50 Roubles, share voucher Riga experimental plant "Energoavtomatika"

During the final years of Soviet rule, many state enterprises in the Baltic republics began issuing their own internal scrip and share vouchers as the command economy buckled and ruble liquidity dried up. Energoavtomatika — a Riga-based plant producing automation and control equipment — was among those that printed denominated vouchers for use within the enterprise economy, part workers' compensation, part proto-equity instrument.

These vouchers occupy an odd legal space: not currency, not quite securities, issued under a Soviet framework that was already dissolving when the ink dried.