5 Chervontsev

The chervonets — originally revived under Lenin's NEP in 1922 as a hard-currency instrument backed by gold and foreign exchange — had shed that convertibility entirely by the mid-1930s. By 1937, it was purely a notional unit of account, the backing rhetoric long abandoned. This issue replaced the 1934 series, which had been issued without Lenin's portrait; that absence proved politically untenable as the cult of personality solidified, and the redesign corrected it.

Gosbank issued this denomination in comparatively large quantities, and surviving examples in any grade are not scarce. The 1937 series remained in circulation until the 1947 monetary reform, which cancelled all outstanding notes and exchanged them at rates deliberately punishing to those who had hoarded cash outside the banking system.