Type 3 of applying a surcharge at 100 times the face value on the "Ukraine trident" overprint on a 1917 Russian Empire stamp.
After the coup d'etat of April 29–30, 1918 and the coming to power of Hetman P. Skoropadskyi, the People's Republic was abolished and Ukraine was proclaimed the Ukrainian State. The Ukrainian postal administration had substantial stocks of such stamps. In order to use them and prevent stamps of the same type from entering from other regions—which would have harmed the Ukrainian treasury—on August 20, 1918 the Hetmanate Ministry of Posts decided to overprint all available stocks of Russian stamps with the Ukrainian state emblem, the trident of Saint Volodymyr.
It was impossible to do this in a centralized way under the conditions of the civil war. Therefore, the overprints were applied by local authorities simultaneously in all postal districts, using whatever technical means were available, often by hand. This resulted in a great variety of types and graphic forms of the overprints.
Studies identified 52 main trident types, 68 variants, and 13 printing errors—133 principal varieties in total. The overprints were made in six postal districts: Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Katerynoslav, Odesa, and Podillia.
Ukrainian provisional postage stamps began to be counterfeited as early as late 1918 in Southern Ukraine, and later forgeries were produced by speculators abroad. They forged overprints and postal cancellations and even created non-existent denominations, so-called "fantasy" issues. The Union of Philatelists of Ukraine in Germany successfully identified these forgeries.
Money was losing value, and there arose a need to increase postal rates. A decree of the Council of People's Commissars, signed by V. I. Lenin on March 5, 1920, provided that "postage stamps with denominations of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14, 15, and 20 kopecks are to have their value increased by a factor of 100 when sold and when used to pay for correspondence." But the public still held a significant quantity of stamps previously purchased at the old price, as well as stamps from the stocks of post offices that had been looted during changes of власти in the years of the civil war.
In markets, rag-and-bone dealers sold stamps to the public in sheets for household needs (sealing windows, etc.), and we—then beginner collectors—used them for pasting. They had no philatelic interest at that time.
In a telegram from the head of the provincial postal administration of Kharkiv Province dated February 16, 1920, addressed to the heads of postal-telegraph and postal institutions of Kharkiv Province, it was proposed to immediately stop selling to the public low-denomination postage stamps from 1 to 20 kopecks inclusive, and to store the stamps themselves until further notice. Stamps held by the public were to be accepted without hindrance for payment of correspondence.
A subsequent telegram instructed that all the указанные low-denomination postage-payment stamps be sent to the Kharkiv post office for the application of the surcharge at one hundred times the value, and, if necessary, to apply to the post office to send stamps already bearing the applied surcharge. It further indicated the withdrawal from sale of 1, 5, 7, and 10 ruble stamps and the отмене of paying for correspondence in cash from the moment the institutions were supplied with postage-payment stamps.