The Ukrainian Trains of the 1920s

When the Kiryushkin & Robinson book on Imperial Russian Railway postmarks came out, many years ago, it was a huge step forward for all collectors of such postmarks, but for us who like looking beyond 1917, it wasn't much help. Soviet railway postmarks - particularly the postmarks of the 1920s - are mostly unexplored territory, and I don't know of any literature on the subject that is much help. (and if you, kind reader, do know of something, I'm all ears)
A few general trends are visible. The familiar oval postmarks stuck around for most of the 1920s, but more and more circular postmarks start appearing. In some of the union republics, bilingual postmarks come into being (I've seen Russian/Belarusian postmarks and no doubt others exist). And of course, route number assignations continue to change, just as they did in Imperial times. I have a list that attempts to extend the K&R list to 1945 but it's based on a spotty selection of postal lists so it's not very accurate.

Ukraine created a wholly new category of railways postmarks: the All-Ukrainian postmarks. These are postmarks that are wholly in Ukrainian, with not a sign of Russian, and they do not mention termini, being inscribed POSHT. (number) VAG. I've seen about half a dozen examples over the years - they're not common - from routes 47/48, 67/68 and 177/178. Here are a few examples:

Line 47 is also represented in a second group of odd postmarks. These are bilingual, Ukrainian/Russian, but their text is so sparse you don't really notice! Two examples:

I can't help but wonder if this was a uniquely Ukrainian way of sabotaging the imposition of Russian: reduce the postmark text so drastically that it becomes irrelevant if it's in Russian or Ukrainian.

All this is fun to collect, but they are really only small signs of a huge, bitter and lethal struggle going on in the Ukrainian SSR for the definition of what it meant to be a Ukrainian Soviet citizen: how much Ukrainian nationalism was allowed? People died over this, with the late-1920s purge of "nationalist deviationists" claiming thousands of victims.

But for a philatelist, it's fascinating!