On July 24, a postcard with a commemorative stamp dedicated to the 200th Birth Anniversary of folklorist Alexander Afanasyev was put into postal circulation in the Geographical Projects of Russia series

Alexander Afanasyev (1826–1871) was a folklorist, a historian, a literary scholar, and an ethnographer. He was born in 1826 in the town of Boguchar in the Voronezh Governorate into a noble family. He graduated from the Voronezh Provincial Gymnasium (1844) and the Faculty of Law at Moscow University (1848). From 1849 to 1862, he served at the Moscow Central Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In later years, Afanasyev held minor bureaucracy posts. He was a member of several learned societies: the Society for Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University, the Russian Geographical Society, the Moscow Archaeological Society, and the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature at Moscow University.

A. Afanasyev’s scientific and critical work began during his college years. In 1847, the journal Sovremennik published his article entitled The State Economy under Peter the Great. In 1850 - 1854, a large number of his articles, reviews and surveys were published in the journals Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski. His writings appeared in publications of Moscow University and the Academy of Sciences, as well as in the journals Biblioteka dlya Chteniya (Library for Reading), Filologicheskie Zapiski (Philological Proceedings), and Knizhny Vestnik (Books Bulletin), as well as the Moskovskie Novosti (Moscow News) newspaper, and others. Afanasiev edited the Bibliographic Notes journal (1858–1861), in which he published several works on the history of Russian literature. A. Afanasyev’s principal work on literary history is his book Russian Satirical Journals of 1769–1774 (1859).

In the 1850s, A. Afanasyev began studying and publishing Russian folklore. He compiled and prepared for publication eight volumes of Russian Folk Tales (1855–1863). His collections were based on texts collected by V. Dal’ and P. Yakushkin, which they had submitted to the Russian Geographical Society; fairy tales recorded by the folklorist himself or passed on to him by members of the Vtorov Circle. This collection of folk tales brought him widespread fame: the Russian Academy of Sciences awarded A. Afanasyev the Demidov Prize, whilst the Geographical Society granted him a gold medal. The Russian Folk Tales collection remains one of the most popular collections of folklore to this day.

The collection Russian Folk Legends, compiled by A. Afanasyev, was banned by censors up to 1914. His basic work The Slavs’ Poetical Views of Nature was unrivalled in Russian folklore studies for the richness of its material. Afanasiev established himself as a leading scholar representing the Russian school of mythology. His final work, Russian Children’s Fairy Tales, was published in 1870. Owing to A. Afanasyev’s archival research, many documents and literary works from the 18th century to the first half of the 19th century were brought to light. The collections were reprinted many times and translated into foreign languages.

The main illustration shows a portrait of A. Afanasiev against a Russian village and the RGO logo; the commemorative stamp features images that symbolically represent geographical projects.

In addition to the issue of the postcard with a commemorative stamp, JSC Marka produced special cancels for Moscow, St. Petersburg and Voronezh.


Design Artists: S. Kapranov and M. Bodrova.
Quantity: 4.5 thousand postcards.

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