10 Roubles, Russian Empire, series 1909

The ten-rouble note — the krasnenkaya, "little red one" — was the workhorse of pre-war middle-class life, and the note most Russians pictured when they thought of money. Its rose and red printing was deliberate: colour was a security feature and a branding one, and the name stuck for decades after the note itself was worthless.

It shares the fate of the whole 1909 family. Issued under Konshin with the gold clause meaning what it said, reprinted under Shipov through the war years with the clause meaning nothing, and finally circulating through 1917 and into the Civil War alongside Provisional Government and Soviet paper. The Bolsheviks kept printing from imperial plates well into 1918–19, so a "1909" ten-rouble note may have been physically made under three different governments.