Types / 1918

10 000 Roubles, RSFSR, 1918

Государственный кредитный билетъ — Десять тысячъ рублей

common

What was happening

Ten thousand roubles, still styled a State Credit Note and still signed by a Manager and a Cashier as though the imperial State Bank were running. The 1918 series began with a one-rouble note; within a year it needed this.

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.

Rarity

Common. A large-format credit note from the point where the 1918 series had to add denominations faster than it could design them. Catalogue reference not yet confirmed against a specialist catalogue of the Civil War issues.

1 copy in the collection

OM-00043 10 000 Roubles, RSFSR, 1918 БР 164903 $3.5 F