Goznak (Russian: Федеральное государственное унитарное предприятие Гознак, short for Государственный знак, or State Currency) is a Unitary enterprise in Russia, responsible for the production of coins and bank notes. Goznak was established on July 6, 1919, under the conditions of civil war, as an agency that administered the whole process cycle of bank note manufacturing.[1] It incorporated several factories involved in different stages of the production cycle. Although the initial scope of Goznak had been the production of bank notes, the production of coins was added to its field of operations in 1941. Production of orders of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation was also administered by Goznak.
Goznak used to combine paper and printing facilities, which manufactured money, government bonds, checks, letters of credit, savings-bank books (сберегательная книжка), lottery tickets, postage stamps, blanks of passports, birth certificates, marriage licenses, as well as publications of high artistic value, special and high-grade paper. Goznak also controls mints, which manufacture small change, orders, decorations, and commemorative medals. It also manufactures credit cards, banking cards, phone cards, and SIM chips. Goznak not only prints Russian money, but also prints banknotes of foreign countries, including Indonesia and Egypt. The longest-sitting chairman of Goznak is Ivan Dubasov.
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During the reign of Peter the Great, the Russians established the Saint Petersburg Mint in 1724, which would centralize coinage in Russia and begin to produce different kinds of badges and medals used for decoration.
In 1815, after the currency crisis caused by the French invasion of Russia (1812), the government established the so-called Department of State Currency Production (Экспедиция заготовления государственных бумаг) under the authority of the Ministry of Finance; Dmitry Guriev, Minister of Finance, assigned engineer Agustín de Betancourt to design and build the modern, steam-powered currency printshop which was completed in 1818.
In 1838, a Russian academician Moritz von Jacobi (known as Boris Yakobi in Russia), employed at this Department, used his invention of galvanoplastics to produce printing plates for the first time in printing history. In the 1890s, an employee of the Department Ivan Orlov invented and developed a new printing method, which would be called the "Orlov Stamp" (Орловская печать). Also, he built multicolor printing presses, which would serve as a prototype for modern multicolor printing presses. Orlov's machines were still in use in some countries in the 1970s.
After the October Revolution of 1917, the Department of State Currency Production was reorganized and renamed Goznak (short for Государственный знак, or State Currency). Although the initial scope of Goznak had been the production of bank notes, the production of coins was added to its field of operation in 1941, when the Leningrad mint was taken over by Goznak.[2] Goznak had its own All-union Research Institute in Moscow. In the 1920s, a Goznak employee and a prominent Soviet sculptor Ivan Shadr created the first samples of the Soviet money. In the 1950s – 1960s, an employee of the Goznak’s Moscow Printing Factory V.A.Oleynik invented an original money counting device, which would be further developed by other workers of the All-union Research Institute. Thus, all of the paper and printing factories and mints of the Goznak were equipped with the counting machines.
Currently, Goznak is a Russian Federal Government-owned corporation (Russian: федеральное унитарное предприятие) that consists of:
Since beginning of 2006, the Moscow Printing Factory of Goznak (MPF Goznak) started with the personalization of the first ePassports. The current ePassport - often announced as biometric passport - does not contain any biometric data yet.Since the production capacities were low, the ePassports was only issued for certain regions of Russia. Starting 2008, MPF Goznak increased its capacities significantly. Objective is a possible output of more than 5 million ePassports per year. The personalization ePassport equipment for the Russian ePassport is provided by the German company Mühlbauer AG. From January 2008 till September 2008 more than 800.000 ePassports have been issued.
On September 3, 2008 Goznak celebrated its 190th anniversary. During these days the 1.000.000th Russian ePassport have been issued.