100 Soviet Rubles with Taras Shevchenko
IOTL in the last months of the USSR, there were projects of refusing to place Lenin on money and replace it with cultural figures of the republics. Here is what the head of the USSR State Bank Gerashchenko says:
"At that time, we had plans for issuing new bills with portraits of writers or military leaders representing different republics. In order to strengthen the Union. They would have placed Shevchenko and Khmelnitsky in addition to Pushkin and Suvorov. So that cash would support the unity of the country."
Minister of Finance, and then Prime Minister of the USSR Pavlov:
"At the first, preliminary stage of development and creation of money, we worked on the idea of drawings on banknotes. They used two directions: historical and literature. In other words, they decided to draw portraits of Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, Shevchenko, Nizami, Rustaveli and all of honored national historical events. This question has always caused difficulties, because it was necessary to observe national equality. "