Postal service. History of postal development in Russia
The beginnings of mail in Rus' have existed since the times of princely messengers, birch bark letters and carts. The further development of the postal service was associated with the pits, the pit chase, and the creation of postal departments - the Postal Department, the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, the Main Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs. In Soviet times, there were People's Commissariats and the Ministry of Communications, which was replaced by the corresponding state bodies of modern Russia. Mail Until the 9th century. The history of exchange of news begins with the Stone Age. Then information was transmitted by the smoke of fires, blows on a signal drum, and the sounds of trumpets.
Later they began to send messengers with oral messages. Such a messenger memorized the “letter” from the words of the sender, and then retold it to the addressee. The memory of this has been preserved in our language: we more often say “the letter says” than “the letter says.”
The great powers of antiquity Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Rome, the Inca state had a developed, well-organized mail. Messengers traveled along paved roads and caravan trails day and night. They took turns or changed horses at specially built stations. Actually, the word “post office” comes from the Latin expression “mansio pozita...” - “station at a point...”. 2500 years ago, the relay race method of transmitting letters from messenger to messenger was already used.
Sending messages on the territory of Russia has been known since ancient times. Even in the 1st millennium BC, Greek historians mentioned the transmission of messages from the peoples who lived in the Northern Black Sea region and Central Asia - the Scythians, Sarmatians, Saxons and Massagetae.
9th century In the last quarter of the 9th century, almost at the very beginning of the existence of Kievan Rus, the foundations of Russian mail- one of the oldest in Europe. In terms of time of occurrence, only the communications services of Great Britain and Spain can be placed on a par with it.
In 1266, almost 100 years earlier than in Germany - the country with the most developed at that time by mail, the first rules for the passage of messengers across Russian lands appear. Mail then it became an integral part of the state administrative machine and a means of communication between educated people.
Occupies a special place in Russian history mail Veliky Novgorod XI-XV centuries. The discoveries in recent years of dozens of birch bark letters delivered through communication channels allow us to speak not only about the almost universal literacy of Novgorodians, but also about the existence in the boyar republic of a developed system for sending private correspondence.
The Tatar invasion brought innumerable troubles to the Russian land. Development has stopped mail. For many years, the domestic communication system was at the level of the 13th century. The only thing that the Russians borrowed from their enslavers was the new name for the post office - Yamskaya gonba.
From the end of the 15th century, after the Russian state threw off the shackles of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, the heyday of the Yam persecution began. The first ones appear postal institutions, A new type of postal services provided to the population is emerging - paid delivery of court summonses. Foreigners visiting Muscovy back in the first quarter of the 16th century. They called the Russian communication system "mail", although in Rus' this word became widely used only from the middle of the 17th century.
Great contribution to development Russian Post contributed by the outstanding statesman A.L. Ordin-Nashchokin. Under his leadership, a regular postal service was created for the delivery of private correspondence. It was developed and improved at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. Regular delivery of letters was carried out from Moscow to Arkhangelsk, St. Petersburg, Astrakhan, Azov, Kyiv and even across Siberia to Kyakhta to the Chinese border.
First lines of regular public mail went beyond the borders of the Russian state to “German” countries. This is how Russian people sometimes called lands where they spoke “silent” languages incomprehensible to our ancestors. This is where the name of the first mails in Riga and Vilna (Vilnius) came from - “German”, in contrast to the Yamskaya, which served internal lines.
The Riga and Vilna mails were sometimes called “merchant mail”, because in the early days of their activity the bulk of the correspondence sent abroad consisted of letters from foreign merchants. The “German” post office was distinguished from Western European ones, first of all, by the fact that it was a state institution, while in the West the system of delivering letters by private enterprises became widespread, among which the post house of Thurn and Taxis achieved particular power.
Unlike the “German” one, the scope of activity of the Yamsk post office spread widely throughout Russia. Only its lines ran in Siberia, in the south of the country, in Ukraine and Belarus.
The parallel existence of two postal systems - "German" and Yamskaya - created many inconveniences and sometimes led to completely ridiculous things.
For example, at one time two mails went from Moscow to St. Petersburg: the “German” mail, which delivered only merchant letters and government papers, and the Yamskaya, which, in addition to government mail, carried correspondence from local administrative institutions and letters from nobles.
Moreover, the Yam service charged significantly less money for its services from letter senders than the “German” service. This state of affairs could not be considered normal, therefore, from the middle of the 18th century. The merger of both services begins.
The establishment of communication lines with provincial cities was of great importance for the development of domestic mail. They were first organized in 1712 for relations between the Senate and the governors of individual regions. And after a short time, the provincial post offices became subordinate to the Yamsk office and became publicly accessible. The Yamsk Post Office in Moscow delivered public and private correspondence throughout Russia - from Minsk to Yakutsk.
The “fruit” mail was also subordinate to him, carrying not only letters from Astrakhan to St. Petersburg, but also grapes, watermelons, melons to the royal table.
From the second half of the 18th century. postal lines reach some county towns, especially those that were industrial centers or mining sites for vital minerals such as table salt or iron ore. On local lines, postmen most often walked from city to city.
The Russian postal service began with the delivery of military news, but military field mail, as such, did not exist for a long time. The transportation of military messages was carried out by random people, the roads were unreliable, and there were often no means of transportation.
If in the area of combat operations the organization of postal chases was poor, this sometimes affected the course of the war. Only from the end of the 17th century. In Russia, the institute of military postmen began to be created, who were directly included in the staff of regiments and formations of the active army. The existence of a connection of this kind was legitimized by the “Military Regulations” of Peter the Great, which included the article “On the rank of the field, post office.”
Until the end of the 17th century. in Russia, various seals were used to seal bags with correspondence: order, voivode, customs, personal stamps of postmasters.
At the turn of the XVII-XVIII centuries. special postal stamps are introduced, first on the “German” and then on the Yamskaya post office. The foundations are laid for the unification of postal items and the design of their appearance according to a single model. At the end of the 18th century. special stamps appear, imprinted with paint on each individual letter.
