Juodupė 1990

This is a cover sent from Juodupė in 1990 to the UK. One of the things I was underestimating was that I thought it would be relatively easy to collect post-Soviet provisional postmarks but I must say I was wrong. Large towns are indeed not so hard but Juodupė class towns are somehow not so easy. The postmark is made out of the Soviet one, excluding the inscriptions indicating CCCP, but the Soviet stamps and postal stationery were still valid at that time.

Juodupė 1939

This is a postcard of the Freedom monument in Kaunas sent in 1939 from Juodupė to Święciany Wileńskie (now Švenčionys, Lithuania), Lenkija/Poland. Juodupė is a small town with a present population of 2000 located near the Latvian border. The town's history is closely tied to the windmill which was the vital source of the economy. But that's not what makes this postcard interesting, it is the destination: Lenkija, which is the Lithuanian name for Poland. It is known that the First Lithuanian Republic had no diplomatic relation with Poland, which automatically leads the conclusion that there were no postal correspondences between the two countries either (with an exception of few airmail links). Well, this is true, EXCEPT, from June 1938 to October 1939 when the Soviet invasion began. The March 1938 Polish Ultimatum forced the Lithuanian government to conclude a diplomatic normalization with Poland and from June of the same year, limited railroad and postal communications gradually started to open its way.