1 000 000 Lei

Romania's postwar hyperinflation was among the worst in European history, and this note belongs to the period of its peak. By 1947, the leu had collapsed so severely that denominations in the millions had become routine transactional currency rather than emergency instruments. The Groza government's failure to stabilize prices after 1945 drove successive redenomination proposals, and this issue — one of the highest face values in Romanian interwar and postwar paper money — was already near-worthless in purchasing terms within months of its appearance.

The monetary reform of August 1947 extinguished the old leu entirely, replacing it at a punitive conversion rate that wiped out most private savings. Notes of this denomination were among the last casualties.