Unhinged
Major Philatelist
Posts: 149
Registered: 11/8/2007
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Mood: No Mood
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Semi-Postal Income?
Do we know how much the early Soviet semi-postals brought in, and how it was used?
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IvoSteijn
Major Philatelist
Posts: 388
Registered: 11/2/2002
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Mood: philatelic
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Well, the income can be estimated from the print runs (see e.g. the Standard Collection catalog 1923-1940). For example, the Leningrad Flood
semi-postals of 1924 had print runs of 1 million (all values except the 12+40k, which was 670,000), so total income was 1,000,000
*(0.10+0.20+0.30+0.50) + 670,000 * 0.40 = 1,368,000 gold rubles.
But determining how the money was spent is probably impossible - I very much doubt there are any sufficiently detailed and accurate publications on
Soviet public finance available.
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verny
Major Philatelist
Posts: 125
Registered: 11/15/2005
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Mood: Bright & breezy
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There were official figures on the monies collected (e.g. the 'Philately for the Children' one day event raised 344, 535 Roubles). How this money was
actually spent is a moot point. In all likelyhood, as with charity issues in the 3rd Reich the soviets simply banked the cash and used how they
pleased with some window dressing for PR.
Nothing new and sadly the same kind of thing happens today.......governments in many disaster zones such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Burma and Nepal
have all insisted that charitable aid money is chanelled through them rather than NGO's.....and a lot of the money and aid seems to be
sticky....sticking to the palms of those in the chain of distribution.
The figures on monies collected from Soviet charity issues often appear in the official accounts and or press releases/party congress reports. A good
places to start looking for the information are: the organisational accounts/reports - these can be confusing especially up to 1930's as there were
often competing departments/organisations and it is not always clear who was responsible for what without archival access. The other place to look are
the official philatelic magazines such as filintern and Sovietskii Philatelist.
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