Iranian Azerbaijan - Autonomous Government, 50 Tomans, AH 1324 (1946)

This is a note of one of the shortest-lived governments to ever issue currency. In the closing months of the Second World War, Soviet forces still occupied northern Iran, and under their protection a Soviet-backed Azerbaijan People's Government was proclaimed at Tabriz in December 1945 under Ja'far Pishevari. It issued its own banknotes -of which this 50 tomans is the highest denomination - as an assertion of statehood. The experiment lasted barely a year: once, under intense Western pressure, the Red Army withdrew in 1946, the autonomous government collapsed almost overnight when Iranian troops re-entered Tabriz that December, and Pishevari fled across the border to Soviet Azerbaijan, where he died in a car crash the following year. Surviving notes are scarce and historically evocative relics of an opening skirmish of the Cold War. The present piece is the variant r, a remainder from the issue, and is accordingly crisp and bright, its multicoloured arabesque design in shades of blue as fresh as the day it was printed.

Pick S106r. aUNC.