It's hard to believe it is over five years since I set up this blog to show how interesting world postal history can be. The work involved in sorting stamps for collectors and for destruction following Royal Mail's decision to invalidate so many definitives is my main excuse!
As I wrote on the Modern British Postal History blog:
Once, Postal History was regarded as 'anything before 1840'. Later
it was realised that postal history could have stamps on, but still many
people think '19th century'.
The enlightened view is that Postal History is still being made!
The purpose of this blog will be to present at least part of the story, postal and social, behind some of the covers I have collected over the years in the hope that they may be of interest and that they may encourage other collectors to look beyond stamps to items of mail. Some stories will be stronger on the postal history aspects, others on the social history and connections.
So, without further ado, here's the Soviet cover which is the subject of this story.
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| Registered Airmail cover, 1930, from рудник тетюхе, near Vladivostok, to Loughborough, England. |
For those readers not familiar with the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet, transliteration is relatively easy, and translation even easier. The Google translate webpage shows a Cyrillic keyboard if you select that you want to translate from Russian, so it is simply a matter of choosing the correct 'keys' to get the meaning.
The text ЗАКАЗНОЕ translates as Registered, and ВОЗДУШНАЯ ПОЧТА as Airmail, so this confirms what is written in English at the right hand side. The red and white airmail label is in Russian and French.
The registration number is shown in a rubber stamp at the left. Domestic registered mail would have a З prefix but on international mail the place name would be in western characters and the usual R marking would be used.
Postage Rates
The postage paid is 74 kopecks (100 = 1 rouble) consisting of 3 x 20k showing a peasant (SG 518) and one 14k showing Vladimir Lenin (SG 515) from a set issued in 1927. According to online sources this would have been the equivalent of 1s.6d. in contemporary UK values. But then airmail was expensive.
I have looked into postage rates – something which would be extremely difficult without the internet. However, internet searches must be treated with caution.
In 1930, sending a letter from Vladivostok to England via the combined Trans-Siberian rail-airmail network (e.g., train to Moscow, then flight to Berlin and on to London) required the standard international letter rate plus an additional airmail surcharge.
For example, I found that the Airmail rate from Vladivostok to England would have been 40k – according to Google's AI, but the detail on Wikimedia Commons states that for
Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and other countries via Germany - 30k
The more one looks at rates, the more confusion there is with Cherrystone Auctions showing a 1930 68k Batum to Finland cover underpaid by 7k suggesting the registered airmail rate should have been 75k. Yet a 1931 cover to Switzerland in the same auction is prepaid 115k. This is an area for Russia specialists to explain.
Back to the companies involved.
The letter is addressed to W A Dutton, Esq, c/o Brush Elect(rical) Eng(ineering) Co(mpany), Falcon Works, Loughborough, which is still thriving in the same location.
The Brush Electric Light Corporation was established by Charles Francis Brush in Ohio in 1889, and he soon established a base in Britain. With nothing suitably large in London, he took over the Falcon Engine and Car works in Loughborough, Leicestershire.
In the early 1900s with electrification sweeping the country, Brush developed distribution equipment, including transformers which are still produced on the same site today. (Read more about Brush history on the company website).
As for Dutton, I can find no definitive information about him. He may be the Dutton who lived in Derby Road, Loughborough. Whether this letter was about business matters, personal social matters, or perhaps even philately is impossible to say.
The Russian connection.
As this letter is addressed to him care of the company the letter may have been personal. But what was Dutton's – or the company's – connection with Russia?
The clue lies in the registration 'label' and postmark.
You can look for any words on the internet today and it is rare that something isn't found. But рудник тетюхе is complex. However you transliterate that, Google will offer many suggested alternatives and there is nothing for that specific pair of words. But it tells that Тетюхе = Tetyukhe is now known as Dalnegorsk (Дальнего́рск).
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Illustration 1:
Location of Dalnegorsk (Google maps)
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Dalnegorsk (Russian: Дальнего́рск, literally, far in the mountains) is a town in Primorsky Krai, Russia, 325 km north-east of Vladivostok near Russia's Pacific Ocean coast opposite Japan but not far from China.
Wikipedia tells us that it was formerly known from its founding in 1897 as Tetyukhe (Russian: Те́тюхе; Chinese: 野豬河; pinyin: Yězhūhé; literally meaning "river of wild boars"), until it was renamed in 1973 as part of a campaign to change any Chinese-derived place names in Primorsky Krai.
Any glance at a world map will show just the enormity of the Russian Empire (almost 23 million km2), USSR and the modern Russian Federation. Dalnegorsk is 6,400 km from the imperial capital of St Petersburg and although exploration of the area west of the Ural mountains developed earlier, it wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that Russia took control of part of Chinese Manchuria which included this area.
The development of the territory by the Russians began at the end of the nineteenth century and is associated with a rich deposit of lead-silver ores. The first information about Tetyukhe deposits was obtained from the Chinese in 1880.
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| Julius Bryner (Wikipedia) |
Julius Bryner* was a Swiss silk merchant in Shanghai who developed a trading and shipping company. He moved to Vladivostok, founded Trading House Bryner & Co in the 1880s and accepted Russian citizenship in 1891. In 1897 he organised an expedition to Tetyukhe, headed by mining engineer Sergei Maslennikov, who produced reconnaissance and found a rich lead-zinc-silver field in the Tetyukhe area. (Wikipedia) [* In different sources (even within Wikipedia) the name is spelled Brynner, Bryner and Briner. Some of these have been transliterated from Russian sources. I have generally not changed the source material.]
The settlement was founded in 1897, with the founding by Brynner of a lead and zinc mine which operated alongside a number of others run by Japanese and Russian interests. Brynner's son Boris maintained the right to mine on the site until 1931, one of the longest-running private enterprises in the Soviet Union. (History of the settlement and mining.)
In 1930, Tetyukhe was granted urban-type settlement status. The settlement was renamed in 1973, along with the Tetyukhe River which was renamed Rudnaya, from the Russian word "руда" meaning "ore".
Closing the circle
And this brings us to another clue – the Russian word "руда" means "ore", and from that, the Russian word “рудник” means “mine”, so the postmark is from (Roudnik-Tetuhe) рудник тетюхе = Tetyukhe mine.
The Brynner mine had it's own post office, and that's where this cover was posted!
But what of the King of Siam connection?
Before 1939 Thailand was known as Siam. As with many royal families, Siam's employed a governess to teach their children. The most well-known governess to the Siamese court was Anna Leonowens who described her time as governess in a book in 1870. Her story was fictionalised by Margaret Landon in 1944 (Anna and the King of Siam). This in turn was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein as a musical, The King and I, and then into a film of the same name (1956).
With Rex Harrison being unavailable, Yul Brynner, a young actor and television director was chosen to play the part of the King in the stage production and then in the 1956 film of the same name.
Yuliy Borisovich Briner, was born on 11 July 1920 in Vladivostok - the grandson of Julius Bryner, the founder of the Tetyukhe mine.
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| Yul Brynner, studio publicity photo 1960. |
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