"The early days of a better nation..."

23 years ago, philatelists were given a wonderful gift: the birth of 15 (or 16 or 17, depending on how you count) new nations when the USSR fell apart.
Yes, I know that's a grotesquely shallow way to look at an event that brought a lot of misery to a lot of people, but this is a philatelic blog, what do you expect me to write about, Sumerian grammar?
The new nations were faced with the giant task of constructing a functioning state out of the wreckage of the USSR. Some inherited structures were more hindrance than help - how many former Soviet republics found themselves saddled with a Soviet-oriented parliament?
Postally, the main ingredients were:

1. Outdated postal rates (7k letter rate of April 1991) which rose quickly after independence;
2. A large supply of USSR postal stationery, which was uprated - usually with overprints - on a massive scale;
3. A large supply of USSR stamps - mostly definitives - which were used without overprint, used with overprints and even used with manuscript revaluations;
4. Not much of a local logistical structure - new post-independence stamps had to be printed abroad quite often, and supplying stamps to the post offices was a continual headache, with stamp shortages the frequent result;
5. Sharply reduced control over postal operations, with speculators taking advantages of the chaos in many places.

This transitional period lasted anywhere from a few months (Russia) to several years (some Central Asian republics), and it gave us an almost infinite field of interesting things to collect. Whether the post-Soviet republics are indeed "better nations" is not for me to say, but speaking as a philatelist, YIPPEE!