Philately as a Popular Collecting Practice in Soviet Russia in 1922–1934

In Soviet Russia, collecting was institutionalized as an intellectual and leisure hobby in 1922. It was free of the material practices and meanings that linked it with the bourgeoisie and pursued a purely pragmatic goal of state budget replenishment. The utopian idealism filled this hobby with special values and meanings, turning it into an instrument of socialization. In fact, it had an obvious economic component as a source of state budget replenishment and an investment tool. The evolution of the institute of Soviet popular collecting started in the 1920s and continued through the mid-1930s, from the establishment of the All-Russian Philatelic Society in 1922 to its abolition in 1934. The article introduces a reconstruction of the economic meanings and practices behind the Soviet philately as it sought to get rid of all material value connotations. The author applied the approach formulated by K. Mannheim in his Ideology and Utopia to periodicals and archival materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation. Even children’s stories about philately revealed certain economic markers that contradicted the official ideological guidelines popularized by the Soviet Collector magazine (1922-1932). The institutional language of the magazine reflected its status as an ideological agent. The derogatory meanings and practices of bourgeois philately implicitly permeated Soviet collecting, starting from its institutionalization and extrapolating these practices and narratives into the future.