I half remember reading a quote that britain would have been a creditor nation if Russia hadnt defaulted when it went Soviet.
Can anyone substantiate the quote or tell me the sterling amount of Russian debts to the uk.
Total Imperial Russian debt before the revolution was approximately 11 billion rubles. Of that about three billion was general pre-war debt. The roughly eight billion rubles in wartime (foreign) debt was split:
French government 1.5 billion
UK Government 5.4 billion
Others 1.2 billion This includes the Japanese government as well as private banks in the US, Italy, and the Netherlands.
The Russian government engaged in a number of deception measures to hide their indebtedness; for example between 1914 and 1917 they shipped about two billion rubles in gold to Canada to fulfill a British demand for collateral for further loans. This was officially classed as a loan, in exchange for around 1.8 billion rubles in British treasury bonds. In fact the bonds were provided in addition hard currency loans by Britain against their gold. Plus the Russians continued to count them as part of Russia’s gold reserves, despite being held in British repositories in Canada.
There was also about eight billion rubles in internal debt in the form of war bonds, plus 7.8 billion in short term 5% Treasury notes. In total there was around 23.9 billion rubes in debt, around 62% of the cost of the war.
While this thread is specifically about UK debt problems it should be noted that Russia was also becoming an economic basket case due to the costs of the war; basically the ruble had lost more than 70% of it's purchasing power by early 1916. By late 1916 there was effectively no coinage left as people hoarded coins of all denominations and metals, leading to more printing of stamp money and paper coupons to replace coins. This merely showed people that the Russian Empire and once mighty ruble was on unstable ground; this naturally led to food hoarding, shortages, food riots and the usual outbreaks of anti-Semitism.
It's also notable that after the first 1917 revolution the currency crisis continued; the new "Kerenky" notes were widely perceived as worthless, even Tsarist paper was preferred. Between the revolutions more than five billion rubles in paper were issued, further weaking the economy both in fact and in perception. By October 1917 the ruble had lost ~94% of it's pre-war value.
Hope this helps.
Slightly OT but relevant to the subject of Bolshevik debts (and a personal interest of mine) is the matter of the Romanian Treasure which was sent from Romania to Russia in 1916. This consisted of three trains; the first left Iaşi (in Moldova, eastern Romania, and the temporary capital after Bucharest was occupied at the beginning of December) at around 3AM (local time) on the night of 14/15 December 1916 loaded with gold bullion. 21 carriages carried about 120 tonnes of bullion (in ingots) along with two hundred armed police guards. Included in the shipment was a collection of Queen Maria's personal jewellery.
On 27 July 1916 a second and third train were dispatched to Russia. The first had three wagons loaded with 188 crates containing several tonnes more bullion, artworks and the State archives.
The final train was larger, 24 wagons (3,549 crates) holding an immense collection of works-of-art and other precious objects of the Romanian state. These included a set of 3,500 year old gold jewelry, the archives of the Romanian Academy, a collection of ancient Dacian jewels, the accumulated jewels of the voivodes of Wallachia and Moldavia, the historical archives of Braşov, the Romanian royal treasury and jewel collections, several thousands paintings, the religious objects owned by Romanian monasteries and churches (including icons and manuscripts), the collections of the National Museum of Antiquities and more. It also contained cash, bullion and others valuables on deposit the national banks.
The value of this trainload is extremely difficult to estimate but the Russian government signed for it in the sum of 8.4 billion Romanian gold Lei, or around 370 million pounds Sterling in 1917. Today it would be worth billions of Euro/Pounds/Dollars.
Neither of these collections was returned to Romania after the Russian Revolutions of 1917. On 13 January 1918 the agreements between Russia and Romania were formally repudiated by the revolutionary government after Romanian troops entered Bessarabia. The fate of the treasure is still a subject of inter-governmental dispute today.