Exchange rates fluctuated wildly depending upon the fortunes of war and rumors.
Exchange Rate - early 1918: 1 ruble = 51 cents (US)
(Source: "The Chicago Daily News War Book for American Soldiers, Sailors and Marines")
Exchange Rate - later 1918: 1 ruble = 10.5 cents (US)

Combatants in the Russian Far East--Japanese soldiers, Reds and Whites--often treated refusal of their currencies as a crime.

Horrendous economic conditions under White rule may have created more sympathy for the Reds than White brutality. During their nine-month tenure in Amur Province during 1918, the Bolsheviks had churned out a pool of eighty million rubles in banknotes, to which the succeeding government had thoughtlessly contributed fourteen million rubles more. Workers already afflicted with revolutionary malaise and surliness were even less inclined to labor for a dubious currency. For an extended period Blagoveshchensk's two large department stores were closed, supposedly due to shortage of stock, "but the real reason is the fact that they do not wish to accept Bolshevik money," reported an American officer. Similarly, the well-known Churin's department store discretely admitted customers who were "willing to pay in Imperial, Kerensky or foreign money."

Currency was a powerful political weapon wielded by both Russia and Japan in their competition for commercial dominance in Manchuria. The yen had been on the rise in usage and popularity since 1919, when Japanese soldiers pumped large volumes into circulation along the Chinese Eastern Railway while the ruble's credibility faded fast with the proliferation of emergency banknotes cranked out by scores of cash-hungry revolutionary and counter-revolutionary administrations. "The Bank of Chosen [in Japanese-held Korea] has flooded the market," noted a U.S. intelligence report, "...and the [yen] notes are being printed at Seoul as fast as possible to fill the demand." Chinese General Chang Tso-Lin, the crafty Manchurian warlord, realized that his military forces were not strong enough to expel the Japanese occupiers from the Chinese Eastern Railway, but attacked them through their soft financial underbelly by issuing a new currency, the Harbin tayang p'iao, which was convertible with the traditional silver tael and, more importantly, became an acceptable form of payment for Chinese Eastern fares as of May 9, 1920. To the Japanese’ dismay, Chang’s tayang p'iao soon surpassed the yen in circulation.

After the Red "liberation" in spring 1922 Semenov banknotes were used for cigarette paper, and a Caucasian money-changer in a Verkhne-Udinsk market could not get three silver rubles (about 42 US cents) for a 10,000-rouble "Moscow bill." Gold and silver were the only real currencies, and the Red administration--the Far Eastern Republic--had abolished paper currency to force precious metals from their hiding places.