The book of the St. Petersburg historian Ekaterina Pravlova is a vivid and interesting analysis of the development of financial relations between the center and the outskirts of the Russian Empire of the 19th - early 20th centuries. How did the financial economy of the multinational state function? How did the government solve the problems of distributing money between the outskirts? On what basis was the taxation system built? How and when did the ruble become the imperial currency? Answers to these and other questions of the history of the imperial economy and politics are presented on the pages of this book.