During the same period, preparations began for the introduction of a unified postal documentation. At the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. all correspondence was recorded in the postmaster's books. Since the 30s of the 18th century. special registers for letters appear.
In the early 70s of the 18th century. “model” postal lines are being laid to the Baltic states and Belarus. Their creation is associated with a document of enormous significance - “The Project on the Establishment of Postal Stations and the Position of Keepers”, on the basis of which the rules for organizing the postal race were drawn up for almost 80 years.
At the “model” post offices, for the first time, the position of station keeper was created, later known as the “station keeper.” Since 1773, the Russian communications service began to accept bills and money for transfer everywhere. At the same time, new terms are emerging: relay race, post-package, kuvert (envelope), post bell, troika. And most importantly, the post office has finally become a profitable enterprise.
Decrees of 1770 and 1772 provided for the creation of lines of postal stagecoaches or, as they were then called, “trolley mail”. However, these projects did not receive practical application, since the income from the introduction of postal vans did not cover the costs of their maintenance.
1782 became a milestone in the development of domestic means of communication. That year the “German” and Yamskaya post offices were liquidated.
All means of delivering correspondence are merged into a single organization managed by the Main Postal Affairs Board. The old postal system, which had become a hindrance to progress, was destroyed. It took almost 900 years from the time of the first mention of sending a messenger in Rus' for mail to approach the form and organization that we use now.
With mail from the 18th century. The names of many outstanding statesmen are closely connected. Among them are diplomats P.P. Shafirov and A.A. Bezborodko, historian and mining engineer V.N. Tatishchev, commanders B.P. Sheremetev and Z.G. Chernyshev.
Russian Post in the 19th century: In 1802, in connection with the establishment of ministries in the Russian Empire, the Main Postal Administration was annexed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
After the reform of 1830, important changes took place in the postal industry: the introduction of city mail, delivering postal items in cities, the establishment of messages for transporting passengers in wheelchairs, new forms of maintaining postal stations, and bringing postal operations to uniformity. In 1834, the construction of the first highway between St. Petersburg and Moscow was completed.
Over time, other main roads in the country were converted into highways, which made it possible to combine the transportation of mail with the transportation of passengers.
The peasant reform of 1861 and the creation of Zemstvo self-government made it possible to organize a post office to serve the entire rural population.
Since 1865, zemstvos began to organize their own post offices. Despite many prohibitions and limited funds, zemstvo mail became widespread and at the end of the 19th century existed in 190 counties. Zemstvo post offices reached their greatest development in the Vologda, Kazan, Novgorod, Perm and Samara provinces.
In 1874, by agreement between 22 states, which included Russia, the Universal Postal Union was formed. The union allowed the establishment of direct postal relations between the participating countries.
In 1884, in order to reduce the costs of maintaining postal and telegraph offices, the Postal and Telegraph Departments were merged into a single Main Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs within the Ministry of Internal Affairs. By the end of the 19th century, almost all regions of the Russian Empire were covered by regular postal services.
After the fall of the Russian monarchy in February 1917, Kerensky's Provisional Government renamed the Main Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs to the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs.
After the Bolsheviks came to power in November 1917, the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs was renamed the People's Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs.
In March 1918, the People's Commissariats, together with the country's leadership, moved from Petrograd to Moscow, which became the capital of the state.
During the years of the First World War and then the Civil War of 1918-1922, the country's postal service fell into decay. Postal communications between the capital and some districts were completely or partially disrupted.
The length of postal routes and the network of communications enterprises was reduced by almost half compared to pre-war times. Railway transport fell into disrepair, and horse-drawn transport was mostly idle due to a lack of horses.
With the end of the Civil War in 1920, postal routes were restored, and international postal exchange with countries that were members of the Universal Postal Union resumed.
In 1922, air transportation of mail began on international and domestic routes.
In 1924, mobile ring mail was organized in many counties, which made it possible to sharply increase postal exchange in rural areas. Simultaneously with the development of the service network, the mail delivery system was improved. Horse transportation was replaced by automobile transportation, and the fleet of railway mail cars was significantly replenished.
In 1926, a department of postal equipment was organized in the People's Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs.
The department was entrusted with the task of modernizing equipment and mechanizing postal enterprises. The following year, the grand opening of installations for the mechanization of parcel processing took place at the Moscow Post Office. Following the Moscow one, the Leningrad post office was also mechanized.
By 1927, mail volumes had reached pre-war levels.
In 1932, the People's Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs was renamed the People's Commissariat of Communications of the USSR. In 1939, work began on the mechanization of postal enterprises and the creation of transport offices in the regions, territories and republics. In the same year, a postal technology laboratory was created at TsNIIS. The main task of the laboratory was to develop fundamentally new and improve old postal technical support systems.
The war with Germany that began in June 1941 posed a new task for postal services: to organize uninterrupted delivery of postal items between the front and the rear.
Postal services for military units and formations of the active army were entrusted to the military field and naval postal authorities. Every month, up to 70 million letters and more than 30 million newspapers were delivered to the active army from the rear.
The main measures to organize postal communications in the rear were reduced to organizing new postal routes and evacuating a large number of industrial enterprises and institutions to the eastern regions of the country. The war caused enormous material damage to the postal industry. Post offices in Leningrad, Sevastopol, Odessa, the Smolensk region, and Belarus were partially or completely destroyed.
In total, the Nazi invaders destroyed about 36,000 communications enterprises.
In 1943, when the Red Army launched a wide offensive, work began to restore postal communications. In 1945, the year of the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany, the activities of communications agencies were resumed throughout almost the entire territory of the country.
In the post-war years, postal services underwent quantitative and qualitative changes.
In 1946, the People's Commissariat of Communications of the USSR was transformed into the Ministry of Communications of the USSR. The management of postal services began to be carried out by the Postal Administration, which was part of the Ministry of Communications along with other departments of the telecommunications industries.
By 1950, the postal service, destroyed by the war, was restored and brought to its pre-war level. In subsequent years, the network of communication enterprises expanded significantly, especially in rural areas.
