posted 08-02-2022 06:11 AM               

Space Cover #661: Modern Russian ASTP commemorative postmarks

This time I want to talk about ASTP commemorative postmarks that were officially issued by Soviet Union/Russia. Unlike in USA the amount of ASTP commemorative postmark is pretty small and can easily sum up to two events – 20th and 40th anniversaries (1995 and 2015). In the Soviet Union the ASTP topic has been forgotten probably because of political reasons, just nothing popped up in 1980 neither in 1985, nor even in 1990, while during the latter in USA three commemorative postmarks we used – Tutisville, Huntspex and Rosemont.

Finally in 1995 a modest postmark has been issued only to be applied in Star City. Need to mention that the status of the postmark was kind of strange – on one hand it has been officially issued by Russian Post, on the other hand it lacked certain elements and the letters could be posted only if general stamped cancel has been present. Well many things were pretty odd by that times. Need to mention that in USA the event has been marked by three postmarks – Houston, Lansing and San Diego.

In 2000 a colorful set of Cooperation of Space stamps has been released with one of them showing ASTP docking but no postmark appeared. A partial relief came from Kazakhstan in 2001 that commemorated Alexey Leonov achievements by a special postmark including the logo of ASTP.

In 2005 Russian Post issued a commemorative cover for 30th anniversary but no official postmark ever appeared. In US two postmarks were available – Huntspex and Sparta.

The next time an official ASTP postmark appeared in 2015 and has been available only in Moscow. Interestingly that Russian postal authorities also issued a cachet to accompany the event. This was probably one of the first times the officially issued cachet has been applied together with postmark for everybody interested. At the same time a special postmark has been used on ISS to make a nice souvenirs.

The 45th anniversary received only a modest attention of Baikonur Post Office with a nice 'semi-official' cachet.