Postage stamps of the Tuvan People’s Republic as a reflection of evolving public consciousness of the Tuvan people
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2022.2.12Keywords:
Tuvan People’s Republic; history of Tuva; postage object; postage stamps of Tuva; public consciousness; Tuvans; social self-consciousnessAbstract
Postage stamps hava a unique value of their own which sets them apart from other historical documents. Imagery appearing on stamps do more than just preserve important historical information — they bear an emotional footprint of a bygone period — a trace imagined by artists who lived and worked within a certain cultural and historical space. This study examines postage stamps of Tuvan People’s Republic (TPR) aiming to outline the evolution of the public consciousness of the Tuvan people as it was emerging with a statehood of their own. We provide a description of the most significant postage stamps which can help assess the major stages of the development of Tuvan society from 1920s to 1940s.
The early issues of TPR’s postage stamps reveal the closest cultural, religious and economic links the nascent state had with Mongolia: the stamps were valued in the mungu and tögrögs, used Old Mongolian writing, featured the image of the horloo, a Buddhist wheel, which also appeared on the first version of the new country’s arms. As the new public consciousness took root and Tuvans got used to their statehood, the emblem has evolved: the 1926 horloo gives way to the hammer and sickle, red star and heads of wheat in 1943. The way state borders are shown also gets a revamp: the conventional dashed line across Mongolian territory (1927) gives way to a clear bold line on the 1935 stamps.
The rise of a national writing system and currency has become another key factor. Stamps issued in 1932 have text in three languages – Old Mongolian, Tuvan (Latin script) and English. This was typical before the introduction of the Cyrillic script in 1941 which immediately made Tuva part of the Soviet cultural space. A unique 1934 stamp was nominated in two currencies – the rouble and the never-existent Tuvan tögrög, aniticipating the dream of a national currency which later materialized as the aksha.
It is evident that postage stamps can be seen as instruments of propaganda and drivers of certain cultural codes within the society. But to function efficiently, they have to rely on the existing network of social relations. Creators and designers of postage stamps had to take the current state of affairs within the republic into account, thus reflecting the hopes and aspirations of the Tuvan people.
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Voronin R. M. Pochtovye marki perioda Tuvinskoi Narodnoi Respubliki kak otrazhenie evoliutsii obshchestvennogo soznaniia tuvintsev [Postage stamps of the Tuvan People’s Republic as a reflection of evolving public consciousness of the Tuvan people]. New Research of Tuva, 2022, no. 2, pp. 177-187. (In Russ.). DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.25178/nit.2022.2.12
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