Russian Levant: Which lot would you buy?

Don't read on until you have made your choice!

At the top, a stamp sold for 20 €uro in the recent www.filateliapalvelu.com auction.

Underneath, another Lot unsold at the starting price of 60 €uro

As far as I can tell from the scan of the first Lot, the basic stamp is from the later ( 1890) printing of the 10 kopeck which has different basic shades compared to the 1872 printing It also has a later-style R.O.P.I.T cancellation. So the overprint (which was issued in 1876) can't be genuine. (These later R.O.P.I.T cancels also exist in forged versions, described in Tchilingirian's work, and these forged versions turn up on things like the 1918 so-called "Beirut" R.O.P.I.T  overprints)

The second lot (which I put up for sale) shows the shade of basic stamp you would expect for the 1872 printing and three stamps are signed by the late Eric Peel, who knew about these overprints.

Much scarcer than Russia Number 1 on cover?

This is my favourite recent acquisition. What and why?

In June 1919, the Volunteer Army forces of General Denikin captured Kharkov from the Bolsheviks, who had returned after the withdrawal of German forces at the end of 1918. The Volunteer Army held on until the end of 1919 when the Bolsheviks re-took the city.

This letter from a South Russian mining organisation located in Kharkov (I can't manage a word-for-word translation) was sent as unsealed Printed Matter to a mine in Alexandrovsk - Grushevski, then in the Don Cossack Oblast with a population of 50 000 and many mines. Today it is Shakhty in Russia, northeast of Rostov on Don. It got its new name (which means "Mine") in 1920 and hosted the first of Stalin's show trials in 1928 when fifty-odd mining engineers were accused of wrecking and sabotage as agents of the former mine owners. Later, it was home to a serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo - the subject of a film Child 44 currently causing controversy in Russia.

The stamps are roller cancelled KHARKOV 16 11 19 and there is a receiver cancellation on the back dated 23 11 19.

The 10 kopeck franking here compares with a 35 kop or later 70 kop tariff for ordinary letters and double that for Registered letters, so it's a cheap rate - just like the cheap Imperial printed paper tariffs. I don't think I have previously seen this Tariff in operation. I also don't think I have seen a cover franked exclusively with the lowest value in the Denikin series - the 5 kopeck orange which keeps the colour of the Imperial 1 kopeck but increases the face value to 5 kopecks ( the Denikin 10 kopeck green parallels the Imperial 2 kopeck and the 15 kopeck red parallels the 3 kopeck).

Maybe there is a whole heap of these Printed Matter covers out there - send me scans! - but my guess is that you will find it much easier to find a Russia Number 1 on cover - even a pair of Russia Number 1's on cover - than to find another commercial cover with this franking.

Russia - Germany 1917 Armistice Mail

When the Bolsheviks seized power on 25 October (7 November New Style) 1917 they had three strategic objectives: Bread, Peace and Land. They moved rapidly to exit from World War One, and ceasefires and local armistices soon emerged. On 2 December (15 December), Russia signed a short Armistice agreement with the Central Powers at Brest - Litovsk. This Armistice held until 17 / 4 February 1918 when Germany gave 7 days notice of its intention to resume hostilities - which it did on 24 / 11 February when the successful Operation Faustschlag was launched with the aim of forcing Russia into signing the full Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

An English version of the Armistice agreement can be accessed via the Wikipedia article "Armistice between Russia and the Central Powers". It  provides, among other things, for the exchange of unsealed mail at the front("between sunrise and sunset") and sets up a commission in Petrograd to work out the details.

This provisional measure is very different from a full resumption of postal relations, with mail heading by train to Petrograd from Berlin and vice versa. It basically expresses an intention to give civilians access to the military field post at front-line exchange points.

The collection of Harry von Hofmann sold recently at Heinrich Koehler in Wiesbaden included some examples of such Armistice mail from the German side. Some of it is puzzling and in the absence of the text of the arrangements agreed by the Petrograd commission, it's necessary to guess what is happening, though Alexander Epstein published some information in Yamchik  (June 2005).

