Month: May 2024

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Kamchatka 1994, fake stamps that do serious moral and economic harm to the Russian Federation and discredits the Russian Postal Service

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.

A 19th century Russian depiction of an Itelmen. What is he about to do with that knife?

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.

Real Far Eastern Republic stamp from 1922

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 soon there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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Yemen Arab Republic 1967, Egypt pulls out, so it is time for conciliation

At the time of this stamp both North and South Yemen had rival entities claiming the future. In the North that even meant rival stamp issues. With the Egyptian pullout, perhaps it was time to see if the sides had more in common, like needing a new patron. 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.

When two sides in a civil war are putting out stamps, The Philatelist did a Royalist one here, https://the-philatelist.com/2019/06/20/fake-north-yemen-stamp-remembers-the-barefoot-bazooka-guy-freedom-fighter/   , you can bet the issues are more to raise revenue than for actual postage. So here we get an elaborate oversized issue on Flemish painting masters. Bizarre thing for socialists of North Yemen to be spending time on. Anyway the painting is “The Peasant Wedding” by Pieter Brueger and is from the 16th century. Brueger is noted for finding the nobility in his images of peasants. There is a mystery as to who the groom is in this wedding celebration. There is an old Dutch proverb that says it is a poor man that cannot be at his own wedding so this may be a take on that. Though Brueger mainly operated out of Antwerp, the painting today hangs at a museum in Vienna.

This stamp is issue A60 a 1/4th Bogaches stamp issued by the Yemen Arab Republic in October 1967. It was 15 stamps on Flemish painting masters issued in three groups of five. The higher denominations were airmail issues. According to the Scott catalog, these were real stamps as this force was holding Sana the capitol and the post office. They put the value at 25 cents whether unused like this one or cancelled to order.

In 1967, Egypt pulled out it’s military presence from North Yemen as they were needed at home after the 1967 Sinai war with Israel. The socialists that they supported still held the capital of Sana and the Saudi Arabian backed rebels the highlands. After an unsuccessful siege on Sana in 1968, the Royalists were nearly spent. So however were the socialists without Egypt.

It was time for Abdul Rahman to make his move. He was the son of a judge but at different times he was put in prison by the King and by Nasser in Egypt. Rumors persisted around Rahman that he was a secret Jew named Hadad that was adopted by his important Muslim family. He says Hadad was his stepbrother. In any case in 1970 he was able to form a government of conciliation that included socialists and royalists. This government had the backing of  Saudi Arabia, which is so important with Saudi Arabia so rich and Yemen so poor.

North Yemen President Rahman

In 1972, forces of the old South Arabia tried to make a comeback in South Yemen with backing from the Saudis and North Yemen under Rahman. What a change from being a part of the free Yemeni  movement against middle eastern royals. The war was not successful but the two Yemens agreed in principle to join into one Yemen. It took 18 years for that to happen.

Their coming for you, South Yemeni Pan Arab socialist. Slowly..

That area or the world is not known to be forgiving of losers. In 1974 Rahman was couped out of office under a program, pogrom?, of correcting the revolution and getting rid of the legacy of decadence. Easier said than done. He lived the rest of his life in exile in Damascus.

Well my drink is empty and I will confine my toasting to the wedding couple on the stamp’s painting. Hope they were able to track down the groom. Come again soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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New Zealand 1982, A nattering nabob comes to New Zealand, bringing sheep

A nabob is a word that comes to English from Hindi. In the English language it came to mean a fellow who returns after making a great fortune in India. When nabob John Cracroft Wilson arrived in New Zealand, he was perhaps not the fellow you would have expected to bring with him that rural England staple, a flock of sheep. You might not also expect New Zealand to take to the raising of sheep in a bigger way than even England. Even today with a diverse urban society, New Zealand hosts ten sheep for every human. 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.

This view of a sheep herd is an attempt by the stamp designer to evoke spring. There were four stamps in the issue, one for each season. This is the lone season that implies work. Not sure what to make of that.

Todays stamp is issue A275, a 70 cent stamp issued by New Zealand on June 2nd, 1982. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 85 cents whether used or unused.

Sheep raising was not practiced by the Maori prior to the arrival of Europeans. The islands, especially the south island, are quite suited to it with ample grassland and well distributed rainfall over the seasons. John Cracroft Wilson was stationed in India during the time of the East India Company. He was tasked there with hunting down groups of native thugs that were preying on British in residence there. Thugery is another word that came to the English language from Hindi. He was quite successful at it but when faced with a patch of ill health he decided to find a more temperate climate and chose New Zealand.

Seeking a calmer rural life, he stopped in Australia and acquired a flock of sheep. One can imagine how treacherous it must have been to move a flock of sheep by sea in the time of sailing ships. Indeed the journey was quite hard on the flock with over 1200 of them having to be put overboard. He founded an estate near Christchurch that he named Cashmere. The name was to be evocative of the Indian region of Kashmir.