A network of post offices subordinate to post offices and communications centers developed in cities. Most enterprises began to combine mail, telegraph and telephone. These means of communication were, as a rule, located in the same building and were under the same leadership. A huge network of mailboxes was created, which were installed not only in cities, but also in rural settlements, at railway stations, sidings, and at forks in highways.
Further development of postal services followed the path of mechanization and automation of mail processing processes, improving the organization of its transportation and delivery.
For this purpose, the modernization of old postal equipment was carried out and the production of fundamentally new models was carried out - postal processing and handling machines, equipment for container transportation, small-scale mechanization and postal equipment, and customer service equipment.
For many decades, postal and telecommunications enterprises existed first as part of regional and republican communications departments, and then as part of state communications and information technology enterprises.
In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the socio-political and economic transformations taking place in Russia entailed changes in governance structures.
The Ministry of Communications and the Russian Postal Service have carried out difficult work to improve the organization and management system of mail. At the government level, it was decided to separate postal services into an independent industry. The management of this industry in 1993 began to be carried out by the Federal Postal Administration, created under the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation.
In 1995, the Department was reorganized into the Federal Postal Service of the Russian Federation, and in 1996 it was transformed into the Postal Communications Department of the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation. Management of postal services in individual territories is provided by regional departments, which operate through post offices, city and regional centers and postal offices.
Russian postal enterprises received economic and commercial independence, but along with it, high competition created by former partners - telecommunication enterprises. At the same time, despite the division of industries, the unique postal network created in previous periods and covering almost all settlements of the country was preserved.
In 1996, the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation, for the first time in the centuries-old history of Russian mail, decided to break the state postal monopoly on some postal services, as a result of which commercial postal companies emerged in Russia.
The services of the new companies included courier delivery of postal items, pensions and benefits, forwarding of parcels, and distribution of periodicals.
Considering the role of the Russian post in the historical development of the state, in 1994, Russian President B. N. Yeltsin established a professional holiday for postal workers, “Russian Post Day,” which is celebrated annually on the second Sunday of July.
Another presidential decree in 1997 restored heraldic traditions Russian post– emblem and flag.
Information. It is probably difficult to name something else in our world that is just as intangible and just as dense, permeating all directions and constantly accumulating around us. The preservation of information appeared with the first rock inscriptions, and along with the need to transmit it over long distances, signal fires were lit and drums began to sound. This is how the first post office was born. In this series of articles we will show you how this most important segment of our lives works, how it is evolving, what it was and what it will be: mail.
People learned to speak relatively long ago, but the human voice is imperfect when it comes to sending messages far away. As the need to share information not only accumulated, but increased exponentially as our world evolved, new forms of postal communication were born along with it. From the first signal drums, which appeared about 8,000 years ago, ancient tribes moved on to fire and smoke: they can be seen from afar, and the very fact of lighting a smoke column was a kind of signal. African tribes still use tom-toms for communication, and bonfires were used even by the Indians of the 20th century.
The first beginnings of postal communication were born in ancient states along with the advent of writing: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Persia, China, and the Roman Empire. The first messengers walked along the roads; later they mounted horses. Messages and written messages were transmitted according to the relay race principle. In the Ancient East, rulers needed to be supplied with constant information about what was happening in the slave-owning territories under their control. It is not surprising that this led to the development of the prototype of postal service. It is believed that the first postal message was sent about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia in the form of a sealed clay letter.
The post of antiquity was built on messengers, who, orally, in writing, by sea, on horseback, by land, on foot - and most often for military purposes - carried news to all corners of the states. This system of transmitting messages received particular development in the Roman Empire, and with its fall (about 520 AD), mail ceased to exist. In feudal medieval Europe of the 11th–15th centuries, post and communications as such were transferred to spiritual and secular institutions. That is, the church began to deal with mail. We will talk about this period later.
N.K. Roerich, "Messenger"
Let's think about it for a second. When was the last time you used postal services? You may remember a package that you picked up from a post office or directly from a courier. They sent letters to some government agency. They opened envelopes in search of money in distant unhappy childhood. Sending “letters of happiness”, carefully “licking”, as expected, each envelope, without indicating the return address. It seems that mail is moving away from us, transforming mostly into a delivery service and going to the “cloud”. In fact, mail is evolving. The news and article that you are reading now is an example of the evolution of news that has come a long way from the weathered hands or even the lips of a Persian messenger to the image on your display. E-mail, without which we cannot imagine our lives, was impossible without the Internet, and the Internet appeared not so long ago - it is not even 50 years old. Instead of emails, people sent only paper letters. And even in the future, when, perhaps, there will no longer be a need to deliver a package - the desired product will be printed on your 3D printer, materialized in a teleporter, or you will use exclusively virtual products - all this will be just an evolution of mail.
Information does not disappear without a trace, does not dissolve in a black hole, it only takes a different form.
There are not many phenomena in the world, or even institutions, that have emerged as a result of consistent and independent development across the globe. Offhand, we can name only the most grandiose ones - writing and languages, many of them; an institute of science that has absorbed the research of scientists all over the world over many millennia; a matter of diplomacy and statehood, which even in modern times do not shy away from the norms developed back in the Roman Empire; artistic culture, the heyday of which is considered to be Ancient Greece. Try to include mail here, and you will be surprised how perfectly this institute fits into this series and includes the best of what people in different parts of the globe can come up with, together and separately.
The medieval church, being the one and only authority, took on the task of centralization, which would have been impossible without its own message system - the monastery mail. Couriers from the monasteries maintained contact between individual monasteries and the head of the church in Rome, between monastic orders and their brotherhoods. At the same time, stations for changing horses were born, which later migrated to Russia. Actually, the word “post” comes from the Italian “statio posita in...”, which meant a station for changing horses. The word “mail” (post) was first used in this meaning in the 12th century.
European universities of the mid-second millennium, to which, historically, students flocked from a variety of countries, almost on foot, in Lomonosov style, to get an education, took advantage of this important point: for a fee, professional messengers of the university post office maintained communication between students and their families, sometimes delivering letters to individuals.
