250 Roubles, RSFSR, 1919

Расчетный знак РСФСР — Двѣсти пятьдесятъ рублей

Reverse of 250 Roubles, RSFSR, 1919 — Reverse 600 dpi

This copy

Accession: OM-00019
Serial: АА 020
Series year: 1919
Actually issued: 1919–1922
commissar_of_finance: N. N. Krestinsky (Н. Крестинскій) probable
People's Commissar of Finance; signature consistent across this series.
cashier: M. Osipov (М. Осиповъ) probable
Read at 600 dpi from the lower-left signature panel.
Grade: VG (IBNS)
Edge tears, soiling, limp. Estimated from the archival scan. Folds, soiling and edge condition are visible at this resolution; paper crispness, pinholes, small repairs and pressing are not.
Estimated value: $2 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-07.
Dimensions: 105.3 × 69.9 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
Themes: Russian Civil War Hyperinflation Settlement token Krestinsky signature

The type

Type: 250 Roubles, RSFSR, 1919
Printer: Expedition for the Preparation of State Papers (Goznak)
Rarity: very common

Inscriptions

Obverse — the backing

Обеспечивается всем достоянием Республики

Secured by the entire property of the Republic — no gold, no exchange undertaking, only the assets of the state

Reverse — the counterfeiting penalty

Подделка преследуется по закону

Counterfeiting is prosecuted by law

Symbology

Soviet arms: Hammer and sickle crossed over a globe in a wreath of wheat, with a rising sun behind - industry and agriculture, the world as the field of action, and the sunrise of a new order. It replaced the eagle entirely rather than editing it.
«Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!»: 'Workers of the world, unite!' - printed on money, and on the larger notes repeated in German, French, Italian, English, Arabic and Chinese. A currency addressed to people who would never hold it.
Guilloche: The dense interlaced line-work filling the field. Engine-turned on a geometric lathe, it was the era's principal anti-counterfeiting device: reproducible only with the same machine and impossible to draw freehand or photograph cleanly.

What was happening

The 250-rouble settlement token of 1919, and one of the first RSFSR issues to abandon the vocabulary of the credit note entirely. A raschetny znak is not a banknote and does not pretend to be one. There is no promise of gold, no promise of anything but "the entire property of the Republic" — a phrase that appears on every one of them and means, in practice, nothing enforceable.

These were printed to keep a war economy moving while money itself was collapsing. By 1921 the RSFSR was running the presses faster than the notes could be counted, and the denominations climbed by orders of magnitude within months: hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then millions. The 1922–24 reform eventually wiped the slate, exchanging these at rates that made the arithmetic of holding them absurd.

Nikolai Krestinsky signed many of them as People's Commissar of Finance. He was later ambassador to Germany, then a defendant in the 1938 Trial of the Twenty-One, where he became the only accused to retract his confession in open court before recanting the retraction the next day. He was shot that year.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 250 Roubles, RSFSR, 1919 in the collection.

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