The Soviet Union was the first jurisdiction to implement a single-tier banking system, an experience that was subsequently emulated by a number of Communist states.
[1]: 15 In the late 19th century, slavophile journalist S. F. Sharapov advocated the creation of a "universal bank" that would fulfil the need of an autarkic Russian economy without having to abide by the constraints of the gold standard.
[...] A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.
"[1]: 21 Lenin's vision, which echoed Sharapov's without having apparently being directly influenced by it, was not universally held in the revolutionary movement, and was not immediately implemented.
[2]: 82 During the period of War Communism that followed, the part of the country controlled by the Bolsheviks was reduced to a barter economy with no banking activity whatsoever.
The residual monetary means of exchange were notes directly issued by the state treasury, known as Sovznaks (Soviet tokens), which depreciated fast, with hyperinflation peaking in the first half of 1922.
Whereas the Soviet banking system was largely designed for autarkic resilience, it nevertheless included institutions dedicated to promoting foreign trade and to procure hard currency.
Beginning in 1921 in Paris and prior to his death, Leonid Krasin created the first state controlled Soviet overseas bank.
[4][5][6][a][b] In 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Paris-based subsidiary bank BCEN-Eurobank had bad loans with Cuba, Morocco, and Mauritania and received a "silver plater" infusion of capital from Gosbank through a "participatory credit" (Russian: партисипационный кредит) of $1080.2 billion in various currencies.