In 2000 the Russian Federation appealed to the Universal Postal Union in Switzerland to help them put a stop to entities outside Russia from producing topical stamps purporting to be issued by regions of Russia with some autonomy. Hence most of these fake stamps come from the 1990s. This one I think is implying it comes from the Kamchatka Krai though the spelling is pretty wild with Roman script and that weird number 3. Some times it is difficult to figure out what a real stamp designer is trying to get across. Designing fake ones must add another level of challenge. 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.
If you are not an employee of the real Russian postal service trying to get collectors to appreciate what real Russian stamps have to offer, than perhaps you can appreciate this stamp. The fall leaf in the mouth of the turtle is a nice touch though I would imagine Kamchatka to be less deserty.
This is a fake stamp so there is no catalog value. I did a search for Kamchatka stamps on Ebay and only found legitimate Russian and Soviet issues showing off nicely Kamchatka volcanoes. Russia and the UPU must have done a good job stamping out these type issues.
The late 16th century saw Russian and Cossack explorers push into the Kamchatka peninsula and claim it for the Czar. The found the place very sparsely populated with Itelmen natives that were closely related to other Eskimoes of the Russian far east. Interesting they also found evidence that the Japanese had been there, including one living in a Itelmen village. The Russians thought he was a Hindu from India because Tokyo then called Hondo and Hindu were confused. He was sent to Moscow and Peter the Great helped him establish a Japanese school. There was also much talk among natives of an earlier expedition by Russians under a mythical Russian explorer called Fedotov, whose people had stayed on and intermarried. The Itelmen the legend says thought them gods and left them alone until they witnessed a murder among the Russians. They then murdered them and looted their village. Well people should keep their bad behavior to themselves.
There was much hardship for the Russian explorers who faced many uprisings and stolen reindeer from their Eskimo guides as well as rebellious Itelmen. The Itelmen had it even worse for the encounter with the Russians as they contracted and were greatly thinned out by small pox. The suicide rate, the Itelmen had also discovered Russian vodka, was quite high. The Czar made it illegal for an Itelmen to kill himself and the Russian Orthadox Church made extra effort to convert and assimilate the Itelmen.
There was a period when the area had legitimate stamps of their own. Between 1920 and 1922 a red Soviet aligned Far Eastern Republic was allowed to exist as a neutral buffer state during the white-red civil war. The red Soviets were worried that Japanese soldiers in Vladivostok would attack them. The Far East Republic did not go well with a coup against the installed government and the rural areas breaking off as an autonomous region. The stamps were mostly overprints of old Czarist issues.
Today the area is overwhelmingly populated by Russians. Intermarriage meant that Idelmen no longer based their ancestry on pure blood, but rather on the the practice of the Itelmen language. Fewer than 100 mostly older people now speak it.
Well my drink is empty and on Monday there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.