500 Lei Red Army Command

Soviet occupation currency, printed at the Goznak facility in Moscow and issued by the Red Army Command following Romania's armistice with the Allies in August 1944. These notes were produced specifically to facilitate Soviet military expenditure in occupied Romanian territory — a mechanism that effectively transferred real goods and labor to the Red Army at Romanian expense, since the National Bank of Romania was eventually pressured to redeem them at face value.

The series generated considerable economic damage. Romanian economists at the time estimated that Red Army command currency contributed meaningfully to the inflationary spiral that preceded the 1947 monetary reform, which wiped out private savings and smoothed the path for full communist consolidation.