Football FDC from Russia

A nice Russian FDC with recent football stamps on it, postmarked in Moscow on 20 January 2023. I don't know if there is an underlying theme (other than "sports") or reason behind this particular stamp issue. There was an ice skating stamp issued a week before this one that had a similar design. I like the Hyatt Regency envelope. It has good weight to it. This particular envelope was from the Hyatt Regency in Yekaterinburg.

Russian Knights and Swifts, FDC

Stamps commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Russian Aerobatic Aviation Groups "Knights" and "Swifts". The Russian Knights formed on 5 April 1991 and currently fly eight Sukhoi Su-30s. (stamp on the left). The Swifts formed on 6 May 1991 and fly six MiG-29s (stamp on the right).

Tikhaya Bay, Hooker Island

Hooker Island is part of Franz Josef Land: a Russian archipelago far above the Arctic Circle. A little further north than Svalbard. At one time the island was a base for polar exploration and meteorologic research. I don't think much goes on there now. Mainly research I guess. Tourism is growing though and every summer a post office at Tikhaya Bay opens for business. That's where this letter came from.

The cover I got back was not the cover I sent. My cover letter requested that the enclosed letter, stamped and addressed, be returned to me.  But instead they literally returned my cover letter under a new cover with different stamps, as shown above. Perhaps my original cover was damaged or stolen or lost of something. Who knows. Or they literally interpreted my request to mail back "the letter" to mean "mail back my cover letter". Pretty sure I used enough postage.

For reference, this is the address I used:

Post Office - Почтовое отделение
Tikhaya Bay - Hooker Island
Franz Josef Land
Arhangelsk obl.
163110
RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Chelyabinsk, Russia

Russian sport legends. Stamps from a souvenir sheet issued in Nov of 2013: hockey players Alexander Ragulin and Anatoli Firsov and biathlete Vladimir Melanin. Postmarked in Chelyabinsk.

The postmark shows the Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University. Челябинское государственный педагогический университет. Pedagogy being the study of teaching and learning methods. One of many facilities of the Chelyabinsk State University.

Kaliningrad, Russia

Russian Diplomatic Uniforms stamp issued in 2016. These are USSR uniforms from 1945. On the left is an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and on the right is an attaché of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

Russia: Postcrossing stamps

Postcrossing stamps from Moscow with a first day postmark. 

Kaliningrad, Russia

Sent from Kaliningrad, Russia. Kaliningrad is the administrative center of the Kaliningrad Oblast. It's a Russian enclave: a little part of Russia between Poland and Lithuania that has no land connection with the rest of country.

This is a first-day cover postmarked in Moscow of a joint stamp issue by PCC member countries commemorating winter sports. Specifically, hockey. PCC (Региональное содружество в области связи) or Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications is "an organization whose mission is to carry out cooperation between new independent states in the field of telecommunication and postal communication based on their free will, principles of mutual respect and sovereignty."

Russia - Famous Film Actors

Uelen, Russia

Uelen (Уэ́лен), with a population just under 800, is the eastern most settlement in Russia. It is across the Bering Strait from Alaska and just under 60 km from the Alaskan village of Diomede. Most of the population are indigenous Chukchi and Yupik who live a subsistence lifestyle.

Wrangel Island, Russia

Received this little Russian stamp sheet earlier this week. The rocks in the lower half of the sheet are textured and feel rough when you touch them. Wrangel Island (о́стров Вра́нгеля) is in the Arctic Ocean, to the extreme east of Russia and not that far from Alaska. The entire island was declared a nature reserve in the 1970's and is strictly controlled. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004. Nobody lives on the island and only a few people are allowed on the island for scientific research. Wrangle Island is very popular with the polar bears during mating season and has the highest concentration of polar bear dens in the world.

Russian Venera 9 and 10

This little stamp found its way into my collection the other day. It's from 1975 and it commemorates the landing of Venera 9 and 10 on the surface of Venus on the 22 and 25 of October, 1975. Everyone knows about the achievements made in space by the United States. But during the Cold War there was also a push by the Soviet Union to explore space and in the West, most of the achievements made by the Russians went  unnoticed by the general public.

I remember the US Viking landers that made their way to Mars in 1975. But I knew nothing of the Russian Venera program to explore Venus between 1961 and 1985. I learned about this program recently and was amazed to learn that they had successfully returned images from the planet's surface. The Venera probes are, to this day, the only craft to have visited the surface of Venus and the images they returned are the only images we have of the planet's surface.

Running across the lower half of the stamp you can see the surface image taken by Venera 9. This was the first image of the Venetian surface ever taken. The surface of Venus experiences temperatures of 465C and an atmospheric pressure of 90 bar. That's equivalent to the heat inside a hot oven at an ocean depth of 900 meters. It rains sulfuric acid on Venus but the rains never reach the surface because the extreme heat evaporates the rain as it falls through the sky. These probes were able to relay information to their orbiting satellite counterparts for about an hour before radio contact was lost.

Images returned by Venera 13 and 14 are somewhat more impressive but they are still just a mere glimpse of the Venetian surface. The later probes returned colour images.

Covers from Russia and Germany

A couple of covers recently received: