The new Armenia listing
in the Michel catalogue (see previous Blog post) gives separate prices for used
stamps in the Dashnak period, but they are prices for CTO copies. A note simply
indicates the scarcity of postally used material, and its rarity for anything
used outside Erivan and Alexandropol.
There are two problems
about postally used Armenian material: finding it and identifying it correctly.
As for Danzig and other territories, if gum is washed off CTO stamps they often
look very much like postally used stamps – especially where centrally placed
cancels are applied. Worse, in some places dealers and collectors applied mint
stamps singly to sheets of paper or blank envelopes and got them cancelled in
bulk. But a single stamp when removed from its backing paper looks like a used
stamp. This is true for all the Baltic countries after World War One and also
for Armenia.
Philatelists do archive
research and often find helpful information, as Christopher Zakiyan did for
Armenia. But unanswered questions remain. In the Armenian case here are some of
my thoughts and speculations:
Between 1917 and 1921
postal activity was often disrupted and some Armenian post offices disappeared
forever: those in the areas of eastern Anatolia taken by Turkey (all of the
Kars district, notably). Alexandropol was occupied by Turkey for a period.
Conflict with Georgia disrupted the postal service. It wasn’t always possible
to get the trains to run. Civil conflict, famine and disease were more or less
permanent features of Armenian life.
Postal activity was
modest. The practice which was standard at least until 1939 of soaking stamps
off covers makes it seem even more modest than it was. In addition, a significant
part of internal Armenian mail would have been stampless official correspondence
of which little survives which has not been faked by the addition of genuine
stamps cancelled with fake handstamps. But even those fakes provide useful
information.
Erivan could not always
maintain contact with other post offices. It did not always supply them with
stamps so cash payments were accepted – this became official policy in the transitional
year 1921 (Zakiyan’s research). Conversely, those post offices could not always
get things into the postal network even if they were open and a clerk on duty.
But the post offices
were always there and the best evidence for that is the rapid revival of the internal
post in 1922 – 1923 where old Imperial cancellations suddenly re-appear on the
new Soviet Armenian issues, sometimes very dirty and worn (BASARGECHAR a good
example).
A significant part of
franked mail in the Dashnak period was foreign mail destined for the Allied
countries – the USA, France and Great Britain – who were providing some minimal
support to the new Armenian republic and sometimes helped the mail along its
way, as the British did in Batum. Those covers often had stamps soaked off and that
is one reason that when I try to assemble examples of postally used stamps, it
is the higher values which are more common. See the scans below. Tariffs during
1920 rose through rouble steps: 2 and 4 and 8 roubles. But mail abroad seems to
have reduced and even stopped before the end of 1920 – postally used examples
of rouble overprinted stamps are rare. There are only two examples on my scans
(both of 1 rouble overprints).
Inland mail from Erivan
or Alexandropol probably had a poor delivery and survival rate. In addition,
though stamps may have gone into Armenian collections, they did not leave the
country once Soviet control was established. This is probably why I can show so
few kopeck value stamps which would have made up tariffs of 30 and 60 kopecks
and 1 ruble 20.
The stamps on the scans
are ones I think probably or certainly postally used, though I cannot tell
whether they were originally on philatelic covers which (for example) Souren Serebrakian
sent in quantity to his brother in Tiflis. In sorting the stamps which are
shown, I have looked at such things as paper adhering to the back of the stamp,
careless cutting of imperforate stamps and even hand tearing, smudged postmarks
which don’t look like the usual CTO. In among all the Erivan and some
Alexandropol cancels, you will see a couple of manuscript cancels and just one
identifiable as from another town, Karaklis, flagged up on a 3 rouble 50 kop
imperforate.
Click on Image to Magnify
Click on Image to Magnify
Click on Image to Magnify
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