Today, we'll take a look at a card from Russia. It was sent by Anastasia from Norilsk, Russia.
The card read "Keep calm and wait for summer", which is a really popular meme format used worldwide. But, do you know the history behind it?
The sentence on the above card is an imitation of the phrase "Keep calm and carry on".
Keep Calm and Carry On was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 in preparation for World War II. The poster was intended to raise the morale of the British public, threatened with widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities.
Original 1939 poster.
Although 2.45 million copies were printed, and the Blitz did, in fact, take place, the poster was only rarely publicly displayed and was little known until a copy was rediscovered in 2000 at Barter Books, a bookshop in Alnwick. It has since been re-issued by a number of private companies and has been used as the decorative theme for a range of products.
The Keep Calm and Carry On poster was designed by the Ministry of Information during the period of 27 June to 6 July 1939. It was produced as part of a series of three "Home Publicity" posters (the others read "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" and "Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might"). Each poster showed the slogan under a representation of a "Tudor Crown" (a symbol of the state). They were intended to be distributed to strengthen morale in the event of a wartime disaster, such as the mass bombing of major cities using high explosives and poison gas, which was widely expected within hours of an outbreak of war.
In 2000, Stuart Manley, co-owner with his wife Mary of Barter Books Ltd. in Alnwick, Northumberland, was sorting through a box of second-hand books bought at auction when he uncovered one of the original "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters. The couple framed it and hung it up by the cash register; it attracted so much interest that Manley began to produce and sell copies.
In early 2012, Barter Books debuted an informational short film, The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On, providing visual insight into the modernisation and commercialisation of the design and the phrase.
As the popularity of the poster in various media has grown, innumerable parodies, imitations and co-optations have also appeared, making it a notable meme. Messages range from the cute to the overtly political. Examples have included, "Get Excited and Make Things" (with a crown incorporating spanners), "Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake" (with a cupcake icon), "Keep Spending and Carry On Shopping", "Keep Calm and Don't Sneeze" during the 2009 swine flu pandemic and "Keep Calm and Call Batman" (with the Batman logo).
An electronic sign inside a metro station in Washington, DC during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anastasia desired for a change in weather which she conveyed through the meme on the postcard. She said they all are tired of the snow and are waiting for summer and that the snow will be melting only in June.
She wrote --
"Hello!, Greetings from Norilsk which is in the north of Russia. We all are tired of the snow, we have lots of it and waiting for summer. But the snow will melt only in June - that is north! Best wishes, Anastasia. -12°C. 15th February 2019."
Norilsk is an industrial city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located above the Arctic Circle.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Norilsk became the main centre of the company Norilsk Nickel, the world's leading producer of nickel and palladium, with 17 per cent and 41 per cent of world production, respectively. Nowadays, Norilsk Nickel brings in 2 per cent of Russia's national GDP. Almost 60 per cent of the people living in Norilsk today are involved in this trade.
An aerial view of Norilsk.
Today, Norilsk is the second-worst city on the planet, environmentally speaking. Because of the high concentration of copper and other elements in the atmosphere, its 200,000 inhabitants have dark, toxic clouds constantly dumped on them. Add to this a permanent biting wind, and a winter that spans almost ten months of the year.
Anastasia stuck 4 stamps; one stamp of 40 rubles, another of 3 rubles and 2 stamps of 1 ruble each.
The 3 lower denomination stamps are from the Kremlin series. In my previous posts, I had mentioned receiving some stamps from this series which means I'm one step closer to completing the series.
The 40-ruble stamp, issued to commemorate the FIFA World Cup, depicts the countries in group C of the tournament which was held in 2018 in Russia. The countries in the group were France, Australia, Peru and Denmark. France eventually went on to with the cup after 80 years.
