1st art stamps. Stamps & politics. Was: Which country produces the most beautiful stamps?
Victor Manta
> Ok, I just tried to sneak my opinion quitely in but looks like I got
> caught and I'll have to explain myself.
>
That's the idea :-)
> The stamps that Poland issued in the 70s and 80s have a variety of
> subjects like Art, Architecture and Polish History(Saints, Historic
> Battles, the Pope). All are quite beautiful and at the time that they
> were issued most countries were still not producing an Art or
> Architecture series.
Some older Polish stamps are really very nice. My preferred are the Dogs
(1963)
http://www.marci-postale.com/Romania/Dogs/dogs1.htm
and the Cats (1964).
As for the first big format Polish Art set, it appeared in 1967, i.e. later
then those from Japan (1955), France (1961), and concomitantly with all
Ajmans, Manamas, etc.
> Countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the
> rest of Eastern Europe followed but I just didn't come accross that many
> pretty ones from those countries when I was looking.
OK, let's check together who followed whom :-) Hungary 1966, very nice.
Romania, 1966 (more or less). Czechoslovakia, 1966 (engraved, great).
Generally speaking, the Art stamps of Poland are sometimes nice, but not
necessarily better than many others. Some sets even had problems, but this
is too long to explain here. Of course, each of us has special sentiments
for the stamps of their own country.
> Poland was a communist country in the 70s and 80s. Since the early 70s
> Polish thinking started to revolt against the communist system. You can
> see that in the subject they chose for stamps. The subjects were chosen
> intentionally to remind people of there unique history. And give a
> little slap to the Russians next door.
The stamp issues, like everything printed, were strictly controlled by the
Communist party. All this patriotism and nationalism on stamps had one
purpose: to take advantage of the legitimate anti-Soviets resentments of
populations in East European countries, in order to enforce the domination
of local Communist parties. This movement was sometimes called National
Communism. The most representative of it was Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania,
and his politics is perfectly visible on Romanian stamps of that time, but
not only on those ones (unfortunately).
An idea about how these sentiments (and other, also based on nationalism)
were exploited can be seen for example on the page:
http://www.marci-postale.com/Romania/History/Dacia/dacs.htm , covering some
2000 old, but suddenly... very actual history, repeated by the local mass
media ad nausea.
Regards,
Victor Manta
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