50 years of Soviet stamps (1918-1969), by Pierre Hubert and Dominique Labbé Given the existence in a community such as the USSR of a highly structured and totalizing ideology, the very multiplicity of ways in which this is manifested is an obstacle to its study. The postage stamp is one such, regularly issued, manifestation in which the ideological message has to be condensed. Taking all the 4000 stamps issued in the Soviet Union, it was possible to analyse the ideological content and trend of Soviet stamps from 1918 to 1969 by means of a twofold selection based first on a classification by subject matter, and secondly on a division of the historical sequence into periods. Philately might perhaps therefore constitute an area worth investiga...