Россия

Here is another neat cover from Russia that arrived nice and clean as if it never went through the postal system! The "Misssent to Malaysia" franking is the only telltale evidence that it did. The cover has three stamps, all of which share the theme of fauna. Since there seems to be no database of stamp issues provided by the Russian Postal Service, I guess I'm left to figure things out for myself. The stamp on the left with the horse is part of a 4v set titled "Native Horse Breeds" issued 07 Nov 07. The set features the Vladimir, Orlov, Vyatsky, and Don breeds. The stamp on this cover shows the Vyatsky breed. More on this:

The Vyatsky breed is one of the most interesting one in the history of the Russian horse-breeding. Even now its origins are not found. Some of the literature resources mentioned that these horses are descendants of the Estonian clippers, brought by citizens of Novgorod and Pskov in the Vyatsk, Kazan and Perm province near the year of 1720 under the Peter the Great or even earlier under the Tsar Alexei Mikhaylovich. The Vyatsky breed was so well-known that it was even mentioned in the letters and works of A.S. Pushkin, M.E. Saltykov-Shedrin, and V.K. Korolenko.

In a post entitled "Russia" on my blog published 26 Jun 08, I also put up a scan of another cover received from Russia with a native breed stamp on it. That one shows the Don breed. More on that:

The Don breed was influenced by many other breeds over a period of its history. Cossacks brought from their raids horses, such as Karabakh, Turkmenian, and Persian, so it has been mostly influenced by their Oriental origins. From the middle of the 19th century the Don breed was upgraded using Orlov and Orlov-Rostopchin and Streletsk sires. In this period the Old Don originated from the steppe ancestors was turning into the breed for the stud-farms. In the 19th-20th centuries, the Don breed was greatly influenced by the thoroughbreds. Now the Don breed has such qualities that make it irreplaceable in the horse schools for children, in farming, in riding and even in the hippotherapy, which is a treatment method involving horses as a means of working on physical, occupational, and speech-language goals.

The stamps on the upper right I consider to be quite special because they are the Russian issue of the Russia-North Korea joint issue featuring fauna from the two countries. The issue was released on 01 Jun o5. I find this combination quite interesting as Russia was a communist country and North Korea is still a communist country and, plus, rarely do you hear about stamps from North Korea. I remember that when I was younger a friend of my mother's often gave me covers from North Korea as he had family who were left there after the war. Unfortunately, young as I was, I knew little of the value of such articles and lost track of the covers and stamps, which are now gone.

Anyway, a little more on the animals:

The Russian animal featured on the issue is the sable, a small carnivorous mammal, closely related to the martens. It inhabits forest environments primarily in Russia from the Ural Mountains throughout Siberia, in northern Mongolia and China and on Hokkaidō in Japan. Its range in the wild originally extended through European Russia to Poland and Scandinavia. It has historically been harvested for its highly valued fur, which remains a luxury good to this day. While hunting of wild animals is still common in Russia, most fur in the market is now commercially farmed.

The North Korean animal featured on the issue is the Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, Manchurian tiger, or Ussuri tiger is a rare subspecies of tiger confined completely to the Amur region in the Far East, where it is now protected. It is considered to be the largest of the nine recent tiger subspecies and the largest member of the family Felidae.

The stamps were cancelled with a very nice, clear franking on 24 Jun 08 at Vakhrushi, Kirov Oblast.