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Tannu
Tuva Collectors' Society, Inc. APS Affiliate #235 |
PHILATELY'S
UGLIEST DUCKLINGS:
Rehabilitating the 1934-36 Issues of Tannu
Tuva
by James
Negus.
Part Three.
(Originally published in The
Philatelic Journal, July-September 1960.)
Part One
Part Two.
This story is reprinted exactly as in the original,
though Mirr
catalog numbers have been added in green.
Buy
a copy of the Mirr catalog.
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advice about all "those pretty-pretties" and felt sorry that I was squandering my time and money on such things. The net result of the universal lack of knowledge was that I inadvertently accumulated a great deal of Tannu Tuva whilst trying hard to collect Mongolia! Having a low opinion of this embarrassment of riches, I was on the point of getting rid of it when Mr. Cronin unwittingly saved the day with his article in the 1954 New South Wales Philatelic Annual. So interesting was this that I stopped scoffing and began studying instead, and I have never regretted my conversion. I have tried to counter the prevailing lack of knowledge about Mongolia and Tuva in a number of ways, chiefly by writing articles and giving displays to philatelic societies. But I have also been able to stop up the source of confusion which probably did most harm of all: the simple restoration in the Gibbons Catalogue of the name "Tannu Tuva" instead of the former erroneous "North Mongolia." Why Tuva was ever saddled by the catalogue maker with the fictitious name "North Mongolia" is a complete mystery, but happily this irritating absurdity has now been abandoned. One will find that auction misdescriptions will now become rarer by this simple reform. Search
for Used Material |
though a surprising number of people had taken the trouble to wash the gum off the back. A few rather smudgy cancels occasionally turn up which might conceivably indicate genuine postal usage but these are not very convincing. Far more exciting was a piece of postal stationery which was reposing in a colleague's collection, that of Mr. W.H. Adgey-Edgar, and which through his courtesy is now illustrated (Fig. 5). This has several encouraging features. Postal stationery is not known to have been mass-distributed for philatelic purposes, and the address of the sender (at the foot of the cover) is exactly correct. Albert H. Harris was advised by the Soviet Philatelic Association in 1937 that the postal authorities of Tuva were to be contacted at the following address: Tbba Arat Respublik (Touva), Xarblzaa Ergeleer, Kbzbl-xooraj (Kizil); it will be seen that this corresponds with the sender's address. That the cover has been addressed in handwriting is also a welcome change from the typewritten or printed style usually found on philatelic items. Perhaps the most significant indication, however, is the cancellation. This is Kizil b, 22.9.37, and Kizil b has not so far been recorded on the philatelic covers. The Moscow productions usually bear Kizil a or Kizil c. Incidently, the backstamp on this postal stationery is Ipswich 13.10.37, giving a transit time Kizil to Ipswich of 23 days. Altogether, this item has all the indications of having been a genuine traveller from Tuva, since it does not fit into the well-known philatelic mould of items emanating from Moscow. It will, |
of course, be observed that a 70 kop. adhesive of the 1936 "Jubilee" series has been affixed, so that if the envelope did come from Tuva, the stamp undoubtedly came with it. An
Unusual Prepared Cover
cover of his which also is very significant. Figures 6 and 7 show the front and back and, for the first time, additional evidence is presented for genuine usage in the form of a transit
cancellation. The reverse side is clearly postmarked Ousinskoie 30.10.35, and the town of Usinskoye is just over the border of Tannu Tuva, about 60 – 70 miles from Kizil, in Soviet Siberia. From the map, Kizil and Usinskoye appear connected by road. Remembering Harris's pre-war questions about how mail entered and left Tuva, this transit cancel is a useful piece of evidence. The Russian authorities, inter alia, spoke of communications "towards the U.S.S.R. [on] the high road Kizil – Minussinsk." Minussinsk is also in Siberia, somewhere about 250 miles from Kizil, |
Fig.
8. Stuck-down sheet received from Tannu Tuva
by the author.
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and examination of the map shows that Usinskoye could well be a stage on this road. Particularly important on Herr Klewitz's cover are the Kizil cancellations. These are of a type (Cronin Type 3) well known on covers dated 1931–33 and about which there is no suspicion that they originated from anywhere but Tuva; they were the current normal cancellation. The transit history, as recorded by the cancellations, is Kizil, 25.10.35; Ousinskoie, 30.10.35; Fulda (Germany), 25.11.35, so that the entire movement from Tuva to Germany took 31 days. Although this is a prepared cover, I think it improbable that the Tuvans would obligingly postmark stamps of which they were entirely ignorant, i.e. stamps which had never been on sale in their own country. I am sure that Herr Klewitz's cover actually penetrated to Tuva, was cancelled there, and sent back. It is in marked contrast to the other covers from hopeful foreign philatelists about which I spoke earlier and which may well have been serviced in Moscow with duplicate Tuvan cancellers. The
Blekhman Collection Six
covers bearing the pictorial issues were on show, as follows:
(iv)
Cover addressed registered to Blekhman, cancelled Kizil Type
5, dated 12.7.36. Stamps: 1 kop. (No.
