Ukraine 1918 - 20: Forged Cancellations of Podilia

By 1917, the Imperial Russian postal service operated a couple of hundred post offices in the Guberniya of Podolia. A few were in the main towns - Kamenets, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka, Proskurov - but most were in small towns. If you Google those small towns, most of them show up on Genealogy and Holocaust sites as Jewish shtetls.

Between 1918 and 1920, stamps in the post offices changed as the Ukrainian National Republic introduced the General Issue of 1918 and later in the year the Trident overprinted stamps. But the old Imperial cancellers remained in use. I know of only one distinctive new canceller - and that was introduced by the Polish during their occupation of Kamenets Podolsk in 1920. They produced a canceller with Polish spelling (KAMIENIEC) - this is illustrated in the Fischer Catalog Tom II and on this Blog - click on the Label at the end of this Post to link to the relevant page.

There is also a Kamenets canceller with Ukrainian spelling (KAMYANETS) but this is a Forgery. Though similar in style to Imperial Russian cancellers, it appears to have a fixed date 19. 7 19. It is only found on cancelled to order stamps, some genuine and some forged or doubtful. The ink used for all cancellations is different to the inks generally used in Podilia during 1918 - 20. Here are some examples of the cancellation. At the top it is applied to a genuine 20 Hr General Issue, a genuine type 3 Kharkiv Trident and a genuine type 1a Podilia Trident. Then at the bottom are two examples of Podilia 1a in violet or violet-black ink. These are usually regarded as Reprints or Forgeries though the discussion in the Trident literature is pretty perfunctory.

Click on Image to Magnify

Other forged cancellations exist but are rarely seen. I think this is simply because there is so much used Podilia material freely available. Over the years I have assembled only the small group of doubtful items shown here and on which I comment below:

Click on Image to Magnify

Top left: Genuine Podilia 1a on 50 kopeck with what I take to be a forged cancel of Zhmerinka Voksal. The genuine cancel is oval in the usual Imperial style and rarely seen at this time, though I have one example on a General Issue stamp. 

Top centre: Genuine Kyiv III with what I think is a forged GORODOK POD. cancel. I don't like the general appearance, the ink, the circles instead of stars and the date 10 7 18, well before any Trident overprints appeared - the earliest known dates are at the  end of August.

Top right: Signed Dr Seichter BUT the cancel is in a style with very large letters and numbers quite unlike any known Podilia cancel

Bottom row: Genuine Kyiv II and Podilia overprints, mint with full gum,  cancelled with what I take to be a forged Ukrainian Field Post cancellation. The complete text of the cancel can be seen by looking at both pairs of stamps. The date 18 XII 19 on both items allows a remote possibility that this is a genuine cancel.

____

One other thing: I have had some kind of collection of Podilia postal history for 1917 - 1921 for over twenty years. But - apart from the stamps - it does not feel very Ukrainian. The cancellations are in Russian and it may be that the employees of the post offices were mostly Russians or at least fluent Russian speakers. All their paperwork was in Russian (except at Yampol where the postmaster printed his own Ukrainised Money Transfer forms). Letters to the Courts are addressed in Russian. I suspect that most of the people who used the post offices identified themselves as Russian or Jewish - and from Googling, it would seem that Jews tended to use Russian rather than Ukrainian when they were not using Yiddish or Hebrew. Am I wrong about this?

Added February 2020: Most of my Ukraine-related Blog posts are now available in full colour book form. To find out more follow the link:

http://www.armeniazemstvo.com/2020/02/just-published-trevor-pateman.html

Ukraine: Collecting Tridents of Podillia / Podolia

Click on Images to magnify them

There do exist collectors who are working their way through John Bulat's Podillia Trident listing, trying to get one of every separately listed variety. The listing starts at # 1370 and ends at #2195 (plus an Appendix which runs from #2196 to 2283, plus a, b and c varieties here and there ...). So it's a very big project - and I don't know anyone who has completed it. The late Ron Zelonka once sent me his Podillia Wants List. It was actually quite long. Maybe I found three or four stamps for him.

There is an alternative which is more realistic - and cheaper. For each of the 57 Trident types (literally 57 in Bulat's listing), I would try to find one very good example - if possible in a multiple - and maybe extend from there. But the paradigm example would serve as  the reference point from which to assess other stamps: to answer the question, Is this really an example of Type .... 

Both mint and used stamps can be used. Have a look above. The block of 25 mint stamps shows Trident Type 14b (Bulat # 2075). The clerk (probably left-handed)  worked from right to left across four rows and from left to right in the middle row. In every case he re-inked the handstamp every fifth strike. This means that the block shows us quite clearly the sorts of difference you get between well-inked and lightly inked examples of this Trident. In this particular case, unusually for a wooden handstamp, there is not a lot of variation which is why 14b is an Easy trident to collect.

The block of 12 used stamps shows Trident Type 8a (Bulat # 1603). This is also a wooden handstamp and, again, it is quite distinctive. In the block above there is a particularly clear strike in position 5 of the block - you could trace this one quite clearly. It helps that this block is very lightly cancelled.

In both these cases, you could put the blocks in the centre of an album page and show other denominations with the same Trident around them - and always using the block at the centre of the page to check the identification of what will often be single stamps.

Added February 2020: Most of my Ukraine-related Blog posts are now available in full colour book form. To find out more follow the link:

http://www.armeniazemstvo.com/2020/02/just-published-trevor-pateman.html

Podolia Tridents / Podillia Tridents - help please

A dozen years ago, I had far too large a stock of the Tridents of Podilia / Podolia, most of it from remainder lots of the Vyrovyj collection. In addition, I had some Podolian postal history material from the 1915-18 period and the 1921 - 25 period. So while my younger daughter sat and revised for her school examinations, I sat and constructed two large collections: one of Podolia trident sub-types; one of Podolian postmarks 1915 - 25. The latter collection showed cancellations from about 140 offices.

I recently examined the postmark collection in order to establish the date around which Tridents came into use in Podillia. I have no examples of postmarks on Podilian tridents earlier than 7th September 1918 - and that cancellation, from MICHALPOL, is on a favour cancelled block. I then have postally used examples on the 12th (VINNITSA ZABUSHE), 16th (BRASLAV),ZHMERINKA (20th), KRIVOI ROG (26th) and SNITKOV (28th).

Unoverprinted stamps clearly continued in use for a while alongside trident-overprinted stamps. The last example I have is from SHATAVA on 21st September,and t the penultimate use of unoverprinted stamps is at DUNAEVTSI on the 8th. These late uses are of stamps on Money Transfers or fragments of them, so they are not examples of private individuals using up stamps.

So I conclude that in Podolia / Podillia trident-overprinted stamps came into use in September 1918 and by the end of the month had largely replaced non-overprinted stamps.

Am I right? Does any reader of this Blog have a clear cancel on a Podillia / Podolia trident before the beginning of September? You can scan me a copy at trevor@trevorpateman.co.uk. Thanks in advance!

POSTSCRIPT 23 AUGUST 2010: In his Ukraine Handbook for Podolia, Dr Ceresa illustrates two Money Transfer Forms sent from LETICHEV POD. on 27.8.18 with mixed frankings of overprinted and unoverprinted stamps. This pushes back the date for introduction of Podilian Tridents into August 1918. That is coherent with the August date given for Trident introduction by Bulat in his catalog for several other districts: Kyiv (page 7), Kharkiv (page 38), Katerynoslav (page 46), Poltava (page 74). He does not give a date for Odesa or Podillia.