10 Lekë

Albania's postwar monetary system was rebuilt under close Soviet direction, and this note is a direct artifact of that arrangement. Goznak — the Moscow state printing works that produced Soviet currency, bonds, and official documents — was contracted to print Albanian paper money throughout the late Stalinist period, a relationship that left visible stylistic traces in the engraving and typographic conventions common to Soviet-bloc issues of the time.

The series ran from 1949 through 1957, spanning the period when Albania was firmly within the Eastern bloc before the rupture with Moscow in the early 1960s accelerated under Hoxha.