Yana sends this beautiful and atypical view of Red Square in Moscow. There’s also supposed to be a letter coming, according to the postcard; Yana says that she posted both a letter and this postcard at the same time, and is curious as to which would arrive first.  I shall have to write to her once I receive her letter and give her the results. (Oops, guess I should have waited to post this!)

The postcard was mailed on 15 February and arrived yesterday, without stamps. From the postmark, it is clear that there were two stamps (or more) attached to the card; I can still see and feel a trace of the glue. I don’t think they could have been swiped so cleanly; they must have slipped off in transit. What are the Russians making their stamp glue out of? Potatoes?

Don’t forget to check out the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday today; they’ll stick to you!

When Natalia in Saint Petersburg, Russia proposed a postcard swap some weeks ago, I could hardly resist.  In exchange for a handful of postcards promoting social causes, she sent me several beautiful views of her city at night.  Serendipitously, these cards fit in very nicely with Postcardy’s Postcard Scavenger Hunt for July: Night/Lights.

The backs of these cards have large, bold titles in Russian and English, with smaller titles in German, French, Spanish, and Italian.  Then the photo and publisher credits are listed in English and Russian, along with the publisher’s logo.  As you might imagine, and like many Russian cards (and Soviet cards before them), this leaves very little room for any message you might want to send along with the card.

Without further ado, please enjoy these views of Saint Petersburg at night. 

Since I still haven’t reimbursed myself for my sleep deficit that’s been going on since the 4th of July, and I have nothing especially brilliant on tap for Two for Tuesday, I’m going to cheat and just post yesterday’s mail: two “official” Postcrossing postcards.  The first postcard came from a sender right here in the USA, postmarked 1 July:

It’s a reproduction of Marc Chagall’s “Over the Town” which he apparently worked on for four years, from 1914-1918, and currently hangs in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.  This card contained no message except for a return address label (a label!).  In fairness, there is a smiley face drawn next to the Postcrossing postcard ID — but would it kill you to say hi?

By contrast, the second card is from a ten-year-old girl named Sanna, in Finland, postmarked 30 June:

Unfortunately, the card yields no useful information about the scene or its location.  Sanna, however, seems especially chatty.  The message, as well as my address, were apparently (and laboriously) hand-written first in pencil, then traced over in ink: “Hi! My name is Sanna. I’m 10 y.o. I’m from Finland. I like dogs. I have got two dogs. I play the piano. I like bakeing. Bye-bye.”  Not too shabby, considering that she’s ten and English is not her native language — but my point is that she’s only ten, and she gets the point of sharing postcards with others.

Natalia in Saint Petersburg, Russia was kind enough to send (along with several postcards featuring night views of her city) a couple of replicas of Soviet propaganda posters, scaled down to about 5 x 7 inches (12 x 18 centimeters).  The first, from 1929, features a poem entitled “Night Panel” (no, I don’t get it either) and a fine, upstanding young citizen shouting “Stop!” to flappers and other revelers.  My Russian is terrible, but I think that the gist of the poem, which starts with a phrase something like “Here is how things should be”, is that the youth should work and have faith in the government instead of in drink and debauchery.

And speaking of work:

This second poster from 1947 reminds the proletariat that, hey, you can work at night, too!  Of course, we’ll have to put you on the waiting list for tractor headlights; you should have them in about two years.

For Postcard Friendship Friday, a postcard from some new friends. This beautiful postcard arrived today from Elina, the photographer at Yaroslavl for Me.  She and Evgeny, two university students, felt that most of the information online about Russian life and culture was from an urban point of view, and decided to blog about life in the provinces.  Given that Yaroslavl is less than 200 miles from Moscow, I’m not sure how provincial it is; nevertheless, their observations, as well as the photos and the songs from local bands, are always interesting.

Elina tells me that this photo (which I presume that she took herself) is the view of Yaroslavl as seen from the bridge over the Kotorosl River.

The stamps, with a nice, clear postmark from Yaroslavl, feature the Tsarskoye Selo (Tsar’s Village), a collection of palaces outside Saint Petersburg.

Stop by yarfor.me and say hi; maybe Elina will send you a postcard and you’ll make a new friend, too. Once you’ve done that, don’t forget to check out the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday.

This card came in the mail today from Yana, who has her own very fine blog of her postcards and stamps.  This card features a photo by Pavel Vorobyov of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Christ, the only Roman Catholic church in the Volga region.  It was constructed in 1906; this photo was taken in 2001 during what looks like sunset on a foggy day.

(I notice that this is the very first card I’ve posted from Russia; all of my other “Russian” cards, both posted and not-yet-posted, were technically produced by the Soviet Union.)

I’m also very interested in the stamps on this card, especially the portrait of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, a Russian landscape painter who lived from 1832-1898 and is still well regarded today.  Click on the image to see a larger version.  (I’m very proud of myself — I was able to sound out “I. I. Shishkin” well enough to google him on the first try.)  Shishkin painted landscapes, not portraits; this portrait of him was done by Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy (whose name I also sounded out, thank you very much) in 1880.  Kramskoy had painted Shishkin once before, in 1873.