100 Roubles

The 1896 100-Rouble note belongs to the series introduced under Finance Minister Sergei Witte's currency reform, which fixed the rouble to gold at a rate of 1.5 old roubles to 1 new, effectively devaluing the currency by a third. The reform succeeded — Russia maintained gold convertibility from 1897 until the outbreak of war in 1914 — but the transition required an entirely new note series, and this issue was part of that wholesale replacement.

The Expedition for Procurement of State Papers had printed Russian currency since 1818, giving it nearly eight decades of institutional knowledge by the time this note went to press. The watermark runs through the paper itself rather than sitting in a discrete window, a production technique the Expedition had refined over successive series.