25 000 Roubles

The 1923 Soviet high-denomination issues emerged from one of the most severe hyperinflationary episodes in modern European history. Between 1921 and 1923, the Soviet government printed money to cover fiscal deficits left by civil war and the collapse of industrial output, driving the old sovznaki into near-worthlessness. The 25,000-rouble note — a sum that would have represented extraordinary wealth just five years earlier — was by issuance already a workaday transaction denomination.

This note belongs to the first standardized Soviet treasury series, issued under the State Treasury rather than a central bank, since Gosbank had only been re-established in 1921 and was still building institutional credibility. The monetary reform of 1924, which introduced the chervonets-backed rouble at 50 billion old roubles to one new, rendered the entire sovznaki series obsolete within months of printing.