Summer Olympics Mexico 1968 Ukraine Exile MNH 4 shee (03/17/2011)...

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Summer Olympics Mexico 1968 Ukraine Exile MNH 4 sheets

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Summer Olympics Mexico 1968 Ukraine Exile MNH 4 sheets

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Sold Date: 03/17/2011
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Stamps

Summer Olympics Mexico 1968, Sport, Cycle racing,Track and field athletics, Discus throwing 1968 Ukraine Exile MNH 4 sheets = 72 stamps Rare

- Condition: MNH (**) with glue - Year: 1968 . The initials PPU stand for Pidpil´na Poshta Ukrainy— the Ukrainian Underground Post. A number of questions immediately arise: why "underground," what "Ukraine", and where, when, and how did it function? The PPU, founded by Ukrainian emigres in West Germany after the Second World War, operated under the aegis of the External Units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—the ZCh OUN(B)—from 1949 to 1983. Although its headquarters was based in Munich, many stamps were issued in other German cities, such as Regensburg and Neu-Ulm. In the early 1960s the PPU´s postal issues began appearing in Chicago (USA). During all the years of the PPU´s existence its chief promoter and indefatigable activist was Stepan Liubomyr Rychtyckyj, whose death in 1983 marked the end of the Ukrainian Underground Post. The history of the PPU and its main enthusiast is discussed in greater detail in the fol¬lowing articles by Alexander Malycky and Stefan Golash. Postal issues fulfill two main functions. First and foremost, a postage stamp—or a postage stamp block—is evidence of a fee paid for postal services. In keeping with the second function, which in the history of the PPU was no less important than the first, through these small scraps of adhesive paper the issuing country promotes, within its own state and in the international community, its achievements, history, culture, and im¬portant sites, i.e., its contribution to the global civilizing process. These functions are carried out only by official state postal services of inde¬pendent states. It is a paradox, then, that for three and a half decades the Ukrainian Underground Post, a non-state postal service, sought to realize both these important tasks. Next to official state-issued stamps of the country from which their mail was being sent Ukrainians in the free world also affixed stamps released by the PPU. Even though its stamps did not signify that a fee had been paid for the postal services of a given country, for emigre Ukrainians this was precisely the case. In the eyes of the Ukrainian diaspora, the act of affixing stamps issued by the PPU seemed to indicate that the Ukrainian Underground Post was "leasing" the postal services of countries in the free world. At the same time, all those who circulated the PPU´s stamps were clearly aware that he or she was giving financial assistance to the OUN underground and the armed liberation struggle that was being waged on the territory of Ukraine. It has been determined that some of the underground postal issues were successfully smuggled by couriers into Ukraine, where the underground network used them on letters sent within the borders of Soviet Ukraine, as well as on correspondence designated for the External Units of the OUN and the External Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Libera¬tion Council (ZP UHVR). In the eyes of PPU and OUN activists, these underground postal is¬sues had great ideological and propagandistic value. The enduring ide¬ological impact of the PPU´s stamps was manifested in various spheres; this is the subject of a separate scholarly study. Here, we shall mention only the two most important spheres in which the PPU operated most ef¬fectively: the Ukrainian diaspora and the international community. When the Ukrainians´ expectations of a revived Ukrainian State were not realized during the period of the two global conflicts, a sense of dis¬illusionment and, in some quarters, even loss of faith, began emerging within the emigre milieu. Furthermore, in view of the fact that the com¬munist system had notably expanded its sphere of control, and the world was destabilized by the existence of the atomic bomb in both the demo-cratic West and the totalitarian Soviet Union, the impossibility of a just resolution of the Ukrainian cause seemed to be a foregone conclusion. Ther...