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50 000 Roubles STATE TREASURY 5% SHORT TERM OBLIGATIONS
| Issuer | State Treasury of the Russian Empire |
|---|---|
| Year | 1915 |
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| Currency | Rouble (1700-1917) |
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| Obverse description | The Imperial double-headed eagle arms vignette at centre, flanked by the issue date (20 Июня 1915 г.) on the left and the redemption date (20 Декабря 1915 г.) on the right. The denomination 50.000 Р. appears twice in the upper portion, with serial number field №0000 at centre top, and the full text of the obligation printed in Cyrillic below the vignette. French-language marginal inscriptions run vertically along both side borders, and a French denomination line appears at the foot of the note. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is printed entirely in olive-green on plain paper, dominated by a large central guilloche oval medallion with fine lathe-work patterns, bearing the numeral 50,000 in bold figures within the centre field and the Cyrillic denomination РУБЛЕЙ below it. The surrounding background is filled with an all-over fine geometric guilloche underprint extending to the margins, with small corner counters. |
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| Comments |
These short-term treasury obligations were a direct consequence of Russia's catastrophic wartime financing crisis. By 1915, the government had suspended gold convertibility, conventional bond markets were strained, and the State Treasury was issuing interest-bearing paper instruments that functioned simultaneously as debt instruments and as circulating currency — a deliberately blurred line that helped mask the true scale of deficit spending from a public already under enormous wartime pressure.
The 5% yield was nominal; real purchasing power eroded quickly as military expenditure outpaced any realistic repayment capacity. Pick lists several signature varieties for this series, and P#31D specifically reflects one of the later authorization combinations.