An interesting phenomenon was the “butchers’ mail”. By nature of activity, the European butcher shop, which traveled extensively for purchasing purposes, took on the responsibility of transporting letters and parcels. In some cities in southern Germany this became the responsibility of butchers, in return for which they received certain privileges. This post office operated until the end of the 17th century and in some places received national significance.
Franz von Taxis
And yet, the first organized mail in every sense of the word is considered to be the mail created by members of the Tasso clan (Tassis, Taxis). The Thurn and Taxis post office existed from the second half of the 15th century until 1867 and made a huge contribution to the development of postal services in Europe. The Taxis post office was maintained at their expense, at their own risk, but invariably remained a private enterprise, although the emperors claimed to establish it. The Thurn und Taxis post office importantly adopted all the effects of the evolution of postal services and promptly introduced the postmark and postage stamp into use. 400 years is not a bad history for private mail.
As for Russian postal service, Russian postal service, which developed on the territory of the then Russian state, historians are of the opinion that our ancestors took over the postal service from the Mongol conquerors. During that troubled period, postal stations (which we talked about above) and “pits” appeared on the main roads, where “yamchas” (messengers) changed horses. As you might guess, the word “coachman” is rooted in this legend. And the word “postman” found its way into pre-revolutionary Russia in 1716 (before that, postal employees were called “postmen”).
The reforms of Peter I led to the fact that postal services in Russia appeared in all the main cities of the country. The state took over the postal service, the first post offices and post offices were opened, and the position of postmaster was introduced. The first mail cars (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) paved their way in 1851. What happened next - you know, the first letter in your life fell into your mailbox. We'll talk about how mail works and which of its elements have undergone evolution and which have remained unchanged.
It is impossible to describe in words how far the influence of evolution and revolution has gone in the postal service, on land and at sea. The post can certainly be called a great achievement of mankind. The peace of 1782, which followed the American War of Independence, was concluded only after negotiations that lasted more than two years. Prussia and Austria fought in 1866. The campaign took seven days; and seven weeks elapsed from the declaration of war to the formal conclusion of peace. Obviously, the time difference in both cases was due only to the fact that in one case the news took longer, and in the other, faster.
We can look at the past with mixed feelings - remembering our frivolous ancestors, who were in no hurry and who had enough time for reflection; we consider those times lethargic, sluggish, calm.
We are proud of our own era as filled with life and activity, haste and nerves, high electrical voltage. But many of us know the price of this whirlpool of life events and often say: “This pace is killing.” Will this pace continue for the next hundred years? Probably yes. The evolution of mail allows us to fit more actions into a minute of life, as does the evolution of many other things, of course. Letters no longer take weeks to arrive, parcels will soon be delivered instantly, communication has practically lost any restrictions. What will mail be like in the future? You will be the first to know about it.
Testing of the first postal drones has already begun...
People have always needed to exchange information. That is why the history of mail began long before the advent of writing and letters familiar to modern people. In ancient times, voice was used to convey news. This method was preserved in some regions until the Middle Ages. For example, in the Inca Empire, for many centuries there were herald messengers who spread news from the capital, moving around the country using a network of branched mountain roads. Later they began to use cords and threads as information carriers.
Cuneiform tablets
The first writing system in the classical sense of the word is cuneiform. With its appearance around 3 thousand years BC. e. Postal history has moved to a fundamentally new level. Cuneiform writing spread among the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia: Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites.
Messages were written with a wooden stick on clay tablets while the clay retained its softness. Due to the specific instrumentation, characteristic wedge-shaped marks appeared. Envelopes for such letters were also made of clay. To read the message, the recipient had to break the “packaging”.
The ancient history of mail remained virtually unknown for a long time. A great contribution to its study was made by the discovery of the library of the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, who ruled in the 7th century. BC e. By his order, an archive of 25 thousand clay tablets was created. Among the cuneiform texts were both state documents and ordinary letters. The library was opened in the 19th century. Thanks to a unique find, it was possible to decipher a cuneiform script that was previously incomprehensible to translators.
Shells and drawings
The Huron Indians made do with shell beads. They were strung on threads and entire letters were received this way. Each plate had a specific color. Black meant death, red meant war, yellow meant tribute, etc. The ability to read such colored belts was considered a privilege and wisdom.
Postal history has also passed the “illustrated” stage. Before writing letters, people learned to draw. ancient, samples of which are still found today in remote caves, this is also a kind of mail that went to the modern addressee for entire generations. The language of drawings and tattoos is still preserved among isolated Polynesian tribes.
Alphabet and sea mail
The ancient Egyptians had their own unique writing system. In addition, they developed a pigeon post service. The Egyptians used hieroglyphs to convey information. Much less known is the fact that it was these people who created the first prototype of the alphabet. Among the numerous hieroglyphs-drawings, they developed hieroglyphs that conveyed sounds (there were 24 of them in total).
This encryption principle was later developed by other peoples of the Ancient East. The first alphabet proper is considered to be the alphabet that appeared in the city of Ugarit on the territory of modern Syria approximately in the 15th century. BC e. A similar system then spread to other Semitic languages.
The Phoenicians had their own alphabet. This trading people became famous for their skilled shipbuilders. Sailors delivered mail to numerous colonies in different parts of the Mediterranean. Based on the Phoenician alphabet, the Aramaic and Greek alphabets arose, from which almost all modern writing systems originate.
Angarion
Angarion is an ancient Persian postal service established in the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century. BC e. It was founded by King Cyrus II the Great. Before this, the delivery of mail from one end of the state to the other could take months, which categorically did not suit the authorities.
During the time of Cyrus, hangars (the so-called horse-drawn couriers) appeared. The postal business of that era gave rise to the first shoots of what still exists today. The longest road of the angarion stretched from Susa to Sardis, and its length was 2500 kilometers. The huge route was divided into a hundred stations at which horses and couriers were changed. With the help of this efficient system, the Persian kings freely transmitted commissions to their satraps in the most distant provinces of the vast empire.
