50 000 000 Roubles Transcaucasian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic

The Transcaucasian SFSR was a short-lived federation of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, created in 1922 partly at Lenin's insistence as an administrative mechanism before all three were absorbed into the USSR. It issued its own currency during the hyperinflationary collapse of Soviet monetary policy in the early 1920s, when denominations climbed into the tens of millions simply to keep pace with purchasing power. This note, at 50,000,000 roubles, reflects that terminal phase of the old rouble system.

The federation itself was dissolved in 1936 when Stalin — a Georgian — restructured the Caucasus into three separate Soviet republics. Notes from this issuer were never produced in large quantities relative to Russian issues, and the TSFSR series remains one of the more obscure corners of early Soviet paper money.