15 Kopecks Baku

Baku in 1918 was a city in genuine administrative freefall. The short-lived Baku Commune, backed by Bolsheviks and Armenian Dashnak forces, held the city from April until late July, when it collapsed under Ottoman military pressure. The City Council — a distinct, more conservative municipal body — issued emergency fractional notes like this one to address a severe shortage of small-denomination currency that had been building since the Russian imperial supply chain broke down in 1917.

Fractional kopeck issues from Transcaucasian municipal authorities of this period are routinely underestimated in rarity terms. Most circulated hard in a city that changed hands three times in a single year — Ottoman forces took Baku in September 1918, the British arrived weeks later, and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic consolidated control in 1919.