Under the successor of Cyrus II, Darius I, the Royal Road was built, the quality of which turned out to be so high that Alexander the Great, Roman emperors and even Charles I, who ruled the medieval Frankish Empire in the 9th century, used the example of its organization (and the angarion in general) in their state.
Roman era
As noted above, the Roman history of mail and letters was in many ways similar to the Persian. In the republic, and later in the empire, there was a parallel public and private message transmission system. The latter was based on the activities of numerous messengers who were hired (or used as slaves) by wealthy patricians.
At the height of its power, the Roman Empire covered vast territories in three parts of the world. Thanks to a single network of branched roads, already in the 1st century AD it was possible to confidently send a letter from Syria to Spain or from Egypt to Gaul. Small stations where horses were changed were located at a distance of only a few kilometers. Packages were transported by horse-drawn couriers, and carts were used for luggage.
The fastest and most efficient government mail was available only for official correspondence. Later, special permits were issued to traveling officials and Christian priests to use this system. The state postal service was managed by the praetorian prefect close to the emperor, and from the 4th century by the master of offices.
Medieval Europe
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the old postal system collapsed. Messages began to be delivered with great difficulty. The obstacles were borders, the absence and desolation of roads, crime and the disappearance of a single centralized authority. Postal services became even worse with the rise of feudalism. Large landowners often charged huge tolls for travel through their territory, which made it extremely difficult for couriers to operate.
The only at least somewhat centralized organization in Europe in the early Middle Ages was the church. Monasteries, archives, churches and administrative bodies needed a constant exchange of information across much of politically fragmented Europe. Entire religious orders began to undertake the organization of postal communications. Often, important correspondence throughout the Old World was carried by wandering monks and priests, whose cassock and spiritual status were often the best means of protection against trouble with strangers.
Their own corporations of messengers arose at universities, where students flocked from all over the world. The couriers of educational institutions in Naples, Bologna, Toulouse and Paris became especially famous. They maintained contact between students and their families.
Merchants and artisans needed mail most of all. Without exchanging written messages with their partners, they could not establish trade and sales of products. Separate merchant postal corporations arose around guilds and other associations of merchants. The standard of such a system was created in Venice, whose trade contacts connected the medieval republic not only with the whole of Europe, but also with distant countries on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea.
In Italy and Germany, where the institution of free cities was formed, effective city mail became widespread. Mainz, Cologne, Nordhausen, Breslau, Augsburg, etc. had their own experienced messengers. They delivered both letters from the administration and parcels from ordinary residents who paid for the service at a certain rate.
Coachmen and troikas
Thanks to “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” by Alexander Pushkin, everyone in childhood heard the phrase: “A messenger is riding with a letter.” Domestic mail arose during the period of Kievan Rus. The need for a correspondence exchange system has always been relevant for our country due to its vast territories. The colossal distances for Western Europeans were also reflected in the norms characteristic of Russian messengers and incredible for foreigners.
During the time of Ivan the Terrible, tsarist couriers were required to travel one hundred kilometers a day, which was difficult to explain to foreign observers. In the XIII - XVIII centuries. postal stations in Russia were called yams. They kept horses and operated inns.
There was also a so-called yam duty. It extended to the draft population of the provinces. Peasants serving conscription had to organize the transportation of government officials, cargo and diplomats. This tradition was spread by the Tatar-Mongols during their yoke over the East Slavic principalities. In the 16th century, the Yamsk order appeared in the Russian state. This analogue of the ministry dealt not only with postal matters, but also with tax affairs. The short phrase: “A messenger is traveling with a letter” can hardly convey the complexity of the courier business in medieval Russia.
About two hundred years ago the famous multi-gaited teams of three horses appeared. They were equipped specifically for long-distance travel. Those located on the sides galloped, and the central root moved at a trot. Thanks to this configuration, the maximum speed for its time was reached at 45-50 kilometers per hour.
From stagecoaches to railroads and steamships
Centralized systems of royal posts appeared in England, Sweden, France and other developed countries in the 16th-17th centuries. At the same time, the need for international communications grew.
At the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age, stagecoaches spread in England. This postal carriage gradually replaced simple horse-drawn couriers. Eventually it conquered the world and appeared in all parts of the world from Australia to America. The arrival of a postal carriage in a city or village was announced using a special horn.
Another turning point in the development of communication systems occurred at the beginning of the 19th century with the advent of shipping and railways. The new type of water transport has proven itself well in the organization of British-Indian mail. Especially to facilitate travel to the east, the British sponsored construction in Egypt, thanks to which ships could avoid going around Africa.
Mailboxes
There are several versions about where the first mailbox appeared. According to one of them, the vestibules installed in Florence at the beginning of the 16th century can be considered as such. They were placed next to churches - the main public places of the city. A wooden box with a slot at the top was intended for the transmission of anonymous denunciations that reported state crimes.
In the same 16th century, similar new items appeared among sailors. Each British and Dutch colony had its own mailbox. Using similar technology, sailors transmitted correspondence to other ships.
Renoir de Vilayer is considered the French inventor of the mailbox. It was he who resolved the problem of correspondence between Parisians. In the middle of the 17th century, there were four post offices in the French capital, but even they could not cope with the gigantic flow of correspondence from ordinary citizens. Renoir de Vilayer was a member of the government and the National Academy of Sciences. Using his own ingenuity and administrative resources (permission from King Louis XIV), in 1653 he initiated the installation of mailboxes throughout Paris, which significantly facilitated the work of the postal service. The novelty quickly took root in the capital and spread to other cities of the country.
The history of Russian postal services developed in such a way that domestic mailboxes appeared only in 1848. The first such wonders were installed in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At first the structures were wooden, then they were replaced with metal ones. For urgent items, mailboxes painted bright orange were used.
Stamps
The international postal system that emerged in modern times had many shortcomings. The key one was that postage fees remained difficult despite any logistical and technical innovations. This problem was first solved in the UK. In 1840, the earliest known stamp, the “penny black,” appeared there. Its release was associated with the introduction of tariffs for sending letters.
