25 Roubles Lottery Bond, 1955

Soviet lottery bonds occupied an awkward space between savings instrument and compulsory contribution — workers were expected to subscribe, and outright refusal carried social and professional risk. The 1955 series was among the last of the postwar bond campaigns; Khrushchev abruptly halted repayments on all outstanding lottery bonds in 1957, effectively freezing billions in citizen savings for the following two decades. Redemption was only resumed in 1974.

Goznak printed these to the same security standards applied to currency, including a watermarked paper substrate — appropriate for instruments that, at least nominally, carried monetary value.