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500 Roubles
| Issuer | Soviet Union |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Soviet Republic (RSFSR) ‒ Rouble (1921-1923) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Brown intaglio print over a multicolour underprint in dull red, light orange, and dull green. The state arms appear as a central underprint motif, surrounded by denomination text and issuing authority inscriptions arranged across the face of the note. Series and serial number designations are present in the lower portion. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Brown intaglio print over a multicolour underprint in dull pink, dull yellow, and blue. The centre of the note is occupied by eight lines of explanatory text in Cyrillic script, setting out the legal tender provisions of the 1923 currency issue with reference to the decree of 24 October 1922. The denomination 500 is repeated in numeral form below the text block. |
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| Comments |
The 1923 Soviet 500 Rouble belongs to the brief and chaotic period when the Bolshevik government was running two parallel currency systems simultaneously — the rapidly inflating sovznaki and the new gold-backed chervonets introduced in late 1922. The sovznaki series, to which this note belongs, was essentially a dead currency walking; the State Bank had already committed to phasing it out, but printing continued because the rural economy still ran on it.
Goznak — the successor to the Imperial Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers, founded in 1818 — had only recently been reconstituted after the disruptions of revolution and civil war. By 1924, the entire sovznaki series was demonetized at a rate of 50,000 roubles to one new Soviet rouble.