The initiator of the creation of the brand was the politician Rowland Hill. The stamp design was engraved with the profile of the young Queen Victoria. The innovation caught on and since then each letter envelope has been equipped with a special label. Stickers appeared in other countries as well. The reform led to a significant increase in the number of postal deliveries in the UK, more than doubling in just the first year after the landmark change.
Stamps appeared in Russia in 1857. The first postage mark was valued at 10 kopecks. The stamp featured a double-headed eagle. This heraldic symbol was chosen for the circulation, since it was the emblem of the Postal Department of the empire. This department tried to keep up with Western trends. The USSR Post also paid a lot of attention; postage payment signs appeared in 1923.
Postcards
The familiar postcards arose relatively recently. The first card of this kind appeared in 1869 in Austria-Hungary. Soon this format gained pan-European popularity. This happened during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, when French soldiers began sending illustrated postcards to their families en masse.
Front-line fashion was instantly intercepted by businessmen. Within a few months, postcards began to be produced en masse in England, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. The first Russian postcard was published in 1872. Six years later, at a special congress in Paris, an international standard for card sizes was adopted (9 centimeters long, 14 centimeters wide). Later it was changed several times. Over time, subtypes of cards appeared: greeting cards, species cards, reproductions, artistic cards, advertising cards, political cards, etc.
New trends
In 1820, the envelope was invented in Great Britain. After another 30 years, stamped parcels appeared. In the mid-19th century, a letter could travel around the world in 80-85 days. Departures accelerated when the Trans-Siberian Railway opened in Russia.
The 19th century was marked by the successive appearance of the telegraph, telephone and radio. The emergence of new technologies did not diminish the importance that mail represented for the people of that time. The telegraph provided invaluable assistance to its development (in all countries the departments responsible for these two types of communications were gradually united).
In 1874, the Universal Postal Union was created and the Universal Postal Congress was convened. The purpose of the event was to sign an international agreement that could unify the disparate systems for transmitting correspondence in different countries of the world. Representatives of 22 states attended the congress. They signed the Universal Postal Agreement, soon renamed the Universal Postal Convention. The document summarized the international rules for the exchange of items. Since then, the history of Russian post has continued in line with the global evolution of postal services.
At the end of the 19th century, the development of aeronautics began. Man's conquest of the air has led to the disappearance of any physical barriers to travel around the world. As mentioned above, even ancient civilizations knew their own airmail - pigeon mail. Birds were used by people for communication even at the very zenith of progress. Pigeons became especially indispensable during bloody conflicts. Feathered mail was regularly used on the fronts of the First and Second World Wars.
The modern era has many definitions. It is also called informational. And this is largely true. Today, information is the main resource driving progress. The revolution associated with it occurred thanks to the advent of the Internet and modern means of communication.
Nowadays, paper mail, familiar to many generations of people, is gradually giving way to electronic mail. The iron box for envelopes was replaced by e-mail, and social networks completely erased the idea of distance. If twenty years ago the Internet was perceived as an eccentric fun, now it is difficult to imagine the life of a modern person without it. Electronic e-mail, accessible to every person, embodies the centuries-old evolution of mail with all its various jerks and jumps.
It's no secret that world history is closely connected with the exchange of information - without this process the existence of human society is simply impossible. A key role in such an exchange is played by communication, that is, the transmission and reception of information using various technical means. In very ancient times, people did not have multi-core smartphones, so they used more primitive means: voice, sounds, fire, smoke and the like.
Over time, the means and forms of communication changed - those who were smarter came up with writing a little later and began to transmit information in writing. Since then, information began to be transmitted in a longer-lasting form and especially intensively, and its first transmission can safely be considered the birthday of mail. 
Today, the word “Mail” refers to both a post office (post office, branch), a message, and the totality of received correspondence (letters, parcels).
The most interesting museum exhibitions about mail were, perhaps, in the Museum of Communications. A.S. Popov in St. Petersburg and in the Postal Museum in Ufa (about zero kilometer).
It’s me, postman Pechkin, who brought a parcel for your boy
Historians are of the opinion that the Russians adopted the structure of the postal service from the conquerors - the Mongols. Then postal stations appeared on the main roads (at a distance of 30 to 100 versts from each other) - “pits” where “yamchas” (messengers) changed horses. In turn, the words “yam” and “yamchi” come from two Tatar words - “dzyam” (road) and “yam-chi” (guide). This is where the word “coachman” came from, which was used to describe people involved in transporting people and goods on horse-drawn vehicles. Coachman, don’t chase horses...The work of the messengers was subject to wear and tear (and were subject to harsh punishments in case of dishonest performance of duties or failure to deliver packages on time), so they tried to recruit stronger people into their ranks. For example, the first parcel from Ufa to Moscow (via Kazan) in 1639 took the horse messenger Grishka Pogorelsky as many as 70 days (possibly because he had out-of-date maps in his navigator). Try riding a horse for 70 days... but that’s only one way.
Model of a postal station of the 17th-18th century
The word “postman” (by the way, also a borrowed word) in pre-revolutionary Russia began to be used in the postal business in 1716, and before that, employees who delivered mail were called “postmen.” At the same time, there were variations depending on the type of mail distributed: non-resident mail was delivered by postmen, and city letters were delivered by letter carriers.
Peter I seriously upgraded the postal system with his reforms - it was under his rule that postal services in Russia appeared in all the main cities of the country. The post office became state-owned, the first post offices in Russia were created, post offices were opened in provincial cities, and the position of postmaster was introduced.
At the same time, a new uniform for postal employees was introduced: a dark green cloth caftan with a departmental emblem - a postal horn (to notify of its arrival) and a red eagle (the coat of arms meant that the postal worker is a civil servant and is under the tutelage and protection of the great brother). Later, a bell was used to sound a sound signal.
By the end of the 18th century, the length of postal routes in Russia was no less than 33 thousand miles (here they suggest that it is 35204.4 kilometers).
By the way, since we’re talking about transport, we can’t help but mention the railway. The first mail carriages (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) began running in 1851.
