5 Roubles Batum

Batum — the Black Sea port then under British military occupation — produced this note under genuinely chaotic administrative conditions. After the collapse of the Transcaucasian Federation and the Ottoman withdrawal, the British occupied Batum from late 1918, and local treasury notes were issued to fill an acute cash vacuum left by the simultaneous failure of several competing currency systems: Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and various Russian imperial survivors all circulated in the region concurrently.

The extreme dimensions reflect materials rationing, not design choice. Britain withdrew from Batum in July 1920, handing it to the Soviets shortly after.