6/9/2022
Peter the Great on postage stamps
The Post of Serbia, in cooperation with the Russian centre of science and culture in Belgrade, published and presented to the public a special issue of commemorative postage stamps "350th Anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great". H.E. Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, Zoran Đorđević, Acting Director of the Post of Serbia, and Irina Antanasijevic, head of the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade spoke at the event at the PTT Museum.
"Peter the Great indebted the Serbian people, and as a sign of remembrance and gratitude for building strong ties between our peoples and his direct extraordinary influence on the advancement of education, culture and religious life among Serbs, we mark the jubilee, 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great as part of the traditional brotherly and friendly relations between Serbia and Russia", said Zoran Đorđević, Acting Director of the Post of Serbia.
The motifs on the stamps are The Portrait of Peter the Great, by academic painter Boban Savić, and oil on canvas by an unknown author The Portrait of the Emperor Peter the Great (18th century), kept in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg for which a research has shown that it was kept in the Velika Remeta monastery in Serbia until the end of the 19th century.
The exhibition of the Russian Scientific Institute, which is open to visitors at the PTT Museum until 24 June, with reproductions of the comic "Peter the Great", published in 1941 in magazine "Politikin zabavnik" by Russian emigrants Konstantin Kuznetsov and Pavle Polyakov, which will be again published in magazine Informatika, was presented by prof. Irina Antanasijević, head of the Institute. The motifs of the "Peter the Great" comic were applied to the envelope, while the vignette motifs on the sheets of the stamps are fragments from Peter I decree on sending teachers from Russia to Serbia, which enabled the establishment of the first Serbian school in Sremski Karlovci in 1726.
Commemorative postage stamps have been printed in a circulation of 25,000 copies and are in circulation as of today. The Post of Serbia prepared the edition on the initiative of the Russian centre of science and culturein Belgrade in cooperation with the State Museum Hermitage from St. Petersburg.