5 Roubles

Russia's Assignation Bank was established by Catherine II in 1769 specifically to replace the heavy copper coinage that was strangling trade — a single ruble in copper weighed around 1.6 kg, making large commercial transactions genuinely impractical. The assignat notes were the solution, and this 5-rouble denomination served the lower end of that paper currency experiment for nearly three decades under a single pick number.

The extended date range reflects continuous reissue rather than a single print run. Surviving examples often show significant handling damage, which is expected — these circulated hard among a public that took generations to trust paper over metal.