This Blog is now closed but you can still contact me at patemantrevor@gmail.com. Ukraine-related posts have been edited into a book "Philatelic Case Studies from Ukraine's First Independence Period" edited by Glenn Stefanovics and available in the USA from amazon.com and in Europe from me. The Russia-related posts have been typeset for hard-copy publication but there are currently no plans to publish them.
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Monday 28 May 2012
Turkmenistan since 1991
Today I was asking the question, From which former Soviet Union republic is it most difficult to find mail?
In the 1990s, several of the ex-Soviet republics experienced some disorganisation at some point and mail - internal or external - becomes very scarce. I think this is true for Georgia in the early 1990s for example.
But over the ten year period from 1991 to 2001, my guess is that mail from Turkmenistan (internal or external) is the most difficult to find. Maybe this is only true for someone living in Western Europe - perhaps there is lots of Turkmen mail going East and I haven't seen it.
Anyway, I have only about 20 items of mail from the 1991 - 2001 period, all going out of the country and only two or three items from a place other than Ashgabat - one is shown at the top of this page.
The country has issued very few stamps compared to the other ex-Soviet republics. At first, there was a philatelic agency involved which protected its New Issue revenues by issuing stamps locally in a damaged state (see my previous Turkmenistan Blog for an example). Later stamp issues were often simple in design and imperforate - I show a couple of examples above.
There have also been postal stationery revaluations which I am sure are interesting. I can only show two examples above.
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It's a long time since I studied my FSU collection of covers but you may well be right about Turkmenistan. I have a nice cover here on photobucket - http://i1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff381/civron/postalhistory/FSU/turkmen-3B8G_reg.jpg
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly I have a couple similar. Feel free to add this to your blog - you'll certainly have chance to do so before I get round to doing anything on my FSU webpages!
regards, Ian