20 Roubles Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia - Shirak

Alexandropol — now Gyumri — was under Soviet Armenian administration when the Shirak District Public Bank issued this note, but the city had been Ottoman-occupied as recently as 1918 and would change hands again during the brief Turkish-Armenian war of 1920. Local district banks issuing their own paper in this period were filling a vacuum left by the collapse of successive governing authorities, each of which had printed its own currency with diminishing credibility.

The S695 series is among the more obscure provincial Soviet Armenian emissions. Shirak District issues circulated in a geographically limited area and were not backed by any meaningful reserve — survival rates are low simply because nobody thought to preserve them.