Moscow Gold History - Summary

The Moscow gold history or also known as the Gold of the Republic still continues to arouse interest in those who want to know about it. Next, in this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to offer you a brief summary of Moscow's gold history about this event in which the appropriation of no more and no less than 510 tons took place of gold coins belonging to the reserves of the Bank of Spain by the government of the second republic.

To the few months after the start of the Spanish Civil War, specifically on September 13, 1936, Manuel Azaña, President of the Republic together with Juan Negrín (at that time Minister of Finance) signed an almost secret decree in which they authorized the government to transfer the gold that was in the reserves of the Bank of Spain to a more protected site from the advance of the rebellious troops to Madrid.

Until then and thanks to records that had been made prior to the start of the war, the Spanish gold reserve was considered to be the fourth largest in the world

and it was mainly accumulated throughout the First World War in which Spain, as we well know, remained neutral. Said quantities of gold that were distributed mainly in the central headquarters of the Bank of Spain, as well as in other main delegations that the Bank of Spain had together with other small deposits located in the city of Paris.

In this other lesson from a TEACHER we will discover the Allied countries in the Spanish Civil War as it is a key issue to better understand the history of Moscow gold.

We continue with this summary of Moscow's gold history explaining the moment of the transfer of the gold.

After the signing of the decree on that same morning of September 14, 1936 hundreds of soldiers, anarchists, socialist militiamen along with a hundred metallurgists and locksmiths They accessed the Bank of Spain showing the recently signed decree authorizing their transfer to a place safer. For it it was necessary that this authorization be signed by the main director of the bank, who was kidnapped and at gun point, he was forced to sign it so that both the vaults and the private deposit boxes of individuals were opened. There were several occasions in which he refused to sign said document, so he decided to commit suicide.

Four days it took them to extract the tons of gold that were in the chambers, saving and reusing the 10,000 wooden boxes where the ammunition had been brought to face the war. Said boxes were never numbered to keep track of all the gold that came out, nor was any type of written testimony made about its output. What we do know is that between silver and gold they accounted for a total of around 5,250 million of the old pesetas, which today is about 20 million euros to better understand each other.

Of the 10,000 boxes, 7,800 were shipped to Cartagena (Murcia), and after a period of six months at sea in several Soviet ships whose names were Volgoles, Neva, Russian Y Kine, in which officials of the Bank of Spain itself traveled, who would be in charge of controlling the money and making the count, they arrived at the Port of Odessa (Ukraine); once there they crossed that country to reach Russia, specifically to the capital, Moscow, the final destination. The rest of the boxes were sent to Paris.

In this video we detail the Spain that had before the Spanish Civil War so that you understand the situation in the country.

And we end with this summary of Moscow's gold history to explain why this move was made. The objective of the transfer of the gold to Moscow was the way to pay the Soviet Union for all weapons material that it provided the Republicans for the war, for as we Russians well know together with the Americans were superior in carrying all kinds of material, be it ammunition, weapons, airplanes, fighting ...

The truth is that the quality was never what was expected despite its high prices, nor was the distribution of resources good, since there were times when the delivery of airplanes, the fuselage was disembarked in some port of the Spanish east while the engines in the port of Bilbao, so it is understood that the Soviet Union was left with a lot of Spanish money, it is impossible that a year and a half later there was absolutely nothing left.