25 Roubles Weapons Designer Semyon Lavochkin

Lavochkin's fighters — the LaGG-3, La-5, and La-7 — underwent one of the more dramatic developmental arcs of any aircraft family in the Second World War, transitioning from a largely inferior wood-and-resin construction to a machine that Soviet pilots considered superior to anything the Luftwaffe flew by 1944. The La-7 was the mount Ivan Kozhedub flew when he became the highest-scoring Allied ace of the entire conflict.

This issue belongs to the Bank of Russia's long-running "Weapons Designers of the Great Patriotic War" circulation commemorative series, struck in copper-nickel for broad distribution rather than collector packaging.