Armenia: Postally Used Dashnak Stamps 1919-21

Postally Used Dashnak Stamps? Mission Almost Impossible.

Over the past twenty years, I have handled thousands of Dashnak stamps - and maybe six commercial or philatelic covers and cards, which can only be obtained as expensive single item Lots in auction.

At one point, it occurred to me to look at my stamps and take out any that looked postally used as opposed to Cancelled to Order (Favour cancelled).

CTO stamps normally have neat, full cancels "socked on the nose" or they have neat quarter cancels. Only four places seem to have cancelled to order: Alexandropol, Erivan [ maybe 90% of the total], Elenovka and Katarsky Zavod (the copper mines at Giryusy). The last two places favour cancelled only a tiny number of stamps. Most CTO stamps will have gum but, of course, this can be washed off and sometimes is.

From my stocks, I picked out maybe thirty stamps. A few were on pieces and one had a violet Censor cachet across it. These I sold. The rest are shown above.

Given the Tariffs at this period, you would expect to find mainly rouble value stamps or stamps with rouble surcharges. However, early on there was a 60 kopeck tariff and a 1 rouble 20 tariff. Since there is no 60 kopeck Imperial stamp, then a 50 Kopeck + 10 kopeck would have been an efficient two stamp way of reaching 60 kopecks [ 25 + 35 is also possible but no other combination]. For 1 rouble 20, 1 rouble + 20 kopeck is one of two ways of obtaining that rate; the other is to use two 1 kopeck stamps with 60k Armenian overprints. [At Katarsky Zavod the local 1 r 20 overprint on 1 kopeck would have also served].

This reasoning leaves some puzzles in relation to the stamps shown above which include a 2 kopeck and 3 kopeck imperforate with unframed Z. These stamps could have been soaked from philatelic covers, like those sent by Souren Serebrakian to his brother in Tiflis. These are normally correctly franked, but with a variety of low value adhesives.

I also have some doubts about the 3r on 3 kopeck and 5r on 2 kopeck imperforate shown in the top row on the right. These have ERIVAN "k" cancellations which are associated with the speculative activity of Paul Melik - Pacher / Pachaev / Pachaian about which I have Blogged before. It's possible that these two stamps are also soaked from philatelic covers.

This perhaps shows that though they exist postally used Dashnak stamps are needles in haystacks or hen's teeth.

An Armenian Rarity

There is some difference of opinion as to whether Postal Savings Bank stamps exist with genuine Dashnak period overprints. I think they do, but that they are extremely rare. Here is an example. The stamp has been overprinted with "k.60.k" in black and then later, in a greyish ink, with a large unframed Z over the Imperial Arms. There is an authenticating ERIVAN cancellation of April 1920, which is an appropriate date.
The stamp is signed in pencil by S Serebrakian (and was almost certainly from his stock), in green by Dr R J Ceresa, and it now has a Stefan Berger Short Opinion.

More about 1919 Armenia "k 60 k" overprints

Back in December, I blogged about the first stamp of independent Armenia. Now I illustrate the state of my stock - see below.
From a stockbook now containing over 250 "k 60 k" stamps I constructed this matrix:

ACROSS:

"k.60.k" in black on imperf, the same, but missing in violet; in black on perf, in violet on perf; "k 6 0 k" (wide setting) in black on imperf; "k 60 k" (narrow setting) in black on imperf

DOWN:
Additions to the basic stamps:
Framed Z in black
Framed Z in violet
Unframed Z (small) in black
Unframed Z (small) in violet
Unframed Z (large) in black
Unframed Z (large) in violet

What strikes me is how many gaps there are in the matrix: all of column 2 is empty. There is only one stamps in Row 3, and this is a "Serebrakian Special" with his small boxed handstamp on the back - Serebrakian generally reserved this handstamp for stamps which he had in only limited quantities, originally made for him as Counter Surcharges

Armenia 1919: "k 60 k" overprints

Armenia declared its national independence in May 1918 with Yerevan as its capital. Distinctive postage stamps did not appear until over a year later - July 1919 is the date usually given for the appearance of the first "k 60 k" overprints on 1 kopeck Russian stamps.

So this is Armenia's Number 1, celebrated 75 years later on a stamp of the modern Republic of Armenia.

