Types / 1919

5 000 Roubles, RSFSR, 1919

Государственный кредитный билетъ — Пять тысячъ рублей

common

What was happening

Five thousand roubles, dated 1919 — one of the last issues to keep the State Credit Note form, with its Manager and Cashier signatures, before the RSFSR gave up the pretence and switched to settlement tokens that promised nothing but the property of the Republic.

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. Dated 1919, by which point the credit-note format was being abandoned in favour of the plainer settlement tokens. Catalogue reference not yet confirmed against a specialist catalogue of the Civil War issues.

1 copy in the collection

OM-00045 5 000 Roubles, RSFSR, 1919 АС 170150 $3.5 F