Zolotnik

A zolotnik (in Russian: золотни́к; abbr.: zol.) was a small Russian unit of weight, equal to 0.1505 avoirdupois ounces, or 4.2658 grams (about 65.83 grains). Used from the 10th to 20th centuries, its name is derived from the Russian word zoloto, meaning gold. As a unit, the zolotnik was the standard for silver manufacture, much as the troy ounce is currently used for gold and other precious metals.

This unit was originally based on a coin of the same name. The zolotnik circulated in the Kievan Rus until the 11th century; it was equal in weight to the Byzantine Empire's solidus.

Relation to other units

The Russian pound was known as the funt. There were 96 zolotnik in a pound. A smaller unit, the lot, was equal to three zolotnik. There were 96 dolya in a single zolotnik.

The zolotnik was also used to measure fineness of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum). In this case, the ratio zolotnik/funt was meant, so one zolotnik meant 1/96. For example, 14-karat (58.33%) gold was named "56-zolotnik gold" in Russia. As one karat means 1/24, one zolotnik is 1/4 karat.

gollark: This is not very accurate, though.
gollark: In a market, if people don't want kale that much, the kale company will probably not have much money and will not be able to buy all the available fertilizer.
gollark: You can just hand out what some random people think is absolutely *needed* first, then stick the rest of everything up for public use, but that won't work either! Someone has to decide on the "needed", so you get into a planned-economy sort of situation, and otherwise... what happens when, say, the community kale farm decides they want all the remaining fertilizer, even when people don't want *that* much kale?
gollark: Planned economies, or effectively-planned-by-lots-of-voting economies, will have to implement this themselves by having everyone somehow decide where all the hundred million things need to go - and that's not even factoring in the different ways to make each thing, or the issues of logistics.
gollark: Market systems can make this work pretty well - you can sell things and use them to buy other things, and ultimately it's driven by what consumers are interested in buying.

See also
  • Zloty
  • Obsolete Russian weights and measures
  • Obsolete Tatar weights and measures

Russian measurements
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