On the Internet you can find publications that the American financial regulator was founded thanks to the gold, which was transferred in favor of Washington on behalf of the Russian emperor. We checked how justified such statements are.

In numerous publications in Blogs, social networks and some Media It is alleged that Emperor Nicholas II played an important role in the creation of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) of the USA - Tsarist gold, sent by his order for the ocean, has supposedly became the basis of the constituent capital of the Fed. In some cases, specific numbers are even given: 48.6 tons of gold were transported to America (in some cases - 48,600 tons, which is about six times more current gold reserve The USA, the largest in the world), which amounted to 88.8% of all shareholders. According to the most exotic versions, gold was leased for 100 years, which allows modern Russia to demand its return, as well as accumulated interest. Russian copies of the agreement were allegedly stored in the library of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and were destroyed during fire In January 2015.

First of all, you should figure out what the Fed is and how it arose. Since the 1830s in the USA did not exist The Unified Central Bank-because of this, the situation in the financial markets was not always stable enough, banking crises occurred periodically. After one of them, the so -called banking panic 1907, the federal authorities began to prepare reform. Since there were sharp contradictions between representatives of the Republican and Democratic Parties (the former demanded the creation of a private and independent single central bank, the latter acted as a decentralized system controlled by the state), established in December 1913, the FRS became the result of a compromise. By law The territory of the country was divided about its creation into 12 financial districts, each has established its own Federal Reserve Bank. Their authorized capital was formed due to the sale of shares that could only be purchased by banks registered in the corresponding financial district. These shares of federal banks were not subject to purchase, sale, exchange or pledge. If for the establishment of any federal bank it was not possible to raise a minimum of $ 4 million in this way, it was allowed to issue conventional exchange shares that could purchase any companies and private individuals, including foreigners. However, in practice to this extent in any case I did not have to resort. To coordinate the activities of federal banks, a council of managers of the Fed from seven people with the status of an independent Federal Agency of the United States was created (its members are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate).

The version of the participation of tsarist capital in the creation of the Fed, as far as one can judge, first nominated many decades later by an American sailor and a treasure seeker Martin Bayerl. Since the late 1970s, he was engaged in the search for the remains of the ocean liner Republic, Susing in 1909 off the coast of the United States due to a collision with another ship. Republic belonged to the fashionable company White Star Line (later it launched the Titanic water), there were many rich passengers on board, and immediately after the disaster in press They began to circulate rumors that the liner was transporting a large amount in gold. Bayerl, having discovered the remains of the ship, organized a search operation in 1987, during which, however, values could not be found. He did not give up and eventually began to put forward more and more extravagant theories about the REPULIC cargo. Byerle introduced them to special site, and in 2013 published book "Treasures of the Tsar: the sunken Iner of White Star with a secret for a billion dollars." The Bayerla hypothesis, not backed up, by his own admission, was not a single direct evidence, that the Republic, which was coming from New York to Gibraltar, boured American gold coins for about $ 3 million, which were allegedly part of a large international loan to the government of the Russian Empire.

In February 2000, the representative of Bayerla shared this hypothesis with the Russian historian Vladlen Sirotkin, who specialized in the Napoleonic era in Soviet times, and in the 90s he switched to Russian gold abroad (the books published on this subject caused serious Criticism from colleagues). Sirotkin presented his new discoveries in the published in 2003 book "Golden Klondikes of Russia." Unlike previous works of the historian, she did not even claim to be scientific: there were no links to sources, and the bibliography given at the end included mainly articles in the media and not a single archival document. Sirotkin took as a basis the beeral hypothesis, but significantly changed and bloomed it. So, according to him, Republic did not go from New York to Gibraltar, as it was, but from Gibraltar to New York. Thanks to this, the load of the liner could no longer be represented as the American loan to Nicholas II, but as Russian gold, which was heading to America.

To explain its origin, Sirotkin proposed a fantastic and not supported by any source theory. According to him, since the 1890s, Russian Minister of Finance Sergey Witte led secret negotiations with the financial circles of Europe and America about the creation of the world federal foreign exchange system. The discussions were, in particular, to international conferences In the Hague in 1899 and 1907. To implement this plan, Nicholas II supposedly began to transport gold to the ocean since 1908. According to Sirotkin, until 1913 at least two dozen ships with Tsarist gold were sent to the United States, but due to the beginning of the First World War, the project was not implemented. The historian admitted that the project is not mentioned either in the well -known memoirs of Witte or in the documents, but he believed that he was hidden for considerations of secrecy.

It should be noted that Sirotkin did not directly claim that tsarist gold in the United States formed the basis of the authorized capital of the Fed - this idea arose, probably, in 2012, seven years after death historian. At that time, a rumor began to spread in the Russian blogosphere and the media that in December 2012 the Fed’s right to emit dollars expired, which is why the United States was waiting for financial collapse. IN reality In 1913, the Fed’s right was given by the Fed for 20 years, but already in 1927 it became unlimited. The idea that Nicholas II was one of the main shareholders of the Fed is expressed, for example, in published on November 22, 2012 article a certain M. A. Zhukov. Of course, no evidence in this or other publications on this topic is given, but in the future, supporters of the hypothesis of Russian gold in the authorized capital of the Fed has already represented it as an indisputable truth. For example, that is how her sets out In numerous publications And the blogger Sergei Zhelenkov (or Zhilenkov), which positions himself as a historian of the royal family (in open sources “verified” did not find any information about his education and academic career).

Thus, Nicholas II, like other foreigners, was not a shareholder of the US Federal Reserve. The stories of royal gold, allegedly sent before the First World War on the orders of the Russian emperor to America, are conspiracy theories that appeared many decades later and have no documentary evidence.

Photo on the cover: Archiv Der Marine-offizier-Vereinigung Sowie Deutsches Bundesarchiv via Wikimedia Commons