We still know very little about it.

1. We do not know how many physically (numerically) separate handstamps were in use and whether they were (all or some) made individually or (all or some) made from moulds.

The core problem here is that some of the time it is not clear if one is looking at variations due to wear, ink or handstamping style of a clerk or looking at impressions from a different handstamp. I have a couple of hundred overprinted stamps in my stockbook and the variation among those I believe genuine is considerable ...

2. We do not know for sure how many post offices were open to despatch mail in the second half of 1919 and how many of them received or made a supply of "k 60 k" stamps

3. We do not know precisely what was the relation between centrally and locally produced overprints.

It is clear that at Katarsky Zavod - the Zangezur copper mines - there were locally produced handstamps in two denominations (60 and 120) and probably only two handstamps to make these famous local issues.

From the 2010 Artar catalog (page 16) it looks as if a Manuscript "60" surcharge was locally produced at Nizhnie Akhty - and if there, then possibly elsewhere, since there was a central directive regarding the uprating of 1 kopeck stamps to 60 kopecks. [ Correction: As Stefan Berger points out to me, the Nizhnie Akhty cancellation has a date of 30 3 1 ..This is not compatible with the "60" having been applied in response to a directive in July 1919. This suggests that the "60" in manuscript is a fake. The only other possibilities are that the Mss was an independent initiative prior to the official decision or that the "3" in the date stamp (March) is a slipped date ]

According to Ceresa (1978), there was a handstamp used locally at Elenovka (Yelenovka) which because of its similarities to the standard Erivan type (k 60 k without stops) could have been produced from a mould and sent from Erivan to Elenovka ... Ceresa illustrates a cover from his collection (Plate 1) part of which is better illustrated in the Artar catalog (page 16) - I believe the cover to be in a Moscow collection - but Artar does not regard the stamps on this cover as other than examples of the standard Erivan "k 60 k" without stops

The "k 60 k" without stops and with the "6" and "0" close together and apparently from a metal handstamp is associated with Alexandropol and generally attributed to that city in catalogues but which is also found with Erivan cancellations. It seems likely that this handstamp was indeed located in the Alexandropol post office and may have been made in the city rather than sent from Yerevan. At a later date, remainders of the issue may have been sent off to Yerevan for overprinting with framed and unframed "Z". But since stamps with Yerevan-style overprints are found with Alexandropol cancels, it seems there was also a central distribution of stamps from Yerevan.

Finally, at least one "k.60.k" handstamp was in use in Yerevan. I say at least one because Zakiyan provides two different illustrations of this surcharge, though calling both of them "Type II". (Zakiyan also shows two illustrations of "Type I" without dots, but these are the Erivan type ( space between "6" and "0") and the Alexandropol type (no space).

It would be nice to clear up what should be a relatively simple story. The most important fact to bear in mind is that the central directive was implemented with a mix of central and local initiatives - at a time when the desperate state of the country made everyday life very difficult to sustain

______________

Postscript: ELENOVKA. I have only seen CTO Dashnak material from one place apart from ERIVAN and ALEXANDRPOL and that place is ELENOVKA ERIV. I believe that this is because the Belgian mining engineer and philatelist, Boel ( of Katarsky Zavodi fame) visited Elenovka - the Ceresa cover mentioned above is a Boel cover. I don't know why he visited Elenovka (now called Sevan and located on Lake Sevan).
Elenovka was a Russian settlement founded in the middle of the 19th century and home to religious dissidents - principally Dukhobors - though many left for Canada around 1900.
Elenovka post office was open in the Dashnak period - as is evident from the CTO material and the Boel cover - and it remained open in the early Soviet period, though the cancellation is rare on 1922 - 23 issues.
Boel probably stopped at Elenovka because it was on the old post road from Yerevan to Tiflis - trains may not have been running when he needed one. In 1901. Esther Lancraft Hovey published an article in The National Geographic on "The Old Post Road from Tiflis to Erivan". This contains photographs of Elenovka, some of which are reproduced in Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia's Empire in the South Caucasus (Cornell University Press 1905)

Note added 30 March 2014: Boel also visited the copper mines at Allaverdi in Tiflis guberniya and there is Boel-related correspondence from Allaverdi. He may have used the Erivan - Tiflis post road to get to Allaverdi