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Thursday 6 March 2014

The History of Crimea in Postmarks?

For most English people, the History of Crimea means a war fought in the middle of the 19th century. It's a pity it's not that simple. Today I looked in my boxes of pre-World War Two Soviet Union postal history and pulled out four items:


The 1929 postmark above is inscribed in Cyrillic at the top for  KARASUBAZAR, the original Tatar name for a place now called Bilohirsk (in Ukrainian) and Belogorsk (in Russian). The postmark is bi-lingual and at the bottom is inscribed in Arabic.


The 1930 postmark is in Russian at the top with a soft sign after the CH (Google tells me that in Ukrainian there would be no soft sign). The International R label on this letter transliterates the place name as KERTCH though in English-language sources it is now normally spelled KERCH. But at the bottom we have KERC in Latin script and this could be post-Ataturk Turkic - though Google has the name with a cedilla in order to indicate the soft "Ch" pronunciation: KERÇ


This 1940 Soviet postmark for SIMFEROPOL also gives the city its Tatar name AQMESCID in Latin script.


Finally, here is one where I have hit Google without success (I tried for Jewish / Karaite communities too). At the top we have what looks like KADISH and at the bottom QAD S or QAD 5 in Latin script. This is one my readers must solve. Postscript: And Vasilis Opsimos has solved it. See his Comment which identifies Kadish as present-day Voronky.



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1 comment:

  1. Trevor,

    Kadish is present-day village of Voronky (Воронки́) in north-west Crimea (Razdolnensky rayon).

    Vasilis

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