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!

Stories behind covers: Crimea 1918-1920

Sadly, the Crimea is in the news for all the wrong reasons at the moment. It's interesting to see because for years I felt I was the only person on the planet to be interested in the Crimea, but here we are... It makes me look at my Crimean covers with new eyes, I can tell you! Next month I'm exhibiting "Big trouble in little Crimea, 1918-1921" as a 1-framer at Westpex, so I'm in the middle of looking at, thinking about and describing of Crimean Civil war period covers. They're ALL interesting. Here's a 1918 example I really like:

July 1918, Sudak to Koreiz, via Yalta. Franked with the 25k rate that seems to have prevailed in Ukraine, the Crimea, Bessarabia, the Don Cossack area and the Kuban Cossack area, and probably a few more places I've forgotten. An internal cover from the middle of the Sul'kevich period, from one small place to another. Wonderful!

Here's a 1919 example that makes me smile:

April 1919, from Koreiz to Moscow, where it arrived on May 3. A very scarce sending from the short-lived Second Soviet Crimean period (April-June 1919), and sent during a brief-ish moment when mail to Moscow was possible. The 35k rate is a holdover from the previous, White administration: if these Crimean Soviets had been true Soviets it would have been sent post-free.

1920 is the really interesting year, mostly because 1920 mail from Crimea is so scarce. Here's one that continues to puzzle me:

There are three possible interpretations of this cover, depending on which postal rate you think was in force at the time. First, if you think the 70k letter rate was in force, this is either a 13-fold weight letter (13x70+70=9.80) or just a nonsense overfranking.

Second, if you think there was a short-lived 1-ruble rate in Crimea at this time (and I do believe that), then this is an 9-fold weight letter (9x1.00+1.00). 

Finally, if you think this letter belongs to the 5-ruble rate period, then this is simply a registered letter, correctly franked. However, I believe Alexander Epstein when he says this rate was introduced later, in June of 1920, and the postmark says April. 

There is a clue on the reverse:

A censor marking like this suggests Summer 1920 very strongly. So I'm inclined to think this is one of those cases where the date in the postmark is simply an error, and this letter was sent in June, July or even August 1920. Probably not much later since that 5R rate used up stamps quickly.

Is it any wonder I love the Civil War period of the Crimea?

Happy New Year!

And while we're at it, here are my resolutions for 2014:

1. Exhibiting. It's been quite awhile since I put together a serious exhibit. I'm working on two at the moment and I'm rediscovering how much fun it is. This will be an easy resolution to keep.
2. Writing. Working on a lengthy article on Soviet Special Post, and I'll probably do a few more. Some might even be on non-Russian subjects. *gasp*
3. Collecting: I need to put my Soviet Georgia in order. I have a ridiculous number of the handstamped surcharges and I have some ideas on how to analyze them. All it takes is time. Merging my collection with the (much smaller) Ashford collection of this area will also take some time, as Peter had organized his material according to the Kohl types.
4. Selling. I've been getting rid of a lot of stuff that I just owned without doing anything with it. I'll continue to do that this year. Besides, money.
5. Buying. If I can afford it I have some buying plans this year...we'll see.
6. Blogging. As and when, I'm afraid.

The VoA Correspondence 2: revaluations

Wading through a batch of 1200 covers from the former USSR, all sent to the USA in the first half of 1992, is a delight, as it gives you a very nice sample of what the postal system looked like in action in these early post-USSR days.
Manuscript revaluations were found on exactly 5 items, from 4 different locations. As an example, here a registered letter from Noginsk, Moscow province:

The three stamps of 1 ruble have been revalued to 2 rubles each, and a 1R TP marking brings the total franking to 7.50R, which is a recognizable rate. It's interesting that the 1R TP marking was used instead of another unrevalued 1R stamp...

Here's another example from Orel railway post office:

A postcard this time, unusually. 3 stamps of 50k have been turned into stamps of 1R each. Two stamps of 15k have been turned into 30k-stamps, and an old 10k stamp has been turned into another 30k stamp. Not sure if 3.30R makes sense as a rate, but it's interesting!

Even better, the batch contained a second example from the same office:

This time it was just the 2R stamp which was revalued, to 4R. This office seemed to like doubling the face value of the stamps. The fourth example is also a doubling:

The origin is ambiguous as the sender gives her location as Staraya Kupavna, but the postmark is Moscow. Three 35k stamps have been uprated to 70k stamps, although 2.60R makes little sense as a rate.

Finally, the most spectacular, probably from Togliatti:

Stamps of 5k were turned into 20k stamps. But the fun wasn't over yet. The reverse:

Three 35k commemorative stamps were turned into stamps of 70k each. Total franking: 3.55 which is close enough to 3.60 to be convincing.

