The Collection of Banknotes in the Slavonic Library (from 1898‒1947)
The collection of banknotes in the holdings of the Slavonic Library comprises approximately 1,200 items. Most of the means of payment come from Slavic lands (mainly Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union), with also German, Hungarian and Finnish banknotes, those from the Baltic states and others being represented to a lesser extent. The oldest in the collection is a series of Russian banknotes from 1898. Apart from common means of payment, the collection contains state loan bonds, emergency paper currency and duty stamps. The vast majority of the banknotes come from the period of the Russian Civil War and the first years of the existence of Bolshevik Russia and the Soviet Union. After the Second World War, the collection has been complemented only sporadically.
The origin of the collection is unknown. It was first organised and catalogued in the 1980s by the Czech notaphilist Jiří Daněk (1925‒2007), who also proposed its internal structure and division used to this day.
The collection is deposited in three albums (folders).
Album 1:
- Russia – state banknotes (1898‒1917)
- Russia ‒ state credit banknotes (1918‒1947)
- Lithuania (1922)
- Latvia (1915‒1919)
- Estonia (1919‒1922)
- Finland (1909‒1919)
- Poland (1919‒1946)
Album 2:
- North Russia (1899‒1919)
- Ukraine (1918‒1920, 1942)
- Crimea (1918)
- South Russia (1918‒1920)
- North Caucasus (1918)
- South Causasus (1918‒1924)
Album 3:
- Russia ‒ Siberia ‒ The Urals (1917‒1919)
- Central Asia (1918‒1921)
- East Siberia ‒ Baikal (1917‒1920)
- Others ‒ Miscellanea (from the area of the former USSR)
- Bulgaria (1922‒1944)
- Montenegro (1914)
- Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1919‒1929)
- Germany (1904‒1942)
- Hungary (1919‒1946)v
- Korea (1916, 1919)
- Japan