Collection of greeting cards in the Altai State Museum of Local Lore: an analytical review

In recent decades, modern means of communication have almost supplanted postcards. The postcard not only allows you to communicate, but also is a unique source of historical and cultural information, bears the imprint of ethnographic and artistic features of cultures, tells about the architecture and traditions of different countries of the world, expresses the ideological trends of this or that era. The Altai State Museum of Local History in Barnaul has a significant number of postcards (about five thousand copies) in its collection. Part of this collection is greeting cards, which have become the subject of study in this publication. The author has analyzed about 300 copies of cards, most of which are open mail. They can be divided into thematic groups: Christmas and New Year, postcards from May 1, cards from March 8, October holiday cards, greeting cards from May 9, birthday cards, from September 1, cards for fabulous stories. A significant part of the series of cards analyzed has inscriptions for recipients on the back, which adds to these museum items an additional value. The collection of greeting cards in the Altai State Museum of Local Lore is grouped under several principles. Some of the postcards are collected in funds thematically on holidays, part is integrated within the collection, in which they entered the museum. Most postcards have a fairly good (since the 1950s) or satisfactory (until the 1940s) security. In this series, more than 160 open letters are New Year's and Christmas cards, including ten Christmas cards related to pre-revolutionary times, 16 postcards of the 1950s, 67 - 1960s, 22 pieces of the 1970s, 27 Postcards - 1980's. And about ten copies of the 1990s. Among the series in question are interesting pre-revolutionary Christmas cards. The earliest of these is the postcard of 1904. All postcards are made by famous artists-designers of their time. Among them are the works of E. Gundobin, V. Zarubin, L. Kuznetsov, B. Parmeyev, K. Andriyanov, the creative union Lesegry (B. Lebedev, L. Sergeev and M. Grinberg), and others. The works reflect the vivid ideological and propaganda trends of various Historical periods (personality cult, space exploration, pioneer, olympic games and sports in general, etc.). Postcards are also an important ethnographic source, which is expressed in two aspects. First, they are in themselves a memorial, and secondly, they reveal the way of life, cultural traditions and ideological settings of a particular period in the illustrations with which they are framed. Postcards are not represented in a permanent exhibition, but are widely used in the exhibition practice of the Altai State Museum of Local Lore.

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