Here are three cards which belong to this category of Armistice mail:

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The first card, written in German and giving family news, starts in RIGA on 2 January 1918 using a 7 1/2 Pfg card (originally attached to a Reply paid card),. It transits through a Russian Field Post Office (POLEVAYAR POCHT KONT but Number not legible) on 29 12 17 (Old Style) and arrives in VLADIVOSTOK on what looks like 23 January 1918. [Alexander Epstein thinks the Field Post Office will be Nr 42, attached to the 15th Army Corps and located at the time near lake Naroch in what is now Belarus']

The second card, also in German and asking for material help, starts in LIBAU 31 1 18 with a 15 Pfg franking and is addressed in both German and Russian to a company office in Petrograd, where it could not be delivered. There is a cachet of the Address Bureau at bottom left and a central vertical line of glue which probably indicates that a SPRAVKA label has been attached during the attempts at delivery. The card has then been marked with French language (International) cachets for Return with addressee Unknown. Libau was occupied by Germany in 1915 and this would have been one of the first civilian items of mail to travel to Petrograd since the beginning of the Occupation.

The third card, in Russian, starts in RIGA 30 1 18 with 10 Pf in franking on both the outgoing and Reply half. It's addressed to Dvinsk (Daugavpils, Dünaburg) and gets there on 28 1 18 (Old Style) where a mute receiver cancel without town name has been applied (this cancel I have seen before). From the fact that the address on this card begins with "Russland" in German, one can infer that Dvinsk at this point was on the Russian side of the armistice line.

Since each of these three cards is differently franked, it cannot be inferred what the Tariff was supposed to be!

Now to two strange envelopes:

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Both envelopes started out from RIGA 23 1 18 one addressed in Cyrillic but with "Russland" in German, and the other in Latvian - both franked 20 Pf (so we might be tempted to infer the Tariff!). The handwriting is different, but the stamps may have come from the same sheet.

They are both addressed to the Riga - Valk Highway, Libek Station [ Sastawa Libek - which in German would be tranliterated or translated as Lübeck - just as the German city of Lübeck is rendered LIBEK in Russian ], Peace Section No.  2,  Iskolostrel [mis-spelt on the Latvian letter]. From Alexander Epstein's article in Yamchik, I learn that"Iskolostrel" is the acronym for the Executive Committee of the Latvian Rifle Regiment, a pro-Bolshevik unit.

One possibility ( and Alexander Epstein also thinks this possible) is that these envelopes contained cards for onward transmission to Russia, the senders making use of the German civilian Ob Ost post to get the cards to an exchange point. Why they did this is a mystery, given that the other cards appear to have travelled without use of envelopes. The top cover is unsealed and the bottom cover looks like it has been sealed later (the rear flap is partly detached). Of course, these envelopes could have contained enquiry letters to Iskolostrel itself, for example, asking about the whereabouts or fate of members of the Regiment.

None of these five items bears any censor marks

And just to complicate matters:

Here is an ordinary letter, correctly franked, sent from MOSKVA 14 2 18, the first day of the new calendar and just a few days before the Germans withdrew from the Armistice agreement. It's correctly franked at the internal letter rate, probably sent unsealed but sealed by the Petrograd censor. It's also addressed to Station Libek but with no mention of Iskolostrel. The handwriting is almost identical to the first envelope above sent from Riga, but there are small differences. It is marked in German "Züruck" on the grounds that the address needs to be in the Roman alphabet.

BUT ... this letter is addressed to a destination on the Russian side of the Armistice line. There is no reason for it to be addressed in Roman script. There are two possibilities: either this letter fell into the hands of the German troops or administration, advancing as part of the Faustschlag offensive and sent back as non-compliant with later regulations (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk mail) or there was a letter or card inside this envelope when it was sent from Moscow, addressed to German-occupied territory but (incorrectly) addressed in Cyrillic. The envelope and contents may have been passed across the exchange line as part of the distribution process and then the whole thing returned back. But still very much a puzzle ...

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One in a thousand? One in ten thousand? One in a hundred thousand?

From very early on in the postage stamp era, there have been stamp issues - often perfectly genuine ones - where the proportion of stamps printed actually used postally is very low. The first 1866 issue of Honduras is a good example. In such cases, catalogues often advise, Beware of Forged Cancellations! But catalogue prices rarely reflect the full reality of postally used scarcity.

An extreme example is provided by the 1919 issue for the Northern Army, # 15 - 19 in Michel, which gives a total printing figure of 3 000 000 stamps for the five values. This figure may well be correct: the Northern Army issue shows little or no sign of being aimed at the philatelic market. The stamps are the worst designed ever, all five of them boring. Proofs, colour trials, errors and varieties are almost non-existent. It may be that the Northern Army really hoped they would need these stamps for post offices in the areas they occupied and optimistically ordered three million.

