Young Pioneers helping the communications service

The Soviet Union issued six commemoratives on 17 April 1936 showing Young Pioneers helping the postal and telegraph service. Domfil catalogues the set as 936.4/9.

Four designs run across the six values. Two Pioneers fix a letter-box to a wall on the 1 and 2 kopek; two lie in the grass under telegraph poles guarding the insulators from damage on the 3 and 5; a boy on a rooftop frees a kite tangled in the wires on the 10; and a Pioneer girl gives the salute in an oval frame on the 15. Vasily Zavyalov drew them all, photogravure on thick white paper, 37 × 37 mm, without watermark.

The subject is worth pausing on. These are not parade or anniversary stamps but a public service campaign: the Pioneers are shown protecting the communications network — reporting damage, keeping kites out of the wires, mounting letter-boxes — the useful-work side of the movement that Scouting elsewhere expressed as good turns. It is the same organisation that filled Moscow for its first All-Union rally seven years earlier, here put to work.

The series is a specialist's minefield. It exists in several perforations and papers, and the catalogues distinguish them with letter suffixes; the copies held here are line 14 on the 1 and 10 kopek and line 11 on the rest, in sheets of 70 for the first pair and 60 for the others. Recorded printings are 750,000 for the 2, 3 and 5 kopek and 300,000 for the 15. Beyond the main catalogues the stamps are listed as AFA SU 549–554A, Soloviev 529A–534 and Zagorsky 435A–440.