5 Roubles, Provisional Siberian Government, 1918

The five-rouble Siberian treasury token, printed in grey-green with a classical architectural frame. Issued by the Provisional Siberian Government at Omsk — the anti-Bolshevik administration that Admiral Kolchak absorbed in his November 1918 coup and ran until his capture and execution in early 1920.

The text makes the note's whole predicament explicit: this treasury token is exchangeable by the State Bank of Siberia for State Credit Notes. It is money whose value is defined by other money, issued by a government whose claim to that other money's issuer had no legal basis at all. The imperial double-headed eagle is retained, crownless, exactly as the Provisional Government left it.

These circulated across a vast, thinly held territory along the Trans-Siberian railway, competing with Soviet notes, imperial notes, Far Eastern issues and outright barter. They died with the Omsk government.