3 Roubles, City of Odessa, 1917

Municipal money. When the state stopped supplying currency, cities printed their own against deposits held at the local branch of the State Bank — and said so in the small print, because acceptance depended entirely on people believing that sentence.

Odessa, Zhitomir, Elisavetgrad and dozens of other towns issued these between 1917 and 1920, through repeated changes of occupying power. Some carry Ukrainian text and the karbovanets denomination, some Russian and roubles, depending on who held the city when the plates were cut.