Was There A Post Office?

In my areas of philatelic specialism the question is often asked, Were these stamps really issued?

To answer this, you need answers to several other questions:

Was there a post office or post offices?

Were these stamps “available at the counter” – even if only for a short period of time – and would they have been used to frank mail brought in by “an ordinary member of the public”?

What did the post office/s do with the letters franked with the stamps? Did they have the ability to put them into a mail delivery system – and was that system local, regional, national or international?

A key part of this set of questions is played by the “ordinary member of the public”. If the stamps will only be brought out for known philatelists (dealers or collectors) or, say, for the local military commander who has ordered their production, then in the ordinary sense of the word, they are not a regular issue. They are stamps produced by or for favours. On the other hand, the stamps may have franking validity and may succeed in getting a letter carried from A to B in which case one might say that they had a “limited issue”.

For many stamp issues, the vast majority of used stamps are found on (obviously) philatelic mail. The British Empire used to control many small and remote islands – still does – and issued stamps for them. But in some cases as many as 99% of all covers now existing are philatelic.

But what counts is the 1% of non-philatelic mail – the same stamps were available to “ordinary members of the public” (maybe there were just two of them) as well as philatelists.

That is why the 1% (or even the 0.1%) is so important. For example, it is the 1% or less which shows that the stamps of the Northern Army and the North West Army were issued. There clearly exist cards and covers which were not sent for philatelic motives. It’s true that the distances they travelled are mostly quite limited – backwards into Estonia, most notably. But a few made it as far as Finland and in that case you have an even stronger case for saying that the stamps were issued and served to get mail put into a mail distribution system. Similarly, though their period of use in December-January 1918-19 was very short, the original map stamps of Latvia saw limited non-philatelic postal use, both on internal mail and on mail to Germany.

The really difficult questions arise with stamps which appear to have been issued but for which evidence of ordinary postal use is now missing. In some cases, there are not even philatelic covers. There are undoubtedly stamps which were officially prepared and would have had postal validity if used but which went straight from post office counter to waiting philatelists who bought everything for onward sale as mint stamps, none even stuck on philatelic covers. This would be true of an unknown proportion of the combinations of stamp and overprint  issued by Dashnak Armenia which could have been used but weren't.

The only really clever guy in the confusing postal history in which I specialise was Dr Ivan Cherniavsky who produced the 1919 CMT overprints of Kolomea in co-operation with the occupying Romanian military commander. Cherniavsky required that quantities of the stamps be distributed to the post offices which the Romanian authorities controlled. These post offices actually served very few people in a widely illiterate countryside. But they did serve local lawyers who were always sending petitions to the district court in Kolomea, and the stamps got used on their registered mail.

Dr Cherniavsky was in charge of the district court in Kolomea. His clerks simply passed to him the one hundred percent genuine commercially used envelopes which brought petitions to the court. Cherniavsky was an unusual collector. He was interested in ordinary commercial mail.... He took a chance that no one out in those small towns and villages would spot the opportunity to buy the CMT stamps for onward sale. As far as I know, only at one office did some other collector/dealer get to secure part of the issue. Elsewhere, it seems that everything went to the lawyers and back to Kolomea, as Cherniavasky intended.

1919 North West Army: two interesting covers

Click on Images to Magnify

There are stamp issues today where 99% of all use is philatelic. Think of issues for Antarctica, any country, any period. In these cases, the 1% of mail which is not philatelic is all the more interesting because it is what confirms the stamp issue as a genuine stamp issue, available to frank mail.

In the Russian Civil War, there were plenty of stamp issues. Some were completely bogus, some were in common use, and some had just 1% genuine use. This is true of the issues of the North West Army which in 1919 briefly controlled several post offices on Russian territory and was organised enough to pass mail backwards (westwards) into independent Estonia.

Have a look at the two covers above. I don’t think either is philatelic. The top one was registered in manuscript from Gdov on 2 10 19. We know that Gdov had lost its own canceller and was using the canceller of POLNA in what had been St Petersburg guberniya. The cover is addressed bi-lingually and has a TALLINN EESTI receiver dated 5 10 19. On the back the sender gives his street address in Gdov, Petrograd guberniya and there is also a one line note at the bottom which I would like someone to translate for me. 

Igor Ryss provides the text and translation as follows:

Pis'ma tol'ko zakaznym prisylat'! - Send only registered letters!

This is important. It shows the sender thought he could receive letters as well as send them

The cover is franked at 1 rubel, so one might guess at 50 kop postage + 50 kop Registration.

The second cover is very interesting. Again it is registered. This time there is a standard rubber cachet but not much ink on the pad. In indelible pencil someone has written “19” as the registry number but in ordinary pencil underneath someone has identified the post office. This is not so easy to read until you look to the left and see that the sender gives an address in Dobruchin, Petrograd guberniya. [Igor Ryss translates the name of the sender as Carlo Kreos] The full name of Dobruchin is in fact DOBRUCHINSKOE and it was in Petrograd guberniya. It just about Googles ( 5 results) and is now in Pskov oblast, and so in 1919 North West Army territory. Igor Ryss tells me that I can get more results using the spelling DOBRUCHI and this also yields a map which shows the location of Dobruchi in relation to Gdov and Pskov.

The cover is addressed to a Tallinn gazette called Tallinn Theatre and there is a receiver cancel of 21 9 19 which touches the top right stamp. Now look at the franking. It’s one rubel made up of 25 kop in North West Army stamps and 75 kop in unoverprinted stamps, all used as a seal. The stamps are cancelled in pen and it is readable  DOBRUCHIN… PETROGRADSK…GUBERNI.. 17 – 9 – 19 (The clerk seems to have tailed off at the end of each word so I have put dots).

Two covers are better than one and it looks like here we have a one rubel registered letter rate used to send non-philatelic letters. This is the tariff that K.Freyman gives in an article in the British Journal of Russian Philately for 1951, cited by Dr Ceresa in his handbook on the N W Army issues; he also claims 10 kop for Printed matter and 50 kop for ordinary letters).

We also seem able to add Dobruchinskoe to the list of post offices under North Western Army control, not only because of use of the stamps but because of the backward journey to Tallinn which would not have been possible if this was an item of RSFSR mail.