GREETINGS FROM......IMPERIAL RUSSIA
GREETINGS FROM.... KOSTROMA
The picture on this card is a view of the Russian city КОСТРОМА [KOSTROMA] in Imperial Russia.
In the inscription on the card before the placename is indicated the Г, this shall be short for ГОРОДЪ [GOROD], stad. The addition ПРИСТАНИ [PRISTANI] means quays.
This picture and all pictures below on this page, if not mentioned otherwise: scanned about 300 dpi. Then set right and cut out, resized 25 % of this image and saved as jpg.
Kostroma is located about 330 kilometers of northeast of Moscow. The city is now part of the 'Golden Ring of Russia', a popular tourist trail.
Also the well known travel guide for Imperial Russia, Baedeker 1914 (p. 332-334) gives a description of Kostroma:
"Kostromá (380 ft.), situated on terraces rising from the left bank of the Volga, which is here 600 yds. in width, is first mentioned in 1213 and is
the capital of thegovernment of the same name and the seat of a Greek Catholic bishop. Pop. 67,000. There are large spinning-mills and a Lutheran church."
The text of the message on the card is written in Polish:
"Dear brother,
I write you from KOstroma, where I came somew days ago with the purpose to find a place, as soon as I have in the army.
I was shocked when I got the message of the accident, skotnawszem (??) in the city Buy.
Nearly half burned. If..."
The city Buy is northeast of Kostrama. Baedeker mentions 'Bui' in the description 'From St. Petersburg to Tchelyabinsk (Siberia) via Vyatka (p. 258-259). This will be the intended location: "Just before reaching (682 V.) Bui (Rail. Restaurant) we cross the Kostromá."
So Kostroma is the river, to which also the city Kostroma is located.
In the postmark we see the indication КОСТРОМА [KOSTROMA]. It is a standard double circle postmark.
The arrival-postmark must be БИЛЬДЕРЛИНГСГОФЪ [BILDERINGSGOF]. This is Bulduri in present Latvia. The place was indicated in German as Bilderingshof. Russian names for places in the Baltic area are many times transcriptions of the German names.
The cityname is also -more or less- to recognize in the adressing, with the addition РИЖСКОЕ ВЗМОРЬЕ, 'Kustgebied van Riga'.
The city Kostrama has a special relationship with the Romanovs: on the right bank the monastery Ipátiyev is founded by a ancestor of Godoenov. The monastery is desribed in Baedeker 1914: "... founded in 1330 by the Tartar prince Zacharias Tchet, the founder of the Godunóv family, ...... at the time of the Interregnum it formed a small fortress, which was able to afford shelter to Mikhaíl Feódorowith Románov in 1613, when persecuted by the Poles."
So Mikhail Romanov, the future tsar, lived with his family in the monastery, when he was chosen by the Zemski Sobor as tsar on February 21, 1612. As Mikhail I he was the first Romanov-tsar and his successors considered it a duty to visit the monastery at least once. Also the last tsar, Nicholas II, has visit the monastery.
Here a postal stationary from the Soviet period with the monastery. The Soviet period was a difficult time for the monastery and the Russian-Orthodox Church. In 1919 the monastery is closed and the property confiscated. The Chuch of the Natvity of the Mother of God became an ant1-religious museum. In the thirties the church is demolished, but in 2010-1013 rebuild, next to the St. Trinity Cathedra. See Royal Russia News.
The postal stationary is issued 15/XI-76. In the text on this cover also is indicated &$1052УЗЕЙ [MUZEI], Museum.
The printing data on the backside of the cover: the postal stationary is issued 15/XI-76.
On the postal stationary of the Russian Federation -here below- is indicated another text: МОНАСТЫРЬ [MONASTYR], monastery.
In the nineties the monastery is returned to the Russian-Othodox Church.
Resized 20 %
The postal stationary is issued 11.05.2011.
The tradition of the Romanovs is also back again: every president visits the monastery once in his term of service.
