Stamps of Soviet Ukraine

From the Soviet Press, 1962

THE UKRAINE HAS AN OLD and celebrated history and a no less heroic present. Both are commemorated on Soviet stamps.

In 1654 the Ukraine was reunited with Russia. The tercentenary of that historic event was memorialized in a postage issue. One of the stamps in the series, the 60-kopeck (old currency), pictures the monument to Bogda Khmelnitsky in Kiev. The 40-kopeck stomp shows Shevchenko University also in the republic's capital.

To honor the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the Ukraine, a 40-kopeck stamp was issued in 1958. It is dedicated to the Ukraine's revolutionary workers and pictures the uprising at Kiev Arsenal Plant.

A series devoted to all the union republics appeared for the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. The 40-kopeck stamp depicts a steelworker and a collective farm woman against the flag of the Ukrainian Republic.

A Kiev monument to the Ukrainian Civil War hero Nikolai Shchors was reproduced on a two-kopeck (new currency) stamp in 1961.

In the Second World War the Ukraine was one of the first of the republics to suffer the blows of nazi invaders. An episode of the defense of Odessa is shown on a four-kopeck stamp of the "Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" series.

Kiev, destroyed by the enemy in retreat, has been fully restored. A pin stamp in the "Capitals of the Union Republics" series shows Khreshchatyk the city's main thoroughfare.

A 60-kopeck stamp (old currency) issued in 1946 pictures the rebuilt Lenin Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, also destroyed in the last war.

In 1961, for the hundredth anniversary of the death of the Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko, a six-kopeck stamp was issued. It bears his portrait, a burning torch and an open copy of his Kobzar, written in 1841. Attached to the stamp is a coupon with lines from one of his poems and his signature.

The centenary of the birth of another eminent Ukrainian writer, Ivan Franko, was marked in 1956 by a commemorative series. The pinkish-red 20-kopeck stamp (old currency) shows the republic's coat of arms. The 40-kopeck, red-brown in color, bears a portrait of the writer and his prophetic words, "After us will come a new life, new happiness to the world."