Batumi is a Black Sea oil port at the end of an oil line from Baku (situated at the other end of the Caucasus). In 1878 its turbulent modern history began when it was taken by Russia from Turkey. Joseph Stalin arrived there in 1901 to organise strikes and was twice imprisoned in the next two years. Following the fall of the Tsar, the Caucasian peoples reasserted their independence and Turkey saw its chance to win back old territory. Its troops entered Batum in April 1918. From this time date letters handstamped Batumskaya Kontora during a shortage of stamps at the Post Office and thus begins Batum’s philatelic history.

The British arranged to take over the whole of the Caucasian oil producing area later that year and their troops began entering Batum from Christmas 1918. The stamp situation was even worse by then and the territory produced its very own stamps in February 1919. These were the six roughly lithographed imperforates depicting an aloe tree and inscribed Batumskaya Pochta. The eight stamp set issued later that year and overprinted BRITISH OCCUPATION is generally better known. Many other overprints in both English and Russian followed on Russian stamps until July 1920, when the British moved out again. By 1921 Batum was part of the Georgian SSR, when the province of Adzhar of which it is capital was declared an autonomous republic.

The province, now called Ajaria, has retained its semi-independent status down to the present day. In 1991 it was linked to the newly independent Georgian republic and Russian troops were stationed in Batum. From 1993 it began bringing out themed sets of stamps aimed at the philatelic market. These are generally regarded as fantasies (or more politely ‘privately issued’). Rather than the name of the autonomous republic, they bear the name Batum in Latin characters, Batumi in Russian and what looks like Batumgh in Georgian writing. No doubt this is an appeal to the precedent of the 1919 issue.

On March 29, 1999, the Georgian Ministry of Posts and Communications sent notice to the Postal Union declaring that stamps issued in the names of the ‘so called republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia’, and in addition Batumi, were spurious. This is disingenuous, to say the least. The first two areas have been at war with Georgia since 1991 and, what’s more, have more or less fought the Georgian army to a standstill. Georgia may not like it, but the areas in question have de facto independence and so a perfect right to run their own postal systems. As for Batum, later that same year the local party boss did a political deal with his Georgian opposite number whereby Ajaria was declared a federal republic. If it eventually decides to set up its own postal administration, the result might well be that all the earlier issues will acquire retrospective authentication.

Later:

Here are a couple of jpegs of the 1919 issues,

plus, for your enjoyment, a couple of the nicer p/c's from www.postcardman.net/georgia.html. One of them shows the land end of the station with the lines running up the street; the other is of those snowy mountains I raved about.

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