1 ruble — USSR (1938)

Photo: Daniel LeBowsky (CC BY-NC-SA) · Numista
Non-commercial use only

Appearance

Brown print over a yellow underprint. The USSR state emblem at top left, the denomination in guilloché rosettes at the corners, a miner with a jackhammer at right -- popularly, but wrongly, rumoured to be a portrait of the Stakhanovite miner Alexey Stakhanov. The reverse has the denomination at the corners and spelled out in 11 union-republic languages, two guilloché rosettes above and below a central octagon. 125 × 60 mm.

State Bank of the USSR notes (1938)

Three denominations -- 1, 3 and 5 roubles dated 1938 -- despite their own printed title "ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ КАЗНАЧЕЙСКИЙ БИЛЕТ" ("State Treasury Banknote"), were actually issued by the State Bank of the USSR, not the People's Commissariat of Finance -- the old name was inherited from the preceding treasury-note series of the same denominations (1924-1934). Designed by Ivan Dubasov, printed using the multicolour Orlov technique (Goznak), with no signatures. Dense unwatermarked paper, no security thread. Withdrawn from circulation by the 14 December 1947 currency reform.

Other items of the period

• 1 ruble (1938) Pick# 213
• 3 rubles (1938) Pick# 214
• 5 rubles (1938) Pick# 215