In the event, these stamps were briefly placed on sale at post offices and a few postally used copies are known on cover and card. Alexander Epstein has chronicled them. Add them all up, and maybe you have twenty postally used stamps.

Rather more stamps are known cancelled to order, either as sheets or on covers. But even including these, it seems to me doubtful that the total adds up to more than ten thousand. The remainder are all mint stamps. But Michel prices mint and used at the same prices. That's absurd.

Another extreme example, and more interesting, is provided by the stamps of Dashnak Armenia. In 1919 - 20 the Dashnaks did attempt to run a postal service in a tiny country ravaged by war, famine and disease, Anyone who could was leaving, taking with them postage stamps which they had exchanged for Armenian currency worthless in the outside world.

As a result, and to this day, mint stamps or CTO stamps massively outnumber postally used ones. How massively? I have handled many thousands of Dashnak stamps in the past twenty-plus years. I doubt that one in a thousand stamps I have seen is postally used, probably more like one in ten thousand. In addition, only a small number of values are seen postally used: the 60k on 1 kopeck first issue, the 10/7 kopeck with framed Z, the 1 rouble, 3 rouble 50 and 5 rouble with framed or unframed Z ... maybe twenty or thirty different types. If you add in the over the counter philatelic productions which Souren Serebrakian used on postcards to his brother in Tiflis, you double or treble that number.

Interestingly, no one to my knowledge has tried to make a full list of stamps known postally used. Someone should do it!

Soviet Use of Ukrainian Stamps in 1920

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Here are two Money Transfer Forms used into Russia proper ( Samara and Tver guberniyas) from Soviet Ukraine but using Ukrainian stamps, revalued x 100 in conformity with RSFSR rules. I spent some time working out that in both cases the frankings are absolutely correct at 2% in one case and 2% plus a 60 rouble premium for the Telegraphic transfer in the other.

Then I noticed the handwritten remarks at the top of each form:

I translate these roughly to mean "Handled under Soviet power" or "Received under Soviet authority". My guess is that this was done to prevent possible confusion caused by the use of Ukrainian stamps - these were transfers from one Soviet area to another, not from one country to another. Can anyone improve my translations or offer more thoughts on the markings?

Added 19 April 2015: Alexander Epstein has scanned me the card below which also has a handwritten remark at the top, but this time it reads "Accepted under the Volunteer Army":

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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

The Indefatigable V. V. Tarasoff of Solombala, Archangel

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Anyone who collects Russia postal history from 1917 through the 1920s will, at some point, come across the printed cards of V V Tarasoff of Solombala, Archangel, who publishes a collectors' magazine in English and invites philatelic exchanges.

Who is this man? In a 1970 Rossica article, Andrew Cronin says that he was a printer - which makes sense from the varied printed cards he uses - and that sometime in the 1920s he moved to Leningrad from where he was sending out cards as late as 1937. By that year, anyone doing that sort of thing was running very considerable risks - stamp collectors with foreign contacts were regarded as security threats. In 1941, the NKVD had them listed as a category of people to be investigated when they occupied Latvia. [Added 19 April 2015: Alexander Epstein tells me that in the 1930s Tarasoff was manager of a Soviet Philatelic Association shop in Leningrad. On that basis, I would guess either that Tarasoff died in the Purges or in the Siege of Leningrad].

But what is someone doing in Solombala ("of all places" Cronin remarks) and how come he commands very good English, which he writes very neatly, and who cares enough about correctness to have apostrophes after "Collectors' " and "Correspondents' ".

A very little Googling suggests that he was a Doukhobor or the descendant of Doukhobors. They were a Russian religious sect, exiled to the corners of the Empire in the 19th century and most famous for their pacifism - at the end of the 19th century, they conducted ceremonies where rifles were burnt.

Tarasoff is a Doukhobor family name and Archangel was one of the ends-of-the-earth places to which they were exiled. Many emigrated to North America (Saskatchewan and Oregon) and it is possible that Tarasoff originally needed English to correspond with family members.

There is another curious possibility. From the 18th century and into the 20th, the  northern ports received foreign ships regularly. The visits from Norwegian ships gave rise to a dockside pidgin language well known to linguists as Russnorsk - a mix of Russian and Norwegian. But Google also tells me that there was a port pidgin called Solombala English, about which little is recorded. So it is just possible that Tarasoff was helped on his way by the fact that the Archangel port areas were places where some English was spoken.

