25 Roubles Piatigorsk-Batalpashchinsk Company, Independent Army

Piatigorsk and Batalpashinsk were two of several North Caucasus towns that issued emergency scrip during the chaotic regional struggle of 1918, when the Volunteer Army and Bolshevik forces contested the area in rapid, brutal succession. This note was sanctioned through the Financial Commission of the Volunteer Army — Anton Denikin's administrative apparatus — as a stopgap measure when central monetary supply had entirely collapsed across the region.

The hyphenated issuing authority in the title reflects genuine administrative improvisation: local branches of the State Bank operated under whatever political authority controlled them that week. Pick S554 is among the harder entries in the broader Volunteer Army scrip grouping to authenticate, as wartime counterfeiting of these low-denomination regional notes was common and well-documented even at the time of issue.