inside Russia while avoiding being arrested for protesting the invasion.
Some of the coins and bank notes are distributed anonymously, while some individuals aren’t afraid to have their name associated with such graffiti. On Twitter @ jonnytickle recently featured a Russian bank note described as, “Left: No to war. They’re lying to us. Open your eyes. Right: Stand clear of the closing doors. The next station is
North Korea.” The note is described by Tickle as being “In the style of a Moscow Metro announcement.”
@ femagainstwar posted “A FAS participant found a bill in her wallet, which she did not sign. Your anti- war money went hand in hand.”
According to a March 29 Newsweek story, “This group of Russian feminists was formed in February during the lead- up to [ Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They call on all concerned citizens of the country to denounce the war through peaceful demonstrations. Recently, they also began sending messages on their Telegram channel for Russians to let their opposition to the invasion be known by marking up their money.”
On April 5, the Crowdfunder web site RedPepper. org. uk posted, “One tactic has been inscribing coins and bank notes with anti- war messages and returning them into circulation. “Ukrainians are dying from bullets, we will die of hunger’, ‘ We will pay for the war with our future’,
‘ Putin destroyed our future’, ‘ They are killing people for our taxes’, ‘ Peace to the world’, ‘ No to war.’”
The war has so far resulted in Russia’s inflation accelerating to 9.05 percent as of February 25 from 8.84 percent one week earlier, according to the Russian economy ministry. The invasion of Ukraine triggered harsh economic and financial sanctions from the West.
Not all the numismatic anti- war messaging is coming from within Russia. In early April the Czech Republic issued a commemorative “Sláva Ukrajine” bank note honoring Ukraine as a charity project. The note is designed by award- winning printmaker and illustrator Eva Hašková. A vignette of the statue of Beregini on Independence Square in Kyiv appears on the front, with Ukraine’s flags and St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev on the back.
There were 20,000 Sláva Ukrajine notes printed by eské dukáty and the State Printing Works of Securities. The notes were sold for 1,500 Czech corona, which has an exchange rate of about $ 67 U. S.
It was more challenging to get your protest across on money at the time of the Romans than it is today. You had to have control of mint then. You don’t now. As an example, defiant Libyans scribbled out the face of Muammar Qaddafi on bank notes after Qaddafi fell from power in 2011.
Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest by Burma’s military junta when she won an election in 1990. A designer working on new bank notes altered the watermark to feature Aung San Suu Kyi rather than her father, General Aung San. The notes were quickly withdrawn once discovered by the junta.
Coins were stamped by metal workers and mechanics as a popular practice of political expression rather than an organized campaign in Northern Ireland from the 1970s throughout the period of The Troubles. Two Irish coins depict the acronyms of the Loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association. A later Republican coin from the 1990s has RIRA, short for Real Irish Republican Army, stamped over the head of the queen on a British £ 1 coin.