Date: 19.06.2017
On 11 May 2017, in the Readers Museum of the Russian State Art Library (RSAL), there was a joint meeting of RSAL’s Postcard Fan Club and the Union of Postcard Collectors of Russia.
At the meeting of collectors and fans of postcards, there were presentations on the book by Olga Shaburova, The Soviet World in Postcards and Greeting Cards, and RSAL’s set of postcards, Monuments of Bakhchisaray, released in 2017.
The Soviet World in Postcards and Greeting Cards, a cultural-anthropological study by Olga Shaburova, PhD in Philosophy, was released in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Using materials from her own Soviet period collection, which contains approximately 30,000 examples, the author examined the practice of extending congratulations as prescribed by festive Soviet rituals.
The complete set of Monuments of Bakhchisaray postcards was presented by the Chief Bibliographer of the Iconography Centre in RSAL Tatyana Mordkovich. The set was released in a limited edition of 300 copies at the eponymous exhibition that opened in RSAL, in March 2017. The postcards are reproductions of photographs from the library’s collection, which formerly belonged to its founder and first director Alexander Fomin. These historical photos are from the photographs taken in 1916, in Bakhchisaray, by Sofia Fomina, Fomin’s wife, and Usein Bodaninsky, founder and first director of the Bakhchisaray Historical, Cultural, and Archaeological Museum-Reserve.
The 20 cards are 20 stories from the life of the city on the eve of the 1917 Revolution. Many of the buildings depicted in the photographs have not been preserved. And most of the pictures reproduced on the postcards are being published for the first time.
The President of the Union of Postcard Collectors of Russia Arsen Melitonyan talked about some of the Union’s projects in 2017. In the spring, the Union of Postcard Collectors of Russia took part in decorating locations where the festival “Easter Gift” took place, for which the Union provided images of Easter postcards and held four master classes for producing them. In August-September 2017, the Union of Postcard Collectors of Russia, together with RSAL and the State Tretyakov Gallery, will participate in the exhibition project “1917. Moscow and Muscovites,” which will be held in RSAL.
