30 Shahiv

The Ukrainian People's Republic issued this note during an extraordinarily compressed window of independence — the UNR existed as a functioning state for only a few years before Soviet consolidation ended it. The small cardboard fractional notes of 1918 were a direct response to a coin shortage so severe that the new government had no time to establish a proper mint. These functioned as shahi denominations, subdivisions of the hryvnia that the UNR had formally adopted in January 1918 to replace the Russian ruble entirely.

The cardboard stock was a deliberate material choice given wartime paper constraints. It wore poorly in circulation.