ABSTRACT
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, it left behind a collection of "successor states," each needing its own new symbols of legitimacy. In post-Soviet Ukraine, consumers endured years of turbulent economic change with the introduction of a new national currency, the hryvnia. The promise of a national currency was not just about the credibility of the post-Soviet Ukraine government; it was also about the meaning of change symbolically expressed in valuations of the many currencies circulating in the markets, in people's memories of the past and their visions of the future. Indeed, despite the temporary shortages of new currency, the hryvnia successfully entered into circulation without the wide-scale economic panic that some people had predicted. No matter what people called it, the hryvnia had come into its own as the currency of a new nation.
