Saturday, December 29, 2012

A back to die for

This cover is quite nice on first glance, though nothing special:
Registered, double-weight letter from Blagoveshchensk to Zuerich
It's a perfect respectable 50k rate letter from Blagoveshchensk. These frankings puzzled me for a bit since you normally see 40k frankings (20k postage plus 20k registration), but it appears that 20k was postage for the first 15 grams, with each additional 15 grams costing 10k, so 20k+10k postage and 20k registration. August 1922, so sent during the last few months of the FER, although the Chita stamps remained in use until February 1924.

But the back makes this cover a rarity:

Charity labels! In Gold kopeks! From the Ts.D.V.K.! If only I knew what that meant! (I'm betting Central Far Eastern Committee)

Only cover from the FER with charity labels I've seen.



Sunday, December 23, 2012

In praise of cash (frankings)

I have a weak spot for cash frankings. I think it started when I first spotted a 1919 registered cover from Perm' with its 1.20R rate (50k postage and 70k registration) paid in cash, as witnessed by a nice cachet on the reverse of the cover.
As I started seeing more and more of them (though never many - I estimate I've seen about a dozen examples from Siberia and the Far East during the last 25 years) a few trends were obvious. Disregarding the howlingly rare cash frankings of the Far Eastern Republic, the cash frankings were all from areas under Kolchak's control, and they were all on registered letters to inland destinations. Since such mail isn't exactly common it's no wonder we see so few examples, and the fact that stampless mail seems to have a lower survival rate to begin with doesn't help. And yes, unregistered mail to domestic destinations was franked with stamps!
You can form a small and frustratingly static collection of the cachets involved. I've seen examples from about 5 cities and while a few are obviously from the same mold, they're mostly very individualistic creations.

The odd man out is this cover:
Registered letter from Tugulymskoe, Tobol'sk to Kamyshlov, March 1919
Yes, the back has the "smoking gun":

A few differences makes this one example unusual. It's a wholly manuscript notation, which is unique in my experience for White Siberia, but hardly surprising for such a small place. Second, it's fairly early, predating Kolchak's first set of rates, though not the earliest I've ever seen (I've seen a late 1918 example from Vladivostok). Finally, what about that 7k stamp inprint on the stationery envelope? Was it counted? Ignored? Was this envelope sold by the post office with ms. notation and all?

Wonderful stuff!

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Kolchak's Express

Many years ago, Prof. Howard Weinert made me a fine gift of this cover:
Chita to Omsk, September 1919, sent on to Irkutsk. Cash franking of 2.20R on reverse

It's battered, but interesting for a few reasons. It's addressed to Nikandr Mirolyubov, who investigated the murder of the royal family in Ekaterinburg. It's franked in cash (aside: am I the only person on the planet who thinks cash frankings are more interesting than franked letters?). And it has the word "EHKSPRESS" written on the front. After some time I became aware that the cash franking of 2.20R probably included 70k registration and 3x50k postage, so that this would be a triple-weight letter seemed a plausible explanation of the rate. The "Ehkspress"? I assumed it was a plea for this letter to be carried on an Express train, perhaps, nothing more since Express Mail didn't exist in 1919, right?

Flash forward a bunch of years. Masha Chlenova is kind enough to make me lots of copies of Kolchak's postal circulars. For the first time I had primary source material on postal rates in White Siberia! Two sets of rates, as surmised, one starting in late April 1919, the second in October 1919. The rates were for domestic mail only, the rates for mail abroad still have a few riddles left.
But the surprise was with the October 1919 rates. These included rates for Express Mail, at triple the normal postage. Oho!

The April rates did not mention Express mail, but it could have been introduced sometime between the two circulars of which I had copies (April and October) at triple the domestic letter rate. Could it be that ratty letter was actually Russia's oldest Express letter?

And so we come to THIS letter:
Omsk to USA, late October 1919. 6.50R franked in cash on front
It's marked Ehkspress as well! And it's franked 6.50R which would have been the right rate for an Express letter to a domestic destination. However, this one went to the USA, and the reverse had a further surprise:


4R in Arms types, which would have been the correct rate for a registered letter abroad... Is it possible the letter was assessed a kind of schizophrenic rate because the foreign letter rates made no provisions for Express mail? In other words, the Express service only applied to the domestic leg and only paid for that domestic leg. It took a further 4R to get it from Vladivostok to the USA, perhaps?

Two 1919 Russian Express letters...Who could guess?