On April 12, a postage stamp dedicated to the Cosmonautics Day was put into postal circulation



April 12 is annually celebrated in the Russian Federation as the Cosmonautics Day. It was instituted by a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on April 9, 1962, “to commemorate the world's first flight of a Soviet man into space”.

JSC Marka in association with the Moscow Branch of the Union of Artists of Russia held an Open All-Russian Thematic Competition of drawing a postal stamp and an illustrated stamped envelope themed Happy Cosmonautics Day!

The goals and objectives of the competition are drawing of attention to the Cosmonautics Day; promotion of the peaceful space idea; popularization of the genre of the author's artistic miniature executed both in traditional “manual” techniques and with digital technologies; bringing new authors to the genre of postal miniature.

The postage stamp features the artwork by Competition Winner I. Miroshnichenko: an image of a cosmonaut against the background of outer space.

In addition to the issue of the postage stamp, JSC Marka produced First Day Covers and special cancels for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Star City (Zvezdny Gorodok) and Korolev of the Moscow Region, Baikonur, Yekaterinburg, Kaluga, Samara, Saratov, Penza, Perm, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Yaroslavl, as well as a maxi-card, unstamped postcards, and an illustrated envelope with the postage stamp, a label and a First Day Cover with a cancel for Baikonur inside.


Artist: I. Miroshnichenko; Design: V. Zatologina.
Face value: 19 rubles.
Stamp size (diam): 30 mm, sheet size: 141×141 mm.
Emission form: a sheet with formatted margins with 9 (3×3) stamps.
Quantity: 324 thousand stamps (36 thousand sheets).

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