A quick poll will probably reveal that most readers know
which 5 countries broke away from the Russian Empire (more-or-less) permanently
after the Revolution: Poland, Finland and the 3 Baltic states. The fact that
Bessarabia guberniya was quietly occupied and annexed by Romania in 1918 is
less well known and the very few attempts at exploring what that meant in
philatelic terms have all been within the pages of Yamshchik/The-Post-Rider. The political timeline was as follows
(dates in New Style):
15 December
1917: “National Council” in Kishinev proclaims Moldavian People’s Republic,
intended to be in a federative union with Russia
6 January 1918: military aid is
requested from Romania
23 January 1918: Romanian units
move into Bessarabia, occupying the following cities:
24
January: Cahul
25
January: Bolgrad
26
January: Kishinev
27
January: Reni
3
February: Ismail
5
February: Bendery
7
February: Khilia
18 February 1918: total
independence is declared
9 April 1918: Bessarabia is united
with Romania
1 July 1918: Romanian postal
service is established in Bessarabia
Clearly, the period of interest is from roughly 15 December
1917 to 1 July 1918: a period of transition, which is always interesting
philatelically.
Sadly, examples of mail from this period are extremely
scarce, and apart from two postcards described by Epstein (2005, 2007) I don’t
know of any examples illustrated in the literature. So it’s a pleasure to add
one more example to that short list. The cover illustrated here was sent
registered from Bolgrad (17 April 1918) to Kishinev (20 April 1918). Franked
with Russian Arms stamps for 50k, it supports Epstein’s conjecture that
Moldavia-as-part-of-Romania was using the Ukrainian postal rates of 15 January
1918 (or something that looked just like it): 25k postage and 25k registration,
see Ivakhno (1991) for details.
It’s an interesting example of Russian stamps being used to
frank Ukrainian postal rates in what was by then part of Romania…
References
Epstein, Alexander: “An item from Bessarabia in the period
of troubles”. Yamshchik/The Post-Rider 56,
June 2005, pp.72-73.
Epstein, Alexander: “One more item of mail from Bessarabia
in 1918”. Yamshchik/The Post-Rider 60,
September 2007, pp.47-48.
Grecu, Dan: “The beginnings of the Romanian posts in Bessarabia
in 1918”. Yamshchik/The Post-Rider
45, November 1999, pp.62-66.
Ivakhno, Aleksandr: “Pochtovye tarify Ukrainy 1918-1920gg”. Ukrainskaya i Rossiiskaya Filateliya 1,
1991, pp.7-13.
