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to Primorye Siberian Legion 1922 Vladivostok BЛАДИВОСТОKЪ in Esperanto
$300.00
$395.00
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abctoo (12)
Picture Postcard to Vladivostok, Siberia to VOLDEMARO (Volunteer) Kosicin, P.S.L. [Primorye (Coastal) Siberian Legion] from Kaiserlautern, Germany Canceled 26 February 1922 in Germany on mailing: "KAISERSLAUTERN L / 26 / FEB. / 12-1 NM. / 22" Three Vla ... Read More
Item Specifics
- Country
- Russia
- Stamp Type
- Postal Cards
- Condition
- Cover (Postal History)
- Stamp Format
- Multiple
- Year of Issue
- 1922
Item Description
Picture Postcard to Vladivostok, Siberia to VOLDEMARO (Volunteer) Kosicin, P.S.L. [Primorye (Coastal) Siberian Legion] from Kaiserlautern, GermanyCanceled 26 February 1922 in Germany on mailing:
"KAISERSLAUTERN L / 26 / FEB. / 12-1 NM. / 22"
Three Vladivostok, Siberia cancels later applied:
"BЛАДИВОСТОKЪ / 21 4 22 / C" (Vladivostok 21 April 1922)
"BЛАДИВОСТОKЪ / 30 5 22 / C" (Vladivostok 30 May 1922)
"BЛАДИВОСТОKЪ / 11 7 22 / C" (Vladivostok 11 July 1922)
The card is written in Esperanto, stating:
"Trerstimata Sinjoro! Hodiau la dimanĉon mi sendas vin askaū unu Karto esperante ke vi, fartas plezur on de, kun aersîpojn mi ne provus troviĝi's unu mi, unu baldau sendos vin la komerc journalon Kajrestas kun koraj salutoj via amikina. Auguste Klinger."
Roughly translated, the Esperanto text reads:
"Dear Sir! Today Sunday I send you as well a Card in Esperanto that may delight you, I would not try to find one with aircraft. I will soon send you the business journal. You are in our hearts. The best from your friend. Auguste Klinger."
Its 2.50 Marks in postage franking is 10 pfg. over the German foreign card rate of 2.40 Marks in effect from 1 January 1922 through 30 June 1922 during the German inflationary period. Due to unavailability of many small denomination stamps, slight overages in postage were not uncommon. The picture on the postcard is inscribed, "Ein Tänzchen in Freien" ("a little dance in the outdoors"), a nice touch for a card to a Volunteer (Voldimaro, in Esperanto) fighting in Siberia. Scans are of the listed item.
The Primorskaya Oblast, informally known as Primorye, was established as the easternmost division of the Russian Empire in 1856. It included the territory of modern Primorsky Krai as well as the territories of modern Khabarovsk Krai and Magadan Oblast, stretching from Vladivostok to the Chukchi Peninsula in the far north. In the period from 1859 to 1882, ninety-five settlements were established in the Primorye region, including Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Razdolnoye, Vladimiro-Aleksandrovskoye, Shkotovo, Pokrovka, Tury Rog, and Kamen-Rybolov. From 1920, the Communists defined the Primrskaya Oblast as part of the Far Eastern Republic (1920-1922).
After the 1920 withdrawal of the troops of Allies of World War I from Siberia (except for Japanese troops), a provisional national assembly for the Far East met in Vladivostok on 11 November 1920. The gathering recognized the government at Chita and set 9 January 1921 as the date for new elections for the Constituent Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic. A new constitution closely resembling the United States Constitution was written and approved on 27 April 1921. However, right-wing forces rejected the idea of a fledgling democratic republic.
On 23 May 1921, a White Army coup by the Kappelevtsy, the remnants of Vladimir Kappel's army, occurred in Vladivostok and its environs. On 26 May 1921, protected by a cordon of Japanese troops in Vladivostok, the insurgents formed the Provisional Priamurye Government (or Provisional Priamur Government) Приамурский земский край. Vadivostok and the environs are on the Pacific Ocean. Priamur roughly translates into English as "Coastal." The name of the new government thus can be read as the "Provisional Coastal Government."
