25 Roubles Northern Camps

Gulag scrip, not currency in any conventional sense. The Chief Administration of Northern Camps — one of the NKVD's sprawling labor camp directorates — issued these notes for internal use within the camp economy, where prisoners and free workers alike were nominally paid in scrip redeemable only at camp stores. The 1937 date places this squarely within the Great Terror, when the northern camp population was expanding at a pace the administration could barely manage.

The official stamp served as the primary authentication device — printing infrastructure in remote camp complexes was rarely sophisticated enough for embedded security features.