1000 Pengő Russian Occupation

When Soviet forces pushed into Hungary in late 1944, they arrived with their own occupation currency already printed — this 1000 Pengő was part of a series produced under Soviet military authority to pay troops and procure goods from the local population. The issuing legend names the Vöröshadsereg Parancsnoksága, the Red Army Command, a deliberate choice that sidestepped the existing Hungarian National Bank entirely.

The notes were printed in the Soviet Union, not Hungary, and injected into circulation without any formal backing. Hungarians had little choice but to accept them. They fed directly into the hyperinflationary spiral that would, by 1946, produce the highest recorded inflation in history — the pengő's eventual replacement, the forint, was introduced at a conversion rate of 400,000 quadrillion pengő to one.