At the beginning of World War I, many semi-postal charity stamps were issued, with the proceeds allocated to a relief fund for the wounded and for the families of fallen soldiers.
On 18 (31) August 1914, Nicholas II signed an imperial decree renaming St. Petersburg to Petrograd. Contemporaries attributed the initiative to rename the capital to A.V. Krivoshein, Minister of Land Management and Agriculture. In arguing for the need to abandon the city’s old name, he relied on the authority of F.I. Tyutchev and his ideas of Slavic unity under the aegis of the Russian tsar, as well as on A.S. Pushkin, who in the poem "The Bronze Horseman" referred to Petersburg as Petrograd. According to the memoirs of I.I. Tkhorzhevsky, former head of the Ministry’s chancellery, the emperor—and military circles as well—regarded the renaming as a kind of wartime measure. In this connection, the memoirist quotes a story told by one of the courtiers: “The Sovereign is holding up bravely. Many are attacking him over Petrograd. They say Rukhlov remarked: what are you doing, Your Majesty—correcting Peter the Great! And do you know how the Sovereign replied? He did not get angry, but joked: ‘Well then! Tsar Peter demanded reports from his generals about victories, and I would be glad to receive news of wins. A Russian sound is dearer to the heart…’”
The municipal public administration in pre-revolutionary Russia was a city executive body subordinate to the governor and composed of representatives of the city’s wealthiest estates. This body, among other things, oversaw collections and donations from citizens, and it can be assumed that the organization of assistance to soldiers in the newly erupted world war was considered a display of patriotism and was addressed at the highest level.
Helping one’s neighbors in Russia had always been quite popular: by the beginning of the 20th century the Empire had around 7,500 charitable organizations, and in 1902 as many as 11,040 were registered. Thus, all kinds of charity events, concerts, as well as “cup” collections in Russian cities of that time were not a rare occurrence. People chipped in for everything—aid for the starving, outfitting public almshouses, support for disabled war veterans and their family members, and so on.
But it was with the outbreak first of the Russo-Japanese War, and then World War I, that charity ceased to be a purely personal matter and became a “public duty.” Avoiding it was considered a terrible faux pas, while demonstrating one’s participation, on the contrary, took on the character of a kind of competition. This gave rise to many charity badges, postcards, and other distinctive tokens. Initially they were needed so that collectors would not ask the same townspeople for a contribution twice. However, later they began to play a particularly important role—highlighting the owner’s high level of civic engagement. People wanted not only to wear these tokens, but also to be able to display them to their correspondents. That is how non-postal charity stamps came into being: now the recipient of a letter, seeing them on the back of an envelope, could be assured of the sender’s strong civic consciousness and patriotism.