Types / 1918
50 Kopecks, Great Don Cossack Host, 1918
Разменный билетъ Всевеликаго Войска Донского — 50 копѣекъ
What was happening
The portrait is Matvei Ivanovich Platov, Ataman of the Don Host, who led the Cossack cavalry against Napoleon in 1812 and rode into Paris in 1814. Putting him on the money of the 1918 Don republic was a claim of descent: not a new state, the argument runs, but the old Cossack autonomy resuming after two centuries of imperial interruption.
The Great Don Cossack Host declared itself in May 1918 under ataman Krasnov, fought the Bolsheviks with German and then Allied backing, and was absorbed into the Armed Forces of South Russia. It ended with the evacuation of 1920.
A fifty-kopeck note exists because there were no coins. Metal had disappeared into hoards by 1916, and every authority in the former empire — national, regional, municipal, and individual shops — printed its own small change.
