See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

10 Roubles Barnaul; PoW Camp

Issuer Kriegsgefangenenlager Barnaul (Barnaul Prisoner of War Camp)
Year 1919
Type Log in to see details
Value 10 Roubles (10)
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Log in to see details
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse lettering 10 РУБ.
1919
KRIEGSGEF.LAGER-BARNAUL
(Translation: Ten roubles. Barnaul prisoner of war camp.)
Reverse description Essentially unprinted reverse on buff paper, showing only a faint blind-impressed rectangular border frame in two concentric registers, with the serial number bleeding through from the obverse.
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Log in to see details
Protection description Log in to see details
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

Barnaul, deep in western Siberia, fell under the control of Admiral Kolchak's White Army government through much of 1919. The PoW camp there held primarily Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners from the First World War — men who found themselves stranded in Siberia as the Russian Civil War raged around them, their repatriation indefinitely suspended. Camp-issued scrip was the practical solution to an obvious problem: prisoners needed a medium of exchange for internal canteen transactions, and commanders needed to prevent hard currency from circulating inside the wire.

Locally produced under difficult conditions, the printing quality reflects its origins. The Kolchak regime collapsed in late 1919, and most prisoners were eventually repatriated through Soviet-organized exchanges — which means this scrip had an extremely short operational life.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE