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25 000 Roubles STATE TREASURY 5% SHORT TERM OBLIGATIONS
| Issuer | State Treasury of the Russian Empire |
|---|---|
| Year | 1915 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Rouble (1700-1917) |
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| Obverse description | The Imperial double-headed eagle arms at centre, flanked by the denomination '25.000 R.' repeated on either side. The upper portion bears the title text in Cyrillic identifying this as a short-term obligation of the State Treasury, ninth issue of 1915, with issue date 20 July 1915 and repayment date 20 January 1916. The lower portion contains the full text of the obligation in Cyrillic, two manuscript signatures of Treasury officials, and a French-language legend along the bottom reading 'Bon du Trésor de VINGT-CINQ MILLE roubles'; a vertical French inscription runs along the left margin noting the redemption and interest terms. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | 25.000 РУБЛЕЙ |
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| Comments |
These 5% short-term treasury obligations were instruments of war finance, not conventional banknotes. Issued in 1915 as the Russian Imperial government scrambled to fund an increasingly catastrophic mobilization on the Eastern Front, they circulated alongside regular currency because the Ministry of Finance had effectively run out of less desperate options. The Tsar's government suspended gold convertibility in 1914, and instruments like these filled the gap left by a rapidly inflating money supply.
The "short-term" designation was optimistic. By 1917 the obligations were worthless, and the Provisional Government that briefly succeeded the Romanovs inherited a fiscal wreck that the Bolsheviks then formally repudiated entirely in 1918.