50 Roubles

The State Treasury 50 Rouble series of which this note forms part was among the last large-denomination imperial issues to circulate before the upheaval of 1914–1917 rendered the entire monetary system unstable. These notes continued to circulate well into the early Soviet period simply because there was nothing adequate to replace them — the Provisional Government and early Bolshevik authorities both overprinted and reused existing imperial stock out of practical necessity rather than ideological preference.

The watermark was produced using a wove mould technique refined at the Expedition for Storing State Papers in St. Petersburg, the imperial printing works that had held a monopoly on Russian government securities since 1818.