25 Roubles - Goznak Test Note

Goznak test notes are production specimens issued internally by the Russian State Printing House to verify press calibration, paper quality, and security feature registration before authorized currency runs commenced. They were never intended for circulation and never assigned legal tender status. This 1914 example predates the catastrophic wartime inflation that would render Imperial Russian paper money nearly worthless within a decade — the Goznak presses that produced it would be running continuously by 1916 just to keep pace with military expenditure.

Surviving examples are rare precisely because institutional test material was routinely destroyed in-house. The watermark, present as a security verification element rather than a denomination marker, is the detail most likely to differentiate this from a proof or essay of the same period.