47) (Mirr 61)
to 50 kop. (No.
53) (Mirr 67)
– complete set. Cover (iii) is particularly noteworthy. The Tzadan cancel has not so far been recorded on the philatelic covers and the occurrence of a Kizil cancel dated three days later is unique as a combination. On the face of
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it, this cover does seem to have travelled from Tzadan to Kizil and thence to Moscow, franked with the disputed stamps.
It
is of interest to note, by the way, that the Russians spoke before
the war of eight post offices functioning in Tuva
(see Stamp Collectors' Annual,
1939, p.38). They were at: The
Pictorials On the basis of my colleague's notes I published first details of these stamps in the Journal of Chinese Philately, vol. 5 (May 1958), pp 88-89, and repeat the data here: Provisionals
of 1938 – 42 As will be seen, the postmarks vary from the illegible to clearly recognized Kizil Type 5's of the years 1940 – 42. They all convert higher values to lower and if they are not outright forgeries – which is unlikely if they were on public display to a knowledgeable audience – they have all the hallmarks of being genuinely needed provisional issues, manufactured locally in Tuva. The stamps used are the 1934–36 issues, which is consistent with their being the available stamps in Tuva at the time. They can hardly have been made for philatelists – unless it be Soviet philatelists – since they were totally unknown abroad until displayed in Moscow in 1957. We know that there were two series of locally printed stamps in 1942 and 1943, the dying gasp of Tuvan philately before the country was absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1944, but these are outside the scope of the present article. The fact that these provisionals were necessary from 1938 until the local stamps appeared in 1942 is therefore consistent with the general pattern of postal events. That the much despised 1934–36 pictorials were the stamps to be used to make these provisionals
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seems to me to be highly significant, and that the high "aksa" values should be used up to do this – they must surely have been pretty useless in their original state – is quite comforting. What troubled me for a time, however, is the apparent absurdity of Tuva needing provisionals at all. One would have judged the country to have been more than amply endowed with stamps since no fewer than 73 different items had appeared during the fateful years of 1934 to 1936, when Tuva's philatelic reputation was being so systematically done to death. Such an abundance would seem to render provisionals extremely unlikely. However, a probable explanation is that Moscow used up such an enormous quantity in operating its philatelic manipulations that it starved Tuva of supplies. Allied to this are the perpetual disorganisation characteristic of the Soviet state-controlled economy of those years where vital supplies never reached recipients owing to the mistakes of the bureaucracy (students of Soviet economic affairs are quite familiar with this), and the wartime and near-wartime period having repercussions in this matter. A
Fragment from Tuva itself During August 1958 I circularised all these post offices with a prepared self-addressed cover, correctly franked with Soviet stamps, and asked for it to be postmarked and returned to me. Six of the postmasters kindly obliged, and I was very content with the results. One cover, to my great delight, contained two enclosures: a very friendly letter from a private citizen in the town of Bai-Khak and a small sheet of paper on which he had thoughtfully stuck down a few stamps for my collection. That this gentleman was no philatelist was, of course, immediately apparent: the stamps had been pretty well mishandled even before being stuck down and two of the specimens of what he thought were Tuvan stamps were in fact from Hungary! (see Fig. 8). But this little sheet is of the highest interest. It did definitely come from Tannu Tuva; it was not concocted by a philatelist but represents exactly what a typical layman would produce from his own resources. In other words, I think we can safely regard it as an authentic indication of the type of stamps lying about in odd corners of Tannu Tuva, totally unremarked and (unbeknown to the residents) liable to be of the greatest importance to foreign philatelists. Could we but make contact with the inhabitants, such as my unknown benefactor, Tuvan mysteries would be cleared up quickly. (I have heard no more from my friend in Bai-Khak and several letters from me – in French and Russian – have gone unanswered.) Of
this six Tuvan stamps on the sheet, five
of them tell us something new! No. 7 is
the only dull item, being simply SG 29 (Mirr
29).
Nos. 3 and 4,
on the other hand, are the first two used copies of two of the "local"
stamps (1942–43) to have been seen, and No.
4 is the first recorded copy of this stamp outside the Blekhman
collection. No. 5 is evidently another
of the hitherto-unknown provisionals (1938–42), 25 kop. on 5 aksa,
(Mirr
132)
but it is one not recorded in the Blekhman display. |
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