50 Roubles Batum

Batum — the Black Sea port now known as Batumi — was under British military occupation from late 1918 through July 1920, and this diminutive treasury note was issued during that window of contested authority. The Batum Treasury operated independently of both the Georgian Democratic Republic and the short-lived Transcaucasian governments, producing its own emergency scrip for a city that was simultaneously claimed by Georgia, Armenia, and the newly formed Soviet state.

The extreme small size is not an accident — paper was scarce, and these notes were produced cheaply and quickly to address an immediate cash shortage in the occupied zone. The S744 is among the smaller physical notes issued anywhere in the former Russian Empire during the post-revolutionary period.