The colonial power leaves but after being there so long is there a cohesive country still to reconstruct. 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. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
During the cold war era, the Eastern Bloc put out for years well printed large stamps on popular topics. They were readily and cheaply available to worldwide collectors and allowed many stamp collectors to specialize in automobile stamps or in this case cat stamps. Azerbaijan got into this act quickly after independence. In a way that is surprising as the eastern system is after all what they were rebelling against. The fact is though the system was still ingrained in those making decisions. To be frank, these type of stamps are not my thing. I don’t like that most are mint and even if cancelled have never seen an envelope. I also prefer the stamps to be more of a mirror to teach about the place of issue.
The stamp today is issue A55, a 250 Manet stamp issued by Azerbaijan on October 30th, 1995. It was part of a 6 stamp and one souvenir sheet issue displaying domestic cats, in this case a Somali cat. One can see the hyperinflation of early days of independence. The Manet currency was only out for 3 years when this stamp was new. Already the Giapicks, cent equivalent, are gone and the denomination of the stamp is 250 Manets. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 65 cents in it’s cancelled to order state.
Azerbaijan had been taken from the Ottoman Empire by Russia in Czarist times. There was a brief period of independence in the chaos after the 1917 revolution but the new Muslim country was at war with next door Christian Armenia and was unable to resist the Red Army when it came to restore both countries to Soviet aethist Republics.
In the late 80s the Soviet system that had kept the peace began to break down. The locals began to have more contact with their fellow ethnics in neighboring countries and the local Soviet authorities no longer had the stomach to stop them. The border lines of Azerbaijan contained an area called Nagorno-Karabakh that was heavily Armenian in nationality and Christian in religion. As the still Soviet republics both got more autonomy from Moscow, the Armenians gave the vote to Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. The outraged Azerbaijan independence front leaders and they began an anti-Armenian ethnic cleansing pogrom that was quite deadly, the numbers are disputed as usual.
In early 1990 this got the Soviets off the dime and a state of emergency was declared and Soviet troops sent in. The troops were lead by later Russian nationalist leader Alexander Lebed. The Soviets were able to regain control but now Azerbaijan had it’s own massacred in what became known as Black January. At the time of the anti Gorbachev coup, the Azerbaijan Popular Front declared itself independent from Tehran, Iran.
Elections and war with Armenia followed. Gaidar Aliyev was an Azeri who had risen high under the Soviet system but was not allowed to compete allegedly due to age. The Azerbaijan Popular Front had two presidents in short order that fought a losing war with Armenia. APF discredited, Aliyev was then allowed to run and won the Presidency in 1993. He arraigned a ceasefire with Armenia and put his son in charge of the national oil company. When he died he was succeeded by his son who remains in power today. Azerbaijan is again close to Russia.
Well my drink is empty and as I enjoy another I wonder how many former colonies would happily elect an old colonial governor. More than a few I would expect. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.