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| Issuer | State Bank of Russia (Государственный Банк) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ КРЕДИТНЫЙ БИЛЕТЪ ДВѢСТИ ПЯТЬДЕСЯТЪ РУБЛЕЙ 250 РУБЛЕЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ БАНКЪ РАЗМѢНИВАЕТЪ КРЕДИТНЫЕ БИЛЕТЫ НА ЗОЛОТУЮ МОНЕТУ БЕЗЪ ОГРАНИЧЕНІЯ СУММЫ (1 РУБЛЬ = 1/15 ИМПЕРІАЛА, СОДЕРЖИТЪ 17,424 ДОЛЕЙ ЧИСТАГО ЗОЛОТА) Управляющій Кассиръ 1917 |
| Reverse description | Dark brown intaglio on a light green and multicolour guilloche underprint. The Imperial double-headed eagle arms of Russia occupies the centre of the composition, with a swastika motif integrated into the underprint beneath it — a decorative device common to Russian state printing of this period. The denomination numeral «250» appears within ornate frames at both the left and right margins, the whole enclosed by elaborate guilloche borders. |
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| Comments |
The 250 Rouble note was a creature of revolutionary instability — issued by the Provisional Government's State Bank in 1917, between the February Revolution and the Bolshevik takeover in October. The denomination itself was new; no pre-war Russian note had circulated at this level, and the government introduced it to cope with catastrophic inflation and the near-total breakdown of coin circulation driven by wartime hoarding.
Printed by the state printing works in Petrograd, the series is sometimes called the "Duma money" colloquially, though that attribution is loose. Enormous quantities were produced, and the notes remained nominally valid through the early Soviet period before being demonetized. High-grade survivors are scarcer than their print runs suggest — heavy circulation in a society running short of everything left most examples worn.