50 Roubles

The 1915 State Treasury notes were a direct response to the wartime coin hoarding that had stripped small change from circulation almost entirely by mid-1914. These Treasury issues — printed by the Expedition for the Preparation of State Papers, the predecessor institution to what became Goznak — were not banking instruments in the conventional sense but effectively served as state obligations backed by nothing more than the government's increasingly strained credit.

By 1915 the Expedition was operating under severe pressure, producing currency for a war economy hemorrhaging silver and copper. P#53 belongs to a series that would be rendered nearly worthless within three years by the inflationary spiral following the February Revolution.