Now to the card. Written on 29 December 1918 it is correctly franked according to the RSFSR tariff of 10 March 1918. The postmark of SOLOMBALA ARKH, is not date-legible (it could be the 30 or 31 December or 3 1 19)  but what is legible is the British censor cachet in violet - at the end of 1918 the area was occupied by British Intervention forces. The card then went out into the Arctic winter and got to the far-north Norwegian port of VARDO on 20 February 1919 and from there overland down through Norway and then on to Holland, where a typical C292 cachet was applied. A remarkable journey - and one no longer possible for RSFSR mail.

From 1 January 1919, Bolshevik Russia had no mail links with foreign countries. They were not restored until June 1920 when the first new route abroad was established - out from Archangel or Murmansk and on to Vardø. And one of the things I am really looking for is a 1920 item of RSFSR mail with a VARDØ transit mark ...

Added 7 May 2015: And here it is! Jan Lauridsen in Vardø has photographed this Esperantist card, sent from EKATERINODAR in the Kuban (and only recently under Bolshevik control), routed via Moscow where a Three Triangle censorship mark was applied, addressed to Christiania (= Oslo) and sent via the Northern route with a clear VARDØ transit. Jan L. is trying to get a photo of the front to see if it franked; the correct Tariff was 2 roubles but it may have been sent using the obsolete Free Post tariff. If you look at a map, you can see how indirect is the route followed:

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Added 17 April 2015:

.... and Jan Lauridsen in Vardø has sent me scans of a very, very interesting Tarasoff card. You will see that it is registered from Solombala in December 1920 and addressed to Switzerland. The Kerensky card is used as a Blank and the Imperial Arms stamps are revalued x 100 to give a correct - and very rare - 7 rouble franking for a Registered postcard going abroad (Tariff of 30 September 1920). Most importantly, the reverse shows an ARCHANGELSK transit cancel - and also a MURMANSK cancel. This last proves that the card went out by sea (in the middle of the Arctic winter), northwards and westwards towards Norway. At Murmansk the card would have been transferred to a ship headed for Vardø. By 1921 or 1922, as foreign mail handling was centralised, the card would have travelled south - overland - to Moscow or Petrograd and been censored there before being sent on to Switzerland, probably via Germany. But here we have the Northern route still being used, just as it was for the British Occupation card shown above.

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I am very grateful to Jan Lauridsen, who is a specialist collector of this Northern route, for letting me show his card here.

Added 19 April 2015: Alexander Epstein sends me scans of two more cards. The first one ,like Lauridsen's, is franked at 7 roubles with the Kerensky card used as a blank. The second card is a non-Tarasoff item, family correspondence written in Swedish and addressed to Finland. Postage Due has been raised, the Kerensky card presumably treated as a blank. Notably, the Archangel transit is clearly a Three Triangle censor mark and this may also be  true of the (part) Archangel cancel on the Lauridsen card:

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Added 13 March 2021: Franco Tealdo of the French coin and stamp company Nummusphila has sent me these scans of an interesting January 1921 Registered item sent by Tarasoff to Switzerland, routed through Moscow and picking up a Three Triangle censor mark there. The Imperial kopeeck stamps have been revalued x 100 to give a 7 ruble franking. The letter shows Tarasoff trying to set up a business link, though he writes about"exchange":

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Last Post: Bolshevik Russia to Foreign Destinations 1918

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I have blogged previously about the fact that Bolshevik Russia offered NO mail service to foreign destinations from 1 January 1919 until end of June 1920 - a remarkable fact.

But when I look at my mail from Bolshevik Russia going abroad in 1918, there is very little after August - September. I began looking for the latest date in 1918 I could find and picked out the letter above to the USA which started out from Tula on 10 December 1918.

The letter did not arrive in the USA until June 1919 - something the British censor [ in London?] may have had something to do with more than the fact that it is incorrectly franked (or maybe a stamp is missing).

Anyway, once again we have a puzzle: How late into 1918 could you send letters abroad which would still arrive ( and not get turned back at some point)? Examples please to trevor@trevorpateman.co.uk 

Added 19 April 2015: Alexander Epstein thinks that this cover dates from December 1917, with a slipped date in the Tula cancellation. I think he is probably right - the remark on the Censor strip is compatible with British policy in January / February 1918.