15 Kopecks Odessa

Among the dozens of municipal and regional scrip issues that flooded southern Russia and Ukraine following the February Revolution, Odessa's small-denomination paper money stands out for its issuer: a city government, not a bank, stepping in to address the acute shortage of subsidiary coinage that had been driven underground by wartime hoarding. By late 1917 the Russian Imperial ruble's coin supply had effectively collapsed, and municipalities across the former empire were printing their own stop-gap fractional notes whether they had legal sanction to do so or not.

The Odessa city issues circulated alongside a bewildering mix of Duma notes, Kerensky stamps, and early Ukrainian People's Republic issues — a monetary free-for-all that lasted until Bolshevik consolidation ended most local issuing authority by 1920.