Couverts and stamps
As now as before, free cheese was only in mousetraps and in cheeseburgers punched like hamburgers. To put it simply, sending letters was not a free pleasure.Letters at that time were written on paper, which was then folded with the text inside. The address was indicated on the outside on the blank side, and the folding location was often sealed with sealing wax. Then the letter was taken to the post office, where the employee (after weighing the item and receiving money for sending it) stamped a special stamp. The resulting piece was called a “cover” (presumably from the English “to cover” - to close) and was a prototype of modern envelopes.
A stamp is a seal-type device used at the post office to obtain (manually or mechanically) stamp impressions that are used to cancel postage marks, confirm receipt of a postal item, control the route and time spent en route, as well as apply any notes.
Well, this is also what they call the print itself, which itself carries quite a lot of different information (depending on color, shape, content, purpose, and so on).
The volume of transfers was continuously growing, and soon such an imperfect method of payment very quickly became expensive, primarily for the service employees themselves. Therefore, to streamline the system of postal fees in 1845, the postal department carried out a number of reforms, among which was the introduction (first in St. Petersburg, and then in Moscow) of the first postal payment marks. This is how stamped envelopes appeared - the same envelopes, but with a stamp already printed on the front side. Initially, they were in circulation only within the city, but already in 1848, variants of different denominations appeared, including for nonresident correspondence.
Since then, the appearance and design of the envelope have remained virtually unchanged.
Stamps
The stamp system was replaced by postage stamps - special signs, franking (a form of advance payment by the sender for postage and delivery of the postage) which indicates the fact of payment for the services of the department (forwarding and delivery of both domestic and international correspondence). Small and beautiful pieces of paper with a given value (face value) and a rich history.
My modest collection)
It is believed that their inventor in 1837 was the Englishman Rowland Hill, whose mother worked at the post office and repeatedly talked about the difficulties of work, the shortcomings of the postal system and the high cost of payment. In response to this, Hill once put forward the idea of a uniform postal rate (paid by the sender), releasing a pamphlet “Postal Reform, Its Importance and Expediency.” It was there that the appearance of stamps was envisaged: “ Perhaps this difficulty (of using stamped envelopes in certain cases) might be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp and covered at the back with a glutinous wash, which the bringer might, by the application of a little moisture , attach to the back of the letter, so as to avoid the necessity of re-directing it» (« Perhaps this difficulty (of using stamped envelopes in certain cases) can be eliminated by a piece of paper large enough to bear the stamp, and coated on the back with a thin layer of adhesive, which the sender can, with a little dampening, apply to the back. letters in order to avoid the need to redirect it."). A little later he became the author of the first stamp (“Penny Black”), and from there it went…
The world's first postage stamp
Stamps appeared in Russia a little later - in 1857 by A.P. Charulsky (an employee of the postal department) adopted foreign experience and proposed introducing a stamp system in our cold regions.
The first drafts of Russian postage stamps (submitted by F.M. Kepler on October 21, 1856) were rejected by Charulsky. Later, the senior engraver of the EZGB, Franz Mikhailovich Kepler, joined the stamp project - after reading Charukovsky’s feedback on the first samples, he began to make the first samples - from several options, one was chosen, which became the first postage stamp of Russia. Beautiful? ;)
The first stamps had to be cut out with scissors, although very soon they came to the conclusion that this was not the most convenient option. In 1847, Dublin Post Office employee Henry Archer proposed perforating, that is, punching through round holes around the entire perimeter of the stamp. But few people know that postage stamps are perforated not only to make it easier to separate stamps - the shape of the perforation and its size are also one of the ways to protect against counterfeiting.
Mailboxes
The advent of stamped envelopes simplified postage payments and made the presence of a postal official unnecessary. All this contributed to the rapid appearance of mailboxes (for collecting and storing letters) right on the city streets.
There were a huge variety of design options for mailboxes at different times - both street and “home”, and vandal-resistant, and even with devices for issuing stamps - many museums, as a rule, have entire collections of them. 
War years
Civilian letters are one thing, but the need to exchange information during hostilities, when mail was in even greater demand, is quite another. The Great Patriotic War made itself felt - the movement of millions of people caused a huge increase in the flow of postal exchange, which is why the post office (as well as telegraphs, about which a little later) worked around the clock, processing thousands of parcels daily. To understand the scale, in the Bashkir Republic alone (Ufa was an important component of the postal system of those times), more than 20 million letters were processed, sent and delivered in a timely manner during the war years.
A minute of entertaining arithmetic: the average speed of an LTE connection from Megafon in St. Petersburg was 50 megabits per second for reception. If we assume that all 20 million letters in the Bashkir Republic would have been written on A4 sheets during the war years (on both sides, that is, approximately 5000 characters per sheet), then the resulting volume of text (20,000,000 * 5 KB = 95.367 GB) could be downloaded in 4.5 hours. I would naively assume that the correspondence of the entire country could be pumped out in a week... so, what am I talking about.
By the way, letters and postcards addressed to the front were sent free of charge.
Nowadays
At the end of the last millennium, equipment and technology began to develop especially intensively; mobile communications and the Internet appeared in Russia. The high level of penetration of these technologies has significantly affected the nature of communications between people: the flow of simple written correspondence continues to decline.But the residents of the country lost practically nothing (except for the joy of receiving a warm letter) - after all, paper mail was replaced by electronic mail. To transmit information, you don’t need to build a fire, have homing pigeons... and you don’t even need to know where the mailbox closest to your house is - you just need to get a phone/tablet/laptop anywhere in the city and be in touch. Any mailing address, instant sending and receiving letters, any file attachments, group correspondence, forwarding, sorting - yes, yes, that's all. Being thousands of kilometers from the office, I was aware of what was happening at work.
But once upon a time, sending only one way would have taken more than one day...
To be continued.
Voronov S.S.
Introduction
Every day, tens of thousands of letters, parcels, and parcels are delivered to people using the postal service. Mail helps people communicate on different parts of the world. In the modern world, in the era of the Internet and high-quality telephone communications, mail is losing its relevance, but still remains the main way of communication between people, and also plays a major role in sending parcels.
