Companie Du Chemin de Fer de Semiretchensk (Est-Turkestan) - 1913 dated Russian Bond (Uncanceled)

187.5 Roubles. Czar Nicholas II-Romanov Dynasty Eagle. Text at back in French and Russian. Uncanceled. The Russian Empire was a vast Empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its proclamation in November 1721 until its dissolution in March 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about 22,800,000 square kilometres (8,800,000 sq mi), roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the third-largest empire in history, behind only by the British and Mongol empires; it also held colonies in North America between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity.

The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. From the 10th to 17th centuries, the Russians had been ruled by a noble class known as the boyars, above whom was an absolute monarch titled the tsar. The groundwork of the Russian Empire was laid by Ivan III (r. 1462–1505), who greatly expanded his domain, established a centralized Russian national state, and secured independence against the Tatars. His grandson, Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), became in 1547 the first Russian monarch to be crowned "tsar of all Russia". Between 1550 and 1700, the Russian state grew by an average of 35,000 square kilometres (14,000 sq mi) per year. Major events during this period include the transition from the Rurik to the Romanov dynasties, the conquest of Siberia, and the reign of Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725). Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire