The Russian Empire was very powerful. At one point, it owned about 1/8 of the world. I have been fascinated by the empire for a long time, and I am writing this to tell you some of the story through coins. Here we go. (My Russian skills are not good, so do not trust my translations 100%)

Russian coins really start with Ivan the Terrible. He introduced the first official Russian monetary system. The minting technique for these coins came from the 14th century.  The metal was rolled into, well, a roll and sliced into equal sections that weighed the same. This resulted in small, oval-shaped, disks very similar in weight. The coins were struck by being placed between two dies. The upper die was hammered, and you had the coin. The obverse showed a man on a horse (likely Ivan) and the reverse showed Russian words that I can't understand.

Piotr I (Peter the Great) was truly great. Besides westernizing Russia and being a great war hero, he was the first ruler to introduce the decimal coinage system (100 cents to a dollar, ect.). He kept on using the ruble that Ivan used, but the new system would be used in Russia (and the world) for centuries.  Peter was the first tsar to have coins struck by machinery. He wanted to use copper kopeks as opposed to the previous silver ones, which made people mad. In 1724, Peter created the Sun Ruble, what I call the dollar coin of Peter's Russia. On the obverse of the said sun ruble is Peter surrounded by Russian words. The ones I can recognize mean 'Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia' (I think). On the reverse is the date, four crowns on a cross, and four Russian words.

Catherine the Great was another Russian ruler who influenced Russian coins. She doubled the face value of the copper Kopeks and reduced the fineness of the silver coins. Later, she experimented with copper rubles, and they had to be huge to make the values equal! Her coins were struck with machinery, like her grandfather's. Surprisingly, very few of her coins had her portrait on it. It usually had the Romanov double eagle on the obverse with another design on the reverse.

Nikolai II was the final tsar, and the last one to make an impact on the empire's coins. He switched Russia to the gold standard in 1897, but made no changes to the silver and copper coins. That caused some problems when the St. Petersburg mint started struggling to keep up with the gold coins. So, the Russians decided to talk to France and Belgium for help. Nikolai gave them Russian dies and Russian gold, and they asked them to help. One interesting thing about this is that the coins from Paris had one star on the edge, the coins from Brussels had two stars, and the St. Petersburg coins had none. Many of his coins had Nikolai himself on the obverse with the Romanov eagle on the reverse.