10 Roubles V.P. Chkalov

Valery Chkalov died in December 1938 at the Shchyolkovo airfield outside Moscow while conducting a test flight of the Polikarpov I-180 prototype. The circumstances remained murky for decades — a faulty valve plug was officially blamed, but the arrest and execution of several engineers involved in the aircraft's production shortly afterward fed persistent suspicion that the crash was not accidental. Stalin served as a pallbearer at his funeral.

Chkalov is claimed by Pridnestrovie partly through geographic association with the Soviet aviation heritage the territory's government actively cultivates. The airfield city of Chkalov — now Orenburg — was renamed in his honor in 1938, the same year he died.