The government was headed by the Merkulov brothers: Spiridon Dionisovich Merkulov, former functionary of the Ministry of Agriculture and head of the Priamurye government; and Nikolai Merkulov, a merchant. Both were deputies of the Russian Provisional Government. Somewhat later, the Cossack ataman Grigory Semyonov attempted to take power and declared himself commander-in-chief. Without backing from the Japanese, Semyonov eventually withdrew. The Kappelevtsy and The Semyonovtsy apparently despised each other. Gradually the enclave was expanded to Khabarovsk and then Spassk, 125 miles north of Vladivostok. Even so, the new Provisional Government of Priamur had little success in rallying the various anti-Bolshevik forces to its banner.
The card was mailed February 26, 1922 and is addressed to a volunteer in the P.S.L., the "Coastal" Siberian Legion. We do not know if that was a legion associated with the "Red" or "White" Army. In March and April 1922, the Japanese Army repulsed large Bolshevik offensives against Vladivostok. The first of three Vladivostok cancellations on the card is dated 21 April 1922 and the second 30 May 1922. Those cancelations mean the card was not delivered but remained in the post office.
On June 24, 1922, Japan announced that it would unilaterally withdraw all of its troops from Siberia except for northern Sakhalin Island by the end of October. That deposed the brothers Merkulov, who were replaced by Mikhail Diterikhs, one of Admiral Alexander Kolchak's generals of the White Army in the Russian Far East. The third Vladivostok cancel on the postcard is dated 11 July 1922, as the card awaited for the Volunteer to arrive and pick it up.
On 23 July 1922, Diterikhs convened the Zemsky Sobor of the Amur region (Приамурский Земский Собор) of the Provisional Priamurye Government in Vladivostok to proclaim a new monarchy (now four years after the execution of the Romanov family). The territory was renamed Priamursky Zemsky Krai and Diterikhs styled himself voyevoda. The army was renamed the Zemskaya Rat ('rat' is an archaic Slavic term meaning "military force").
As this postcard is addressed to Volunteer (Voldemaro) Kosicin, P.S.L., we had initially thought the addressee was a volunteer of the "Priamoursky Siberian Legion" of the provisional government whose coup took over the Siberian region around Vladivostok at the end of May, 1921, nine months before the card was mailed. But that attribution has been troubling to us because of its three different dated Vladivostok cancels (21 April, 30 May and 11 July 1922), which suggest the card was held at the Vladivostok post office awaiting a recipient (Volunteer Kosicin).
The card is written in Esperanto and addressed to a "volunteer." The Russian October 1917 Revolution was a peasant and soldiers revolution against the nobility and class distinction. By 1918, military rank designations were ordered eliminated with each soldier to be called only "Red Army Soldier," which suggests that those from outside would merely be "volunteers" without rank. After the October Revolution of 1917, Esperanto was given a measure of government support by the new workers' states in the former Russian Empire and later by the Soviet Union government, with the Soviet Esperanto Association being established as an officially recognized organization.
However, in 1937 at the height of the Great Purge, Joseph Stalin, who is known to have studied Esperanto, completely reversed the Soviet government's Esperanto policies and many Esperanto speakers were executed, exiled or held in captivity in Gulag labor camps. The use of Esperanto on a card in 1922 can imply it was sent to the "Red" side of the civil war though Esperanto had been created in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire) in the 1880's, suggesting it was sent to a volunteer remaining in Vladivostok after the escape and evacuation of the White Army's Polish Legion in 1920. Thus the P.S.L. maybe the Primorye Siberian League of the Red Army which could not pickup the card until it reoccupied Vladivostok.
Copyright 2021, by Michael Fried, P.O. Box 27521, Oakland, California 94602-0521
Seller Information
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- abctoo (12)
- Registered Since
- 02/25/2020
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