Peter Ashford collection 5: Harenik [Hairenik] Press and Law Courts covers

In the 1950s when Tchilingirian and Ashford were working on The Postage Stamps of Armenia they had access to just two main groups of non-philatelic postal history for the 1919 - 1923 period.

For the Dashnak period, they had examples of mail sent abroad to the Hairenik [sometimes Harenik] Press in Boston, USA This was an important Armenian diaspora publisher - a Google search shows it publishing books and journals until the 1970s.

The Ashford collection contained three Hairenik Press items; two were offered as single items and illustrated in the catalogue and the third - shown below - was included in a group Lot and not illustrated. None of these three items has transit or receiver cancellations but it seems likely that they - along with other covers to the same address - travelled and thus became available to collectors in the West. They would have gone first to Batum and then to Constantinople. The British would have been involved for the period during which they occupied Batum [ See Footnote *]. Click on Image to Magnify.

For the Soviet period, T&A had access to internal mail from what they call the "Law Courts Hoard". These were covers sent by private individuals to Law Courts not only in Yerevan but other districts. They were franked with adhesives. Many of them are damaged or cut down. At the time these covers were sent, Courts often bound or sewed correspondence into files; they could only be removed by tearing them or cutting them out.

These covers should not be confused with the Soviet Armenia official correspondence of the 1921 - 23 period which came on to the market in the 1990s. This mail was originally stampless [ Free Frank] but came on to the market only after adhesives had been added and cancelled with fake cancellers - I have written about this in several places, starting back in the 1990s.

The Law Courts covers look rather different. One notable feature is that imperforate stamps have often been separated by tearing by hand or slitting with a knife - indicating that the post offices had no scissors. This is illustrated by the cover below, sent locally within Karaklis to the Karaklis People's Court. On the left of the cover you should be able to make out how this cover was originally held in a binder - there is a crease and a pin hole. As an example of a Law Courts cover, it is one that is nearly intact - others are more fragmentary. Unfortunately, the first people to obtain these covers amused themselves by pencilling the covers with catalogue numbers, values and any other random thoughts that occurred to them. These pencilled notes have been rubbed out on the cover ilustrated but can still be seen on these high-quality images. [ Moral: Tell dealers not to scribble on their stock!]  Click on Images to Magnify.

* Footnote added 5th June 2013: I just noticed in Ashford's Georgia: Postal Cancellations 1918 - 23

the following, " Voikhansky, in his handbook on the stamps of Azerbaijan, quotes a Baku newspaper announcement which said that, commencing 2 July 1919, civilian mail from Transcaucasia to Europe and U.S.A.would be conveyed by the British Army P.O. Weekly batches of mail often only addressed in English would be made up at the Batum and Tiflis P.O.'s (and at Erivan and Baku) addressed to various countries and sent through the British Army P.O. at Batum to Constantinople for onward transmission" (page 13)

Armenia 1921: Early Days in Soviet Armenia

This is Armenia in 1921, a few months after the Bolsheviks took power. This is not a part of a folded letter but an entire letter: to economise paper, the sender has used only half a sheet. His (probably his) signature and maybe a second signature (as is common on official communications in the early Soviet period) is at the bottom right of the message. My guess is that this is an educated person writing, able to handle a steel pen to write neatly in this small Armenian red script. 

Top left you can see that this is N. 58 in a series of communications, written on 10th October 1921. There is a N. 515 at the top dated 20 X 21 in a different ink and a No.16 to the right, in yet another ink. Someone has pencilled across the letter in pencil in Cyrillic. I guess that all three of these notes were applied at the destination.

The letter is addressed entirely in Armenian, this time in purple ink, with the first word reading "Yerevan". At the bottom left of the address the No 58 is repeated with a note underneath and a faint violet seal applied to the right (and after the letter had been folded and sealed with a paper strip). The seal is inscribed in Armenian in the outer ring and in Cyrillic on the inner circle. I can't read it all but I can see the letters "S.S.R.A." for Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the abbreviated word "ECHM." for Echmiadzin. Then it looks as if there is the word "REVKOM" - Revolutionary Committee - with other words or abbreviations which I can't read but which someone else might be able to reconstruct or guess at.

Together, the No 58 and the Seal probably gave this letter Free Frank privileges. However, at this date - October 1921 - Armenian post offices were only accepting payment in cash for letters and not using stamps (see Zakiyan and Saltikov's 1988 book for the archival evidence). There is a short  note in Cyrillic which would have been on the back of the folded letter but which is at the top of this Blog and which I can't decipher but which could include a signature. If it was a receipt for payment in cash, I would expect (from previous experience) to see a number.

Finally - and this is what you have probably been waiting for - there is a double ring ECHMIADZIN ERIV 14 10 21 cancellation, in a small style illustrated in Zakiyan as Type 13 among the Vagarshpat / Echmiadzin cancels he records (Ashford does not list this cancel). 

So here we have one of those rare things, a postal item from the first year of Soviet Armenia's existence. Don't expect them to look much more exciting than this one. 

Armenia 1922 Second Yessayan stamps

For the serious Armenia collector this torn scrap is a rich source of information.

Here is one of the scarcer Second Yessayan stamps showing the broad "4" overprint. The letter was posted at KARAKLIS ERIVAN "a" 23 6 22. The cancellation shows typical ink and clear strikes of features which forgers often get wrong.

But Karaklis was using old Imperial Registration labels of ERIVAN at this time, modified in violet ink to "Karaklis" (in Cyrillic).

The cover went first to Alexandropol and received an ALEXANDROPOL "zhe" 24 6 22 cancellation. This cancel is genuine and because the "zhe" is struck on the white margin of the stamp you can see that it is the genuine cancellatioon and not one of the fakes you will find at various points in the ARTAR catalog (see my previous Blogs on this subject)

The envelope was then forwarded to a People's Court in Yerevan - see the bright violet endorsement - and was received at ERIVAN "b" 29 6 22: the strike shows clearly the Cyrillic "b" serial which most forgeries get wrong (go again to the ARTAR catalog)

If I was better at reading Cyrillic there is more information to be extracted from this item - and if more collectors bought items like this, they would be less likely to end up paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars and euros for the fake items which appear regularly, even in serious auctions