As is well known, during the colonization of the New World by Spain, a huge amount of gold was exported from America to Europe. In particular, only from 1541 to 1560, Spanish galleons transported 500 tons from America. A significant part of these treasures was the gold of the Incas conquered by the Spanish conquistadors. Galleons died on the way due to storms. They were attacked by pirates. But the flow of American gold to Europe has not dried up.
This caused a price revolution in the Old World, that is, an unstoppable wave of inflation and high cost. A significant part of the gold that ended up in the hands of the Spaniards passed to other Europeans as a result of the wars and in payment for their goods. But even until the first third of the XX century, the basis of Spain’s gold reserves continued to be the same Inca gold.
In 1936, an insurrection began in Spain, which was raised by General Franco in order to overthrow the Republican government. Volunteers from many countries of the world arrived to help the Republican government. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy supported Francoist rebels in the Spanish Civil War. It was then that the expression “Fifth Column” was born. The rebels were advancing on Madrid in four columns, and the fifth counted those residents of Madrid who were ready to support them inside the capital.
The Stalinist USSR helped the Republican government. And volunteers and weapons. In the Civil War that ended in 1939, the Francoists won. But in payment for military aid, the Republicans handed over to the USSR three-quarters of Spain’s gold reserves in the amount of 510 tons.
The total volume of the USSR’s gold reserves in 1941 before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War amounted to 2,500 tons. And a fifth of this already Soviet gold was Spanish gold, which before that was Inca gold.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gold reserve passed to the Russian Federation, which became its legal successor. Russia also assumed all obligations on the external debts of the USSR. By December 1991, at the time of the termination of the existence of the USSR, the gold reserve was only 290 tons. By the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to the post of the head of the USSR, the gold reserve was 719 tons.
There are many intriguing legends, myths and hypotheses about the “Gold of the Party” that disappeared during the years of his rule. If desired, it can be calculated that the disappeared gold in the amount of 419 tons is mostly the same Inca gold taken from them by the Spaniards. But it turns out that this gold did not ensure the preservation of either the Spanish colonial empire, which collapsed even before the civil war of 1936-1939, or the USSR, which existed for only 74 years, from 1917 to 1991.
