Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story to tell of when central economic planning forgets who they are planning for.
The stamp today is from Bulgaria. I have to give credit to the stamp designer. In their wisdom, the government wanted to show off new industry. But how do you make a few new chemical and power plants look like an achievement instead of an environmental hazard. Answer, don’t show the plants at all but rather show the new looking apartment buildings to house the workers. Good job in saving the leadership from itself. There was a shortage of urban apartments and people moving to the cities.
This is issue A887, a 10 stotinki stamp issued by Bulgaria on April 7th, 1976. It is part of a 5 stamp issue celebrating the accomplishments industrially of the most recent five year economic plan. This stamp shows a residential complex attached to a new chemical plant. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used.
This is probably one of the last, 1976, issues of 5 year plan stamp that was a staple of socialist and third world stamps twenty years before. The stamps made a lot of sense in the early years of a new government. After all, at there most basic, they preached hope and change. People were poor and had suffered though turmoil but smart people are now in charge and they are working for you to make things better. This was well expressed by the Albania cigarette factory stamp I wrote about a few weeks ago. https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/09/communism-provides-smokes-for-atheists-and-then-a-refugee-camp-for-muslims/. Cheap readily available cigarettes will make life easier, and the giant factory on the stamp looks ready to start churning them out. But chemical plants? who drew up this plan and why?
By 1976, Bulgaria was being run by Todor Zhivkov, who had been in office for over twenty years. He had placed his children in prominent places and there was a cabal of aging ex partisan fighters that retained special privileges. It almost seems that they are who this stamp and the five year plan was aimed at impressing. After all they would be sophisticated enough to understand the importance and value of new chemical plants. I bet more than a few of us can think of politicians that got off course this way.
There was some real progress in 1970s Bulgaria. People were living longer and being better educated. They were more likely to have TV and refrigerators and even cars. No stamps about that though. Just who are the people in this peoples republic?
Well my drink is empty and so it is time to open up the conversation in the below comment section. How are these long ruling leaders viewed today. There was stability missing before and since. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.