Definitive stamps of Russia are the regular

postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the f ...

issues produced in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

and RSFSR between 1857 and 1923, and in the

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

since 1992.

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire started issuing definitive series of postage stamps since 10 December 1857 when the first Russian stamp went on sale. There were twenty definitive issues produced until 1917 as outlined in a table below.

RSFSR

The first definitive series of the RSFSR was issued in 1921. It included five

designs A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

of new Soviet symbols such as agricultural labour,

industrial labour Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

and

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

, hammer and sickle, and . The stamps had a minimum wording, russian: Почта (''Pochta'' (

postage The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal syst ...

)) and the

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

russian: РСФСР (''RSFSR''), imparting the Soviet messages solely via pictures. File:1921 CPA 3.jpg, Symbols of agricultural labour File:1921 CPA 4.jpg, Symbols of agricultural labour File:1921 CPA 5.jpg, Symbols of industrial labour File:1921 CPA 6.jpg, "Hammer and sickle" symbol File:1921 CPA 7.jpg, "

Proletarian The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philoso ...

Freed" ("Russia New Triumphant" or "The Dragon Slayer") File:1921 CPA 10.jpg, Symbols of science and arts The first regular issue involved eleven different stamps of denominations ranging between 1- and 1,000

rouble The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. , currencies named '' ...

s. Among these, five stamps showed the agricultural-labour design, printed in different colours and with face values of 1-, 2-, 100-, 200-, and 300 roubles. The industrial-labour symbol was given in three denominations: 5-, 500-, and 1,000 roubles. The stamp for science-and-arts appeared only once. To a certain degree, designs of the series, focusing more on agriculture and industry, were in conformity with the spirit of the government's

New Economic Policy The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...

of 1921 aimed at recovering the RSFSR economy. They also followed the same vogue that could be found in Soviet

poster art A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text ...

in 1921, when the

Soviet government The Government of the Soviet Union ( rus, Прави́тельство СССР, p=prɐˈvʲitʲɪlʲstvə ɛs ɛs ɛs ˈɛr, r=Pravítelstvo SSSR, lang=no), formally the All-Union Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, commonly ab ...

, "having secured its own position, turns to problems of peaceful social and economic development (economic and cultural themes move rapidly to the fore)." Reflecting new political goals, RSFSR postage stamps provided visual messages of the values and major

social group In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...

s within

Soviet society The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the country's 69-year existence. It was contributed to by people of various nationalities from every one of fifteen union republics, although a majority of the influence was made ...

. Portraying the three social groups, the RSFSR's final definitive issues in 1922 and 1923 depicted the worker, the

soldier A soldier is a person who is a member of an army. A soldier can be a conscripted or volunteer enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, or an officer. Etymology The word ''soldier'' derives from the Middle English word , from Old French ...

, and the

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasant ...

that constituted the Soviet state. These were stylistic representations in the form of classical busts resembling portraits of

monarch A monarch is a head of stateWebster's II New College DictionarMonarch Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest authority and power i ...

s and other

heads of state A head of state (or chief of state) is the public persona who officially embodies a state Foakes, pp. 110–11 " he head of statebeing an embodiment of the State itself or representatitve of its international persona." in its unity and ...

on stamps of other countries. File:Stamp Soviet Union 1922 73.jpg, File:Stamp Soviet Union 1922 74.jpg, File:Stamp Soviet Union 1922 75.jpg, File:Stamp Soviet Union 1922 76.jpg, RSFSR-1ststandard-1923

Replacing the portraits of the

tsar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...

s, depiction of the three social groups was on purpose, because the Soviet government "specifically decided to create images which would symbolise the idea of worker-peasant power." The sculptor Ivan Shadr was author of these images. Designing the busts, he created the worker first, then the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

soldier. These two stamps appeared in December 1922. The stamp showing the bust of the peasant came out five months later, in May 1923. Among the eleven denominations of the fourth definitive issue, the worker appeared on stamps three times, the soldier six times, and the peasant showed up on two stamps. The Soviet Russia definitive issues are listed in the following table:

Soviet Union

Between 1923 and 1992, definitive stamps were issued by the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

postal administration This is a list of postal entities by country. It includes: *The governmental authority responsible for postal matters. *The regulatory authority for the postal sector. Postal regulation may include the establishment of postal policies, postal rat ...