The modern idea of mail is a little different from the idea that people had in the past. The Russian word “mail” comes from foreign words, the meaning of which can be roughly translated into Russian as – stop, station (where post horses were changed).
Post is a type of communication and an institution (state in many countries) that transmits information in the form of postal items (written correspondence, periodicals, money orders, parcels, parcels) using vehicles (rail, road, sea, air).
Postal services developed differently among different nations, so different cultures had their own peculiarities of postal communication. But still, some parallels in history can be drawn.
Ancient times
At the beginning of the era of human origin or in primitive times, voice communication served as a tool for transmitting important information. The main disadvantage of such communication was the inability to transmit information over long distances. To transmit signals over long distances in prehistoric times, primitive people began to use drums and fires.
Age of Great Empires
In the era of the Great Empires (or, as they used to call it, the era of antiquity), the main way of transmitting information was messengers and couriers. In a number of states (for example, the Roman Empire), postal services were state-owned and well established. In some countries, when delivering mail over long distances, messengers were sent on horseback. In ancient times, mail was mainly actively used by the leaders of empires or the nobility for rapid communication with remote provinces or for the transmission of quick messages.
Foot messengers in the service of the leadership, as a rule, were slaves and had to cover long distances in the shortest possible periods of time, thereby ensuring the efficiency of decision-making, both in peacetime and in wartime. The people involved in this craft were very well prepared physically.
Large eastern states (Egypt, Persia, China), due to the large extent of their territories and subject possessions, began to use pigeons as mail carriers. The birds were specially trained and raised, after which the concept of “carrier pigeon” arose. One of the main tasks of mail in large empires was the delivery of messages related to military purposes, and there were even separate services.
During excavations of various cities of ancient cultures, archaeologists found manuscripts, writings and other evidence that mail in those days had already begun to acquire the structure that it has in the modern world. Even then, rest stations that served as “post offices” were found. At these stations, the messengers changed horses and rested.
The Roman Empire made the greatest contribution to the development of postal services. Postal service was subordinated to the state, and postal transportation was carried out both by land and by sea. The emperors needed mail to communicate with all the provinces of the Roman Empire and was of great importance.
For the ordinary population in large empires, as a rule, there were no methods of delivering mail, because... mail, in the form in which it was, served for the benefit of emperors and nobility, so postal messages were delivered with the help of friends who traveled to other cities, provinces, and countries on business.
Middle Ages
Europe
The Middle Ages is known as the era of numerous wars, military campaigns, the strengthening of the role of the church, but at the same time as the era of technological progress.
In some European countries, after the fall of the Roman Empire, they tried to recreate the state post office, but all attempts did not lead to a positive result. The nobility carried out postal transportation with the help of their subjects (messengers, couriers, drivers).
Because The role of the church in medieval Europe increased and the churches united around one main church in Rome, then a monastic post arose. The main task was to maintain communication between European churches, monastic orders, numerous brotherhoods and the main church. There is no mention in history of a separate service in the church dealing with postal forwarding, but the fact of active communication between churches is confirmed by archaeologists with the help of monastic couriers.
With the advent of science-based universities, there has been a need for communication between them, as well as between students and each other and their families. A university post office emerged as a separate service, and messengers involved in the delivery of postal messages even had certain privileges.
The development of crafts, trade, science, and culture in Europe led to the development of postal relations, because people needed to quickly resolve emerging issues, and there was still no state postal service. This led to the emergence of messenger or courier services, and city post offices began to emerge, facilitating communication between artisans, merchants, scientists, artists, musicians, etc. After some time, ordinary people began to use the services that arose.
Then the institutions of city messengers arose. At this time, the concept of paying for the delivery of letters, parcels, etc. was born. at a certain rate. The services of such institutions were used by both nobles, government administrators, and ordinary people. Some city institutions even then began to become famous for the accuracy of the delivery time of postal messages.
Centralized mail, which worked for the needs of the state and dealt only with state postal forwarding, began to emerge in the 15th century in France.
Asia
After the fall of the Roman Empire, unlike Europe, a well-organized postal service almost immediately emerged in Asian countries with already functioning postal relations. The postal services were used by the nobility, but the lower strata of the population also received limited access. Postal couriers had insignia (yellow ribbons) so that they could be recognized from afar.
South and North America
According to archaeologists, Indian tribes such as the Incas, Aztecs and others also had a system for delivering postal messages using couriers. The couriers were runners who quickly covered long distances. At a certain distance from each other there were “post houses”, where one of the couriers passed a message to another and could stay to rest. Postal parcels were also delivered in this way. The number of postal houses and couriers themselves was very large. Postal messages were transmitted both in written and oral form.
XVI–XIX centuries
During this period of time, a system of centralized royal mail arose in the most developed countries of Europe (France, England, etc.). The idea and the first steps to recognize mail as a monopoly and a state responsibility were implemented in Germany in the 17th century. And with the beginning of industrial growth, the process of organizing fast postal services only accelerated; many states secured postal services. Almost all segments of the population could afford to use postal services. For transportation within countries, special mail coaches were often used. The transport of passengers was also considered postal transport.
A radical revolution in shipping occurred with the advent of steam engines, which were introduced on ships and trains. The mail delivery process has become significantly faster. All postal communications became available to all segments of the population and were carried out with almost all the most remote corners of the country; international relations also reached a new level.
In the 19th century, an envelope, a postage stamp, and parcels were invented. The post office began to acquire the organization of work that it has in modern times.
The expansion of rail and steamship transportation meant that a letter could travel across the entire globe in 80 days. Postal transportation gained popularity and post offices began to appear in almost every village. Post offices themselves also evolved and began to provide new services and operations to customers.
At the end of the 19th century, the telegraph was invented, radio, telephone and some functions of postal communication began to lose their relevance, but, nevertheless, mail did not lose its relevance.
Postage stamps also began to gain relevance as works of art.
In the 19th century, the Universal Postal Union was formed, which included many different countries.
The modern postal network provides postal services throughout the country, including all cities and rural areas. The full range of services provided by the post office has become enormous.
