Government Bank Vladikavkaz branch 50 rubli 12.2.1918

DescriptionDuring the Civil War period hundreds of local administrations issued thousands of local banknotes. The general feeling was they had to do something. If they didn’t people would just be scribbling IOUs to each other.Vladikavkaz is a major city in the North Caucasus. A major railway runs through it connecting Central Russia and the Black Sea.Russia started making paper money in the 18th century. Generally speaking, during the Empire the relationship of paper to gold was, shall we say, fraught. There was a great outpouring of local notes during the Revolution and the Civil War, and again in the last years of the Soviet Union and a few years after.For organizational purposes, banknote collectors tend to make a distinction between national issues and local issues. The Standard Catalog of World Paper Money has a volume dedicated to “specialized” issues, where about 20,000 items are listed. A “complete” catalog would likely have at least 10 times that number. The Standard Catalog numbers for “specialized” notes are designated P-S. There are special catalogs for various series such as German and Austrian notgeld, former Soviet Union, etc.