Why should the ugliest ducklings of philately now be rehabilitated?
manufactured the whole thing, covers, stamps and cancellations. It does not seem to me improbable, either, that the Soviet Philatelic Association could maintain a special department to intercept all those hopeful letters addressed to the “Postmaster of Kizil” by foreign philatelists and dealers. It would not be too difficult to fulfil the orders and the recipient would be in no position to judge whether his covers had reached him from Kizil or Moscow. In the first significant post-war study of Tuvan philately and which led to the current revival of interest A. Cronin drew attention to the importance of transit times in this connection. (New South Wales Philatelic Annual, 1954, pp. 13 – 19). Judging from covers of the 1927-33 period, before Tuva unleashed its pictorials, mail from Kizil to Moscow or Manchuria took somewhere about 25 35 days in transit; this is not an unreasonable time in view of the distances involved and the disturbed conditions of the Far East in those days. When, the