Cancellations of Imperial Russia

Surprisingly, used stamps with cancellations of Lithuania during the Imperial Russian rule are somewhat harder to find than covers from the same period. At least it seems to be so to me. Cancellations of Vilna/Vilnius are still findable if you look carefully but other regional towns are pretty rare. I guess I must check patiently one by one, taking time... Anyway, here are my lastest acquisitions.


This is a stamp with a 1910 cancellation of Кельмы/Kelmy, now Kelmė, Lithuania. It's a town in Šiauliai County with a population of 10000. Kelmė during the Tsarist time had a large number of Jewish population.

This stamp has a cancellation of Ворне/Vorne (now Varniai, Lithuania) Ков(Kovna gubernia). Varniai, with a present population of 2000, was the seat of the Samogitian Diocese. The first book of lithuanian language is believed to be written here.

Vilnius 1924

This is a postally unused postcard of the propaganda against the Polish occupation of Vilnius. The illustration depicts a personified Lithuania chained in Vilnius near the Gediminas tower with heart taken away by an eagle. Printed in 1924.

Seirijai 1931

It's a 15 Litas postal stationery sent in 1931 from Seirijai to Halle, Germany. Seirijai is a small town in Alytus county not far from the polish border with a population of approximately 900.

Kaunas mute cancellation 1914 - 1915

This is a postcard of Kowno (now Kaunas) with a rare 1st World War 4 straight horizontal lines mute cancellation during the Imperial Russian rule. Mute cancellations in this period have no date nor location information, mainly for security reasons. They have been used from 1914 to 1915 before the german capitulation of Kaunas in 1915. You can see on the 3rd line of the text that the card has been sent from "Kowno" on an unknown date.

Here is a link of an interesting article about Imperial Russian mute cancellation. It is mainly focusing on Latvia during the russian rule but part of it also applies to Lithuania too: link

Šilutė 1974

A cover with an illustration of Kaunas castle with a 1973 Soviet stamp of the Trakai castle. There is a commemorative cancellation of the philatelic exhibition held in Šilutė/Шилуте in 1974, with an image of Gediminas tower in Vilnius. Both castles and the tower are excellent example of the Lithuanian gothic architecture.

Kaunas 1926

A postcard of Kaunas (Kowno) cancelled in 1926 at the "Kaunas P.AG5" postal handling office #5. It was located at the railway station, later renamed "Kaunas - geležinkelio stotis".

Klaipėda 1929

This is a cover sent in 1929 from Klaipėda (Memel) to Switzerland. It looks like this envelope has been made for the Ausstellung Litauens in Memel/Lietuvos Paroda Klaipėdoje (1927 Memel exhibition). The letter is correctly franked with 60 centų according to the international mail rate at that time.

Kučkuriškės (Naujoji Vilnia) 1904

This is a postcard of Kutchkurichki (now Kučkuriškės, Lithuania) sent in 1904 from the post office in Вильна/Vilna (now Vilnius) to France. Kučkuriškės is part of Naujoji Vilnia which was a separate town from Vilnius at that time, therefore the postcard description states "près de Vilna", meaning "near Vilnius" in french. The picture shows the Vilnia river and the paper factory in the present Popieriaus gatvė/street. This factory has been built by the count Puslowski in 1823 and was operating until 2001. Most of the building shown in the picture had survived until today.