“In the USSR, Philately Will Either Be Accessible to the Masses or Will Not Exist at All”: The Genesis of Soviet Mass Collecting in the 1920s–1930s

Abstract

The article presents the results of the study of the discourse of collecting in the pages of thematic magazines in the RSFSR/USSR in the period between 1922 and 1932. The source base of the research includes magazines that were published in different regions of the country. Special attention is paid to the establishment of a monopoly on collecting and to the activities of the founders of Soviet collecting (F. Chuchin, Commissioner of the Central Commission for Famine Relief under the VTsIK on Philately and Notaphily, and M. Syuzyumov, an expert in Byzantine history). The study of literature on the topic made it possible to systematize historiography and to offer an explanatory model of Soviet collecting, which was based on political (ideological), economic, social, and cultural aspects. The analysis of literature and sources allows us to conclude that, firstly, legal collecting during that period narrowed down to philately and other forms of collecting, and secondly, from being non-partisan and apolitical, it evolved into a multifactorial auxiliary means of educating Soviet citizens within leisure practices. Contrary to the well-established in historiography thesis, mass collecting in the USSR did not cease to exist at that stage, but it became a widespread children’s leisure practice in the institutions that had been created earlier.

Keywords

• history of the ussr
• history of the rsfsr
• mass collecting
• soviet collecting
• philately
• f. chuchin
• m. syuzyumov
• periodical press in the ussr