Joint-Stock Company “Moscow Combined Cluster.” The charter of the Joint-Stock Company “MOSKUST” was approved on July 5, 1922, and on October 13, 1922. The joint-stock company included: a woolen cloth factory (formerly Iokish), the “Red Tanner” leather plant (formerly Bakhrushin’s), a cast-iron foundry (formerly the Körting brothers’), and several other enterprises.
A postal-advertising stamp is a type of postage stamp that, alongside paying for postal items, is used for advertising purposes. Ordinary stamps from standard issues, affixed to a label with an advertisement.
During the period of the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP), a course was proclaimed toward wide use of commodity-money relations and the development of entrepreneurship while keeping management of the national economy in the hands of the state. In the course of that restructuring, trusts and syndicates were created. Advertising was called upon to serve their needs.
To act as an intermediary between state commercial and industrial enterprises and the population, and to consolidate all advertising and publishing activity of the postal and telegraph administration, on August 27, 1923 the “Advertising, Publishing and Commercial Agency under the People’s Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs” was established, abbreviated as the “Svyaz Agency” under the commissariat.
Postal-advertising stamps were issued in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Rostov-on-Don, Simferopol, and Samara during 1923–1926 and remained in circulation until the end of the 1920s. The advertising label was printed separately from the stamp and gummed on the reverse side. As a rule, the label size was 40 × 55 mm. It provided a special space for affixing a stamp, and carried advertising text and an illustration. They were printed by lithography in several colors with a blank area for attaching a postage stamp. They had line perforation. The edges of sheets were usually not perforated, so margin labels lack perforation on one side, and corner labels on two sides. In the margins, as a rule, publication details were printed: the name of the publisher (the Svyaz Agency), the printing house, the “litho” or order number, the print run, and some other information. All postal-advertising stamps had adhesive on the reverse side.
Postal-advertising stamps were sold in post offices with postage stamps already affixed in accordance with the current tariffs. The list of post offices where such stamps were sold was set by the advertising customer. Sixty-three issues of postal-advertising stamps are known.
Many issues intended for major advertising campaigns—tobacco trusts and factories, Sovtorgflot, Soyuzflot, the State Supply Administration of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR, the Porcelain Trust, Avtopromtorg, the Moscow Machine Trust, the concession company “Ball Bearing,” the Leather Syndicate, and others—were printed in runs from 50,000 to 800,000 copies.
On May 18, 1927, by a decree of the Council of Labor and Defense, the commercial agency “Svyaz” under the People’s Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs was abolished. This was connected with the winding down of the NEP. However, advertising regulations remained in force through October 27, 1928, until a new advertising instruction was issued, and the stamps remaining in stock continued to enter postal circulation until they were fully used up.