In the middle of the 17th century in the course of the military-political actions of Aleksei Mikhailovich the eastern lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth including the modern lands of Belarus, were ruled by the Russian tsar. Russia needed money for trade with new possessions. Has arisen a question about the necessity of minting a new coin, close to the European model. On the territory of modern Belarusian lands there were European coins in circulation: Prague penny, English nobel, Hungarian ducat, etc. The merchants used a large silver coin - thaler in cash payments. By the way on the basis of the Russian monetary circulation was a small silver penny. A Russian penny, familiar to the population of the border of the Russian-Polish lands was lost among the large denominations of Western European type.
The absence of a large payment unit was a drawback of the Russian monetary system. Aleksei Mikhailovich began to use European silver thalers as a raw material of guaranteed quality: stable weight, stable sample, certified by state stamps of Western countries. In the Russian lands, thaler was called “efimok” - a distorted name “joachimstalker”, derived from the city of Joachimov, where this coin was first minted in 1518. Over time the word more familiar to the Slavic ear was distributed to all high-grade Western coins weighing 28-32 g, however for their individual types there were special names. Swedish dalers, in which the king was depicted with his head uncovered, were called “impersonators”, the Danish dalers with the figure of a king to his full height and one leg, covered with a coat of arms, were called “one-legged”.
In 1654 was made an attempt to create a Russian large silver coin of the European type: were issued the first silver ruble coins, which were banished from Western European thalers. However it was not succeed. A year later, in 1655, the boyar duma decided to take the role of an efimkam external special purpose coin - to pay salaries to the troops beyond the old border of Russia. A Russian stamp was imposed on each coin by stamping it with two stamps. One - round, in the form of a Russian penny, the second - rectangular, with the date "1655". Called such a money has become "efimok with a sign." Today in the exposition of the Museum of the Local Lore you can see this unusual coin. It was minted in 1611, and minted - in 1655. They found an “efimok with a sign” in 1979 during archaeological excavations at the Upper Castle under the direction of V. Bulkin. At the northeast corner of the ancient St. Sophia Cathedral at a depth of almost a meter it lay for several centuries. The silver thaler-efimok weighs over 21 g. Among other coins representing money circulation in Russia of the 16th – 19th centuries, it is distinguished by the quality of coinage and is a peculiar example of an international monetary unit.
From the point of view of economic benefits thaler-efimok laid the foundations for bilateral trade between western and eastern lands, although thalers were used in areas where dengue and penny were more common only as a raw material for coin minting and a source of silver jewelry. Nevertheless efimki remained in Russian circulation until the beginning of 1659, when a ban was imposed on them and they began to be redeemed from the population and used for minting small silver coins.
