5 000 Roubles, Transcaucasian SFSR, 1923

The 5 000-rouble note of the 1923 Transcaucasian series. Issued by the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic — the short-lived federation of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan that existed inside the USSR from 1922 until Stalin dissolved it in 1936.

Read the small print across the top: one rouble in Transcaucasian bony equals one rouble in Georgian bony. That sentence is the whole problem in miniature. The region had been running several parallel currencies — Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Russian — and this note exists to fix an exchange rate between two of them by decree.

The denomination appears in four scripts: Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani in Arabic letters. Within about a year the 1924 all-union currency reform swept the whole issue away. The denominations tell you why: this series runs from thousands to twenty-five million roubles in the space of a single year.