The stamp “Pioneers Reinforce a Mailbox” from the “Let’s Help the Post Office!” series was issued in April 1936. Print run: 1,000,000 copies. Artist: Vasily Zavyalov.
At the end of 1933, the Leningrad Pioneer newspaper “Leninskie Iskry” announced the launch of a citywide Pioneer campaign under the slogan “We will help the post office in every way possible!”
All across Leningrad and the surrounding region, Pioneer “light cavalry” squads began to appear. They assisted local post offices in their neighborhoods: putting up posters in building administrations, posting lists of residents, reinforcing mailboxes, and installing protective wire guards for light bulbs.
Pioneers in the region took telephone wires and insulators under their protection. The movement grew, drawing in Pioneers from many towns and villages across the country; they began helping the post office deliver letters and telegrams, newspapers and magazines. The movement came to be called “Pioneers—Active Assistants of Socialist Communications.”
On March 18, 1934, a rally of the best Pioneers from the “light cavalry” squads was held in Leningrad. At the rally, a representative of the People’s Commissariat of Communications thanked them for their useful work and announced the decision to organize a propaganda tour through the cities of the Soviet Union. The Pioneers—members of the agitational brigade—visited many cities across the country and spoke to their peers in Moscow, Kharkiv, Rostov-on-Don, Baku, and Tbilisi.