Is ANYONE collecting and/or studying these wonderful examples of postal improvisation?

The Crimean "little" offices

As I may have mentioned once of twice, I like postmarks from the Crimea. After years of collecting and gathering information I've now recorded 230 postmarks from the Imperial period and 224 from the Soviet period (up to the final "ASSR" type), and I'm still finding new postmarks regularly.
Some postmarks are easier to find than others, of course. Railway postmarks (apart from Sevastopol' Vokzal) are pretty thin on the ground - I'm still looking for a Kerch' railway postmark for instance - and Volostnoe Pravlenie postmarks are downright rare. Seasonal offices are another group that's rarely seen.
Kerch' actually managed to cram 4 offices into its area: Kerch', Kerch' Railway, Kerch' Krepost and Kerchenskii Zavod. The latter is another office you'll rarely see:

Then there are the Town Sub-offices. Unsurprisingly, Sevastopol' and Simferopol' both had Town sub-offices, although examples are not easy to find. The one that really surprised me was Feodosiya:

By the way, both postmarks have a "1" at foot which I think implied that these were considered to be the 1st sub-office of the main post office. 

Town sub-offices are not listed in the invaluable Kiryushkin-Robinson list of Imperial Russian post offices, so each one that turns up is a surprise. I wonder how many more there are?

A little relic of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is, shall we say, not widely collected. I happen to like the combination of obscurity and cheapness that countries like this offer, so I have a mild interest in Turkmenistan stamps and postal history. I appear to be in a very small minority.
A few months ago I tripped over a little "find": a large-ish lot of progressive proofs for the first Turkmenistan stamps, issued in August 1992 (disregarding two hastily-retooled USSR stamp issues from earlier that year). It's a lot of stuff! For each of the 7 stamps (counting the two mirror versions of the president Nyazov stamp) and the souvenir sheet in the set there are from 13 to 21 of these proofs. These stamps were printed using 4 colors (red, yellow, black and blue; sometimes gold was used as well) and for each value the lot contains proofs of the individual color plates, as well as 2, 3 and 4-color combination proofs. All are unperforated.

Proof of the black plate for the 15,0 stamp

For the miniature sheet, 20 of these proofs are present, such as:

Proof of the red and black plates

How did all this fun stuff end up on the market? Here I have to speculate a little, but I think here is what happened. These stamps were printed by Specialty Printers of America in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That company was bought by the Mack Printing Group, which eventually became Cadmus Communication Corporation. My theory is that in the changes of ownership some archival material went missing. I've seen occasional other eyebrow-raising items from this issue, such as a complete unperforated printing sheet of one value, but this lot of proofs is the biggest I've seen.

Is it philatelically relevant? Only if you're very interested in the printing process. personally, I find the progressive proofs interesting, and I'm toying with the idea of having the proofs for the souvenir sheet framed. Besides, it was cheap (and obscure!).

Back! Let's talk about the Joy of Singles

I do apologize to my (entirely hypothetical) readers for my absence. Let's just say my job became even more interesting than usual and leave it at that.
I was rummaging through some old albums and found a little stash of Single Frankings. I collected these quite avidly for the 1924-1940 period at one time, but got rid of most of them after awhile. I did keep the examples from the Second Standard issue, or the Large Heads as we westerners think of them.
Most of the middle values in this set are easily found as single frankings (which is defined as an item of mail franked with one example of a stamp, paying the correct rate and preferably in the right period), although the 50k starts getting a little more difficult. But it's the extreme values of the set that present the most problems.

The 80k is hard to find as a single. Here's a cheat:

This is a scarce postcard from the extensive correspondence between professor Popov in Irkutsk and E. Colaco Belmonte in Sydney, Australia. Most of this correspondence consists of very nicely franked airmail covers, but there are a few postcards too, this being one of them. So why is it a cheat? Because 80k wasn't the right rate: this registered airmail postcard to Australia should have been franked with 70k. 

Here's how to do it properly:

By 1935 the rate for a Speshnoe letter was 80k, so this is the correct franking. 1935 is a bit late for a Large head, but the stamps of that issue can be found used normally throughout the early/mid-1930s, so I'm saying it's acceptable. This, by the way, is the easiest form of an 80k single franking.

On the other end of the spectrum there's the (also orange) 1k stamp. As far as I can tell, this would have paid for local printed matter, which has a low probability of survival. But, we all get lucky sometimes:

Life is good! And with a table of postal rates at your side, this way of collecting stamps on cover is a lot of fun.