Just as Mr. Cracroft Wilson was getting established in New Zealand he was called back to India at the time of the Sepoy rebellion. His success in this period against thuggery was so that he was said by the Viceroy Lord Canning to have saved more Christian lives than any man in India. Mr. Cracroft Wilson was awarded by Queen Victoria the rank of Knight Commander in the newly established Order of the Star of India. Soon however he was back in New Zealand to tend his growing sheep flock. The growing flock required him to lease three additional sheep runs.

Sir John Cracroft Wilson

At the time New Zealand was short of accomplished men so Mr. Cracroft Wllson was pressed into a variety of roles. He was head of the Jockey Club, the Acclimation Society, a military cavalry reserve unit, the Governor of Canterbury College. He also served in the New Zealand Parliament where he was quite the nattering nabob in debate. Dealings with the Maori were a hot topic and Cracroft Wilson proposed importing a unit of Gurkhas from India to make short work of them. The suggestion was not taken up.

The sheep industry got a big boost in 1882 when it became possible to export the meat frozen and not just the wool. At the peak the flock of sheep in New Zealand was 70 million. With land becoming more valuable, it is no longer possible to allocate so much land to the sheep. The flock is down now to 39 million, but that is still 10 for every human being and ten percent larger than the sheep flock of the UK. The decline of market price for wool meant that by the 1980s, dairy farming became the bigger industry.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another toast the Hindi language. I had no idea there were so many contributions to ours. Come again soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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Russia 1970, An Imperial era Cruiser Aurora, just keeps surviving if not her Captains

The early 20th century was an embarrassing time for the Russian Navy. There was an embarrassing defeat by Japan, a deadly friendly fire incident where fishing boats were mistaken for ridiculously far from home Japanese torpedo boats and this cruisers most famous shot was a blank fired under mutiny. 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.

The older Naval warships from the naval construction race are quite strong looking and indeed an important role for them was to project power. They had huge crews so large hulls, they were armor plated unlike modern ships and the multiple large cannons are more visually powerful than modern shipboard missile silos.

This stamp is issue A1800, a three Kopeck stamp issued by the Soviet Union on July 26th, 1970. It was a five stamp issue in various denominations showing ships of the Soviet Navy. The Aurora was 70 years old at the time of the stamp but was still a navy ship with a crew and captain to maintain the ship and handle tourists and ceremonial functions, the other vessels in the stamp set were modern. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

The Aurora was launched in 1900 after being constructed in Saint Petersburg. It was a 6000 ton cruiser with a crew of 650 and part of the three ship Pallada class that were designed for Pacific ocean service. As a new ship, the sailors aboard had inadequate training. In 1903, the ships set out for Port Author in the Russian far east to reinforce the ships there. While on route in the Red Sea, there were second thoughts and the heavier ships were called back. Once back home in Saint Petersburg, there were third thoughts and the ships were again ordered to the Pacific accompanied by much of the Baltic fleet.

It was here that lack of training caused a disaster. Spotting several British fishing trawlers from Hull in the North Sea, they were confused with Japanese torpedo boats and fired at. Then the fleet went into chaos firing wildly at friendly ships. Aurora was lightly damaged and lost two sailors including the ship’s chaplain.

Arriving in the Pacific the force then faced the Japanese fleet. The fleet of this period Japan was mainly British built and trained and had new tech range finders that made their big guns more accurate. The Battle or Tsushima was devastating for the Russians. Many ships were damaged or sunk with the two top admirals and many ship’s captains, including the Aurora’s dying. The damaged Aurora was made a flagship and protected some smaller and slower vessels running from the Japanese fleet. The force made it to neutral Manila and was interred there for the rest of the war.

After the post war return, Aurora was made into a much needed training ship. However a ship full of young cadets many of whom were politically radicalized was not much good to the Czar. In the February 1917 Revolution, the ship mutinied and her captain was killed to be replaced by a sailor elected from the crew. In November 1917, the mostly Bolshevik crew fired one blank round that signaled to the city the beginning of the attack on the winter palace.

The ship’s crew picked the winning side in 1917, so was awarded this Order of the October Revolution

The 20s-40s saw the ship again engaged in training duties and friendly show the flag foreign visits. During the Siege of Leningrad from 1941-1944, the ships 6 inch cannons were removed to form an onshore battery and the ship was heavily damaged from air strikes. Refurbished post war it resumed as a training ship before being parked permanently as a tourist ship. Firing the first (blank) shot of the 1917 revolution is thought quite noteworthy.

To last so long the ship has had much work done. In the late 1980s, the below waterline hull was cut off to be replaced by a new hull created from the original ships drawings. The old hull was sunk to create a reef. In 2013 it was suggested to by the Russian Defense Minister that the Aurora be named flagship of the Russian fleet and resume showing the flag foreign visits. The ship was duly taken to it’s original shipyard and refurbished but then instead just returned to it’s Saint Petersburg home to continue to receive tourists. Not many ships from this era survive. One that does is the Japanese battleship Makasa, that the Aurora faced at the battle of Tsushimi. Keeping these old ships painted and afloat is expensive but there are many fans. In 2009 the Makasa was fully repainted by volunteers from the current American aircraft carrier Nimitz. Admiral Chester Nimitz had previously promoted saving the Makasa during the American post war occupation.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast those that keep these giant monuments to history afloat. Come again soon when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.