. There were 13 definitive issues of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Russian Federation

In 1992–2010, the Russian Federation produced six issues of definitive stamps. The first post-Soviet issue appeared in February 1992. It included two stamps with face values of 20- and 30

kopeck The kopek or kopeck ( rus, копейка, p=kɐˈpʲejkə, ukr, копійка, translit=kopiika, p=koˈpʲijkə, be, капейка) is or was a coin or a currency unit of a number of countries in Eastern Europe closely associated with t ...

s that depicted

Saint George Saint George (Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldie ...

and the

Millennium of Russia The Millennium of Russia (russian: Тысячелетие России, Tysyacheletiye Rossii) is a bronze monument in the Novgorod Kremlin. It was erected in 1862 to celebrate the millennium of Rurik's arrival to Novgorod, an event tradition ...

monument. In the early and mid 1990s, this definitive series of stamps continuously expanded due to

hyperinflation In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...

and a corresponding change in postal rates. Many stamps were reissued using the same design but with a modified denomination. For example, the face value of the stamp with the Golden Gate in Vladimir increased from 10 kopecks to 150 roubles, that is, by 1500 times. The maximum stamp denomination reached 5,000 roubles. File:Russian definitive stamp, 1st series - 0.20.jpg,

File:Russian definitive stamp, 1st series - 0.30.jpg,

monument File:Russian definitive stamp, 1st series - 0.10.jpg, Golden Gate, Vladimir File:Russian definitive stamp, 1st series - 0.60.jpg,

Monument to Minin and Pozharsky The Monument to Minin and Pozharsky (russian: Па́мятник Ми́нину и Пожа́рскому) is a bronze statue designed by Ivan Martos and located on the Red Square in Moscow, Russia, in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral. The statue ...

File:Russian definitive stamp, 1st series - 2.00.jpg, Saint Basil's Cathedral The second and third issues of definitive stamps came out in 1997–1999. Landscape orientation of stamps was replaced with portrait one. The second series included 12 denominations, and the third one had 15 denominations. By design, stamps of two issues were not different from each other. The need for the third issue was caused by a 1,000-fold of the Russian rouble

redenomination In monetary economics, redenomination is the process of changing the face value of banknotes and coins in circulation. It may be done because inflation has made the currency unit so small that only large denominations of the currency are in cir ...

followed by withdrawal of the second definitive issue in 1998. The third issue repeated the second one (except the abolished face value of 75 kopecks) and supplemented them with four other denominations. The latter included the denominations of 50- and 100 roubles that did not have practical application. File:Uzita poŝtmarko de Rusio de 1998 kun naftoplatformo.png File:Poshtmarko de Rusio de 1998 3-rubla pri kosma aparato.png The fourth series of 2002–2003 was different from the previous issues because of introduction of self-adhesive stamps. The new stamp motives included

palaces A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome whic ...

and parks of Russia. Number of denominations was reduced to nine, from 1- to 10 roubles. The problem of fractional postal rates was solved by using the remaining stamps of the third issue. Stamps of the fifth, " animalistic" issue of 2008 were not self-adhesive and went back to standard size. Number of denominations again increased to 15, with certain fractional denominations (15, 25, and 30 kopecks) being of dubious practical value. Maximum stamp denomination increased to 25 roubles. File:Russian standard postal stamp (2008) - 10 kopeks.png File:Russian standard postal stamp (2008) - 1 ruble.png File:Russian standard postal stamp (2008) - 2 rubles 50 kopeks.png File:Russian standard postal stamp (2008) - 5 rubles.png File:Russian standard postal stamp (2008) - 25 rubles.png Sixth Definitive issue of stamps of Russia (sheetlet)

Sixth Definitive issue of stamps of Russia (sheetlet)

The sixth series of 2009, "Russian Kremlins", represented a return to the self-adhesive stamps with most used denominations. The difference from the fourth issue, of a close topic, was the expansion of denominations up to 100 roubles as well as the availability of additional security features to protect against counterfeiting. Definitive issues of the Russian Federation are summarised in a table below:

Notes

References

External links

* * http://stampsoftheworld.co.uk/wiki/Russia {{PostalhistoryEurope Postage stamps of the Soviet Union Lists of postage stamps 1857 introductions