1000 Lei State Bank

The 1950 Romanian 1000 Lei was issued in the immediate aftermath of the 1947 monetary reform that extinguished the old National Bank system and replaced it with a Soviet-style state bank structure. The denomination itself was a holdover problem: Romania's 1947 reform had been severe, exchanging old lei at punishing rates, but inflation pressure continued, and high-denomination notes remained necessary even as the regime publicly condemned the economic conditions that created them.

Șerban Zainea was among the first Romanian designers to work directly under the new People's Republic brief, producing imagery aligned with socialist realist requirements. The 1950 series was printed domestically, a deliberate policy shift away from the prewar reliance on foreign security printers.