500 Roubles, Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1919

The South Caucasus fragmented faster than anywhere else in the former empire. The Transcaucasian Commissariat governed jointly for a few months from Tiflis, then split in 1918 into three republics — Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan — each issuing its own currency, each conquered by the Red Army between 1920 and 1921, each then issuing Soviet notes in the same scripts.

These notes carry their denominations in Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani in Arabic script alongside Russian, and often French: an appeal to the European recognition that decided whether such a state survived.