State credit note

State credit notes represent official government paper currency issues originating in the Russian Empire and later produced by the Ukrainian People's Republic. In Russia, the Ministry of Finance established the State Credit Note Bureau in 1843 to produce paper money distributed through the State Commercial Bank, a monetary tradition that encompassed the empire's paper currency through to the large high-denomination notes of the early twentieth century. During the Ukrainian War of Independence, the Ukrainian People's Republic adopted the designation for its own paper currency by the law of 1 March 1918.

The early Russian imperial notes were initially backed by silver reserves until January 1855. Following the creation of the State Bank of the Russian Empire in 1860, banknote issuance remained under the direct orders of the Ministry of Finance until the bank acquired full central banking functions following the adoption of the gold standard in 1897. In Ukraine, the 1918 legislation planned denominations of 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000 hryvnias. An agreement was signed on 24 March 1918 with the German Reichsdruckerei to print them; however, the 5- and 20-hryvnia notes were never printed, the 50-hryvnia bill was not contracted, and a 2,000-hryvnia denomination was introduced instead.

Ukrainian State Credit Notes incorporated anti-counterfeiting protections, specifically watermarks and guilloche patterns. Graphic artist Heorhiy Narbut designed the 500-hryvnia note, though the German printers altered the submitted colours without authorization. The reverse of each Ukrainian note carried a legal statement declaring that the notes were secured by all state property of the republic, circulated alongside gold coinage, and warned that counterfeiting was punishable by disfranchisement and imprisonment. They also featured a gold-standard inscription certifying that one hryvnia was equivalent to 8.712 dolya of pure gold.