100 Lekë

Albania's postwar monetary system was rebuilt under direct Soviet guidance, and this note is a material record of that relationship. Goznak — the same Moscow facility that produced Soviet state currency — took on the printing contracts for several Eastern Bloc satellite states in the late 1940s, Albania among them. The arrangement was political as much as logistical.

The series ran across nearly a decade of issuance, an unusually long window that reflects the relative monetary stability Enver Hoxha's government maintained before the Sino-Soviet split began pulling Albanian economic policy in a different direction after 1960.