10 Roubles

The State Commercial Bank's 1840 credit note series emerged from a broader reform effort under Finance Minister Kankrin, who had spent the previous decade trying to rein in an increasingly depreciated assignat currency. The assignats were formally retired in 1843, and these notes — issued in the transitional years just before — were part of the apparatus that made that redemption possible, backing new silver-convertible denominations against hard reserves rather than the inflationary paper regime they replaced.

Kankrin's insistence on silver convertibility meant these notes carried real weight with merchants, unlike the assignats they were displacing. The reform ultimately held, at least until the Crimean War forced the suspension of specie payments in 1854.