On April 27, a stamp dedicated to the 200th Birth Anniversary of playwright Alexander Ostrovsky was put into postal circulation

Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) was a playwright whose creative work was a most significant stage in the development of the Russian national theater; he was a Corresponding Member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Ostrovsky was born on April 12, 1823, in Moscow. He received a good home education. At the age of 12, he was sent to the First Moscow Gymnasium, which he finished in 1840. Then he entered the Faculty of Law of the Moscow University. In 1843, he dropped out since legal sciences no longer interested him, and decided to set seriously about literature.

In 1849, the Moskvityanin magazine published a comedy entitled It's a Family Affair-We'll Settle It Ourselves, and Ostrovsky became a staff member of the magazine. In 1851, he resigned office to devote himself to literary work.

The playwright wrote about 50 plays, among them A Profitable Position (1856), The Storm (1859), Mad Money (1869), The Forest (1870), The Snow Maiden (1873), Without a Dowry (1878), and many others. The name of Ostrovsky is related to a whole epoch in the development of the Russian theater. He translated Cervantes, Shakespeare, Terence, and Goldoni.

Alexander Ostrovsky’s creative activity covers a vast period of the Russian Empire development in the 19th century from the era of serfdom in the 1840s to the distribution of capitalism in the 1880s.

His dramaturgy played a decisive role in the establishment of an original and vivid repertoire on the Russian stage and contributed to the formation of a national theatrical school. In 1865, Ostrovsky founded an artistic circle in Moscow and became one of its leaders. In 1870, he initiated the establishment of the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers, which he permanently chaired from 1874 until the end of his life.

The postage stamp features a portrait of Alexander Ostrovsky; the margins of the sheet of stamp provide quotations from the writer's works.

In addition to the issue of the postage stamp, JSC Marka produced First Day Covers and special cancels for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Kostroma and Pereslavl-Zalessky of the Yaroslavl region.


Design Artist: R. Komsa.
Face value: 63 rubles.
Stamp size: 37×37 mm, sheet size: 152×152 mm.
Emission form: a sheet with formatted margins with 9 (3×3) stamps.
Quantity: 99 thousand stamps (11 thousand sheets).

Дополнительно к выпуску почтовой марки изданы конверты первого дня и изготовлены штемпеля специального гашения для Москвы, Санкт-Петербурга, Калининграда, Костромы и Переславля-Залесского Ярославской области.


Художник-дизайнер: Р. Комса.
Номинал: 63 р.
Размер марки: 37×37 мм, размер листа: 152×152 мм.
Форма выпуска: лист с оформленными полями из 9 (3×3) марок.
Тираж: 99 тыс. марок (11 тыс. листов).

« back