Once a flag rises it can never fall was a slogan of Azerbaijan during it’s one year of independence in 1919. Perhaps it should have been never be sure you won’t see this flag again. In the mean time, lets print some fake stamps. 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.
Yes todays stamp is fake. The few real stamps from the early Azerbaijan were imperforate stamps printed on an unusual yellow paper. This stamp mimics those in how the country name is presented and currency but is later. The modern real Azerbaijan stamps don’t say republique and have a different currency. Fake stamps still plaque the country but there is something fake about the real stamps. If you see the Muslim country stamp featuring John Lennon, that is real. A stamp with the Spice Girls, that is fake. Makes you wonder if the whole country is fake.
This is a fake stamp so it is not in the catalog. So therefore the stamp is priceless.
The city of Baku was taken from Persia in the early 19th century. Oil was discovered and the town became a boomtown of Czarist Russia. The area contained Muslim Turks, Persians and Christian Armenians and Russians. With the chaos that overcame Russia in 1917 the Caucus area quickly attempted to break away. The local unit of the Czarist army became the army of the area but there was much infighting between Muslims and Armenians. The Muslims had an Ottoman Turk Army in support and the Armenians allied with the Soviets. Baku fell to the Ottomans and there was an ethnic cleansing. In theory Azerbaijan became an independent Republic under local Azer writer and journalist Mammad Ammin Rasulzadeh, who I will call MAR from here on out. MAR had been an early communist but had also trafficked in Muslim separatism. A rebel with many causes. The Czar had sent him to exile in Persia where he was part of the new Iran movement against the Shah. The Shah then sent him on to Turkey where he agitated against the Ottomans. A 1913 Czar amnesty let MAR return to Baku where he was supported by Zeynalabdin Tagiyez. ZT was a contactor that stuck oil and sold out becoming one of the richest men in Russia. An independent Azerbaijan relied on an occupation Ottoman army that was withdrawn at the end of 1918 as the Ottomans were on the losing side of World War One. After a respectable period, The Red Army marched in and made Azerbaijan a Soviet Republic.
The Soviets showed some grace to the Azers after the reconquest. MAR had known a young Joseph Stalin when both were anti Czarist agitators and gave him a job in public relations in first Moscow and then Leningrad. MAR escaped to Finland and then Poland where he married. Another war sent him on to Romania then Turkey from where he often spoke to Azerbaijan over Voice of America. He died in 1955. ZT in view of his previous philanthropy was allowed to live out his days in his summer cottage as his other properties were seized. ZT’s second wife Sona was not so lucky. Despite being of noble birth and upbringing, in 1924 upon ZT’s death, Sona was evicted from the summer cottage and spent her remaining days a street person in Baku. Sona died in 1938.
Azerbaijan again got independence in 1992. Oil is not has plentiful as it once was probably explaining why the area no longer receives the attention of the Russian, Turkish, or Iranian army. Baku is a big city today but the Armenians and Jews that used to be a big part of life there are gone and even Russians are down below 5 percent of the population.
Well my drink is empty and my stamp fake so come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.