100 Roubles Orenburg

The Orenburg Branch of the State Bank began issuing its own regional obligations in 1917 as the central monetary system fragmented following the February Revolution. Orenburg sat at a strategically volatile crossroads — the city changed hands multiple times during the Civil War, passing between Bolshevik forces and the armies of Ataman Dutov, whose Orenburg Cossack Host controlled the region intermittently through 1919. Which authority actually authorized and circulated any given note from this branch is not always straightforward to determine.

S978 is among the more elusive of the Orenburg regional issues, with surviving examples disproportionately few relative to the print runs implied by their serial ranges.