Banknote from Laos, 1979

In 1979, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic issued new banknotes in the national currency, the kip, as part of a currency reform. The 20-kip notes feature a rather unusual motif: T-54 tanks. The design of a country’s banknotes is always an expression of its cultural and national identity and its history.

During the Laotian Civil War between 1959 and 1975, the Royal Laotian Army fought with US support against the military arm of the communist resistance group Pathet Lao. The rebels, known from 1965 as the “Lao People’s Liberation Army”, were supported by communist-ruled North Vietnam and also received Soviet weapons. The Laotian Civil War was thus closely linked to the Vietnam War, which was taking place at the same time and in which the superpowers were also confronting each other. The US army bombed parts of Laos to fight the North Vietnamese and communist Laotian fighters and their supply lines. To this day, large parts of the country are contaminated by the effects of US chemical weapons and unexploded ordnance. After the Laotian Civil War, the communists finally took over the government in 1975. They transformed the guerrilla army into a conventional state army, which was mainly used internally to stabilize the regime.

Even before taking power, the communists had issued their own currency in the areas under their control – the “liberation kip”. The motifs on the banknotes were intended to show the future of a communist society liberated from “imperialists” in prosperity and peace. The motifs introduced in 1979 also followed this visual language; they show work on the land, in factories and in the army as symbols of economic and technical development and military power. When the government took over in 1975, 80% of the population lived from subsistence farming.

On the 20-kip bill from 1979, machinery from a textile factory can be seen on one side and two tanks on the other, with soldiers marching alongside them on the banks of the Mekong River, on which a patrol boat is sailing. Laos has no access to the sea, but the Mekong forms the western border with Thailand and Myanmar. The Lao People’s Republic had close political and military relations with the Soviet Union, which supplied it with the T-54 and T-55 tanks pictured here in 1975. To this day, the country still uses 15 T-54/T-55 models and only recently exchanged its decommissioned T-34/85s for T-72s with Russia. The country’s poor economic situation and the lack of an external military threat have prevented a technical modernization of the army to this day.

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