COVER N.145 - RUSSIA.

Postmark: ПОЧТА РОССИИ - КАЛУГА ПОЧТАМТ УООПО 248099 (Russian Post - Kaluga Post Office 248099) 
Posted on the 14h July; received on the 27th July 2022

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Julia, I really don't know how to thank you for all the trouble you go through to send me your incredibly nice postcards inside such beautiful envelopes, always  loaded with interesting stamps. Thank you so much!

Robert Ludvigovich Bartini's (1897-1974) life story is uncommon to say the very least and one that would be a good script for a film... abridging it to the fullest , here are some notes on the life and some of the achievements of a very important name in the history of Russian aviation:

Born the illegitimate son of  Lodovico Oros de Bartini, the then Lieutenant Governor of Fiume, a city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,  that is today known as Rijeka, in  Croatia, he was only acknowledged by his father as his rightful son after his mother committed suicide, young Roberto thus becoming Roberto Oros de Bartini,  

With the oubreak of the first world war Roberto would fight with the Austro-Hungarian Army only to be captured by the Russian Army, thus spending the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war. Upon the end of the hostilities he returned home to a city of Fiume being fought over by the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and  Italians, and to the creation of  the Free State of Fiume, a solution that would, in a short time, prove futureless, with Fiume being integrated into Italy in 1924 (the story does not end here but, one day maybe one stamp may prompt me to tell it....).  

Roberto, now an Italian citizen, became a member of the Italian Communist Party, learned to pilot aircraft and became an aerospace engineer, before emigrating to the Soviet Union to escape Fascist Italy.

Once in the Soviet Union he became a Soviet citizen, changed his name to Robert Ludvigovich Bartini and pursued a long career in aircraft design, working for several departments of the Soviet military administration. This would not be a comfortable ride, nevertheless, because it seems his opinions were not always in tune with the hierarchy, what would end up granting him a conviction  to a ten year imprisonment term, in 1938, during which he, nevertheless, continued to work on aircraft design.

Under the Khrushchev administration he was rehabilitated and was even later awarded the order of Lenin.

In the 1950s his attention turned to the design of ground effect flying machines, the so called Ekranoplans, and drawing on the experience gathered  from his first experimental design, the Be, 1 he conceived for the  Beriev design Bureau what was expected to be a vertical take off Ekranoplan for use in the anti-submarine warfare, a design that was to be known as the  BBA-14, in the early 70s.

A prototype was constructed and tested, but never flown with vertical take off capacity and after Bartini's death, the project was abandoned.

What remains of the disassembled aircraft is now in the Russian Federation Central Air Force Museum in Moscow.

The image of the BBA-14 flying low above the waves graces the envelope Julia used, issued on 31May2022, to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of Robert Bartini, whose effigy is featured in the envelope's Tariff A printed stamp which also includes front and side line views of one of his designs, the Bartini Stal -7  in the background.

Remaining stamps, left to right:

15 Ruble stamp, issued on 28 AUG2014 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the soviet victory in the 1939 battles of Khalkhin Gol, an undeclared border conflict opposing the Soviet Union to Japan.

21,5 Ruble stamp issued on 02AUG2016 to celebrate the  Centenary of Likhachov Automobile Plant Joint Stock Company, better known as ZIL, responsible for manufacturing trucks but also the limousines used by Soviet VIPs,

- Self-adhesive 50 Kopek stamp, part of the 7th definitive issue of the Russian Federation, started in 2019. It exhibits the State Postal Administration Emblem and was issued on 07AUG2019.