From the XV century in the Russian state, an award for certain military merits is known in the form of rewarding those who distinguished themselves, or those who participated in a particular military campaign, with gilded silver or gold coins. The Moscow Kremlin Museums keep a gold award with an owner’s inscription stating that it was granted in 1639/40 to the stolnik Vasily Grigorievich Fefilatiev. This is the oldest personalized Russian award to date. It was possible to establish that the gold was awarded for the Saratov service in 1636.
