The Cherkassy Defense refers to the combat actions of peasants from twelve Russian villages of the Lepsinsk Uyezd (Semirechye Oblast) in the rear of the White Guard troops.
During the first 3 months of the siege/defense, the thirty-thousand-strong mass of peasantry, compressed around the village of Cherkasskoye, used for cash settlements the “credit notes of the Semirechye Oblast Council,” secured by a stock of opium kept in the State Bank and, for greater reliability, signed by the Oblast Military Commissar (numbers 8045–8054 and onward). However, due to the limited capacity of the Verny printing house, the Lepsinsk uyezd executive committee, constantly in need of cash notes, began issuing its own money, setting an example for other towns and villages.
It was this example that the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Cherkassy Front followed when the shortage of oblast- and uyezd-issued cash notes began to be felt noticeably.
As a result of the joint work of the “Extraordinary Commissioner of the Military-Revolutionary Committee for Monetary Affairs,” employees of the Cherkasskoye post office, and the treasurer of State Savings Bank cash desk No. 596, A. Utkin, in May 1919 Cherkassy issued its own money.
The model used was the cash notes issued by Lepsinsk, but since Lepsinsk was a town and Cherkasskoye only a village, additional simplifications were made, and the money took the following form:
a) Paper was taken from the archive and consisted of parts of a promissory-note blank with a vignette.
b) The size was the same as the “lepsinki”: 56 × 40 mm.
c) The front was filled with a postage or revenue stamp (of the former Russian Empire) matching the denomination of the issued cash notes in value, but only in kopecks, and with an overprint containing a conversion from kopecks to rubles, with the inscription “Cherkasskoye.”
d) The reverse side was even simpler: an overprint of the value in rubles, an old (with the eagle) seal “State Savings Bank Cash Desk No. 596” (long since closed by order of the Soviet authorities), and the signature of the cash desk treasurer A. Utkin, overprinted in red ink.
The Cherkassy “nameless ones” ceased circulating in that same year, 1919, when Cherkasskoye was crushed by the avalanche of White bands of Ataman Annenkov.