Old postcards greeting

This section gathers all-purpose Soviet greeting cards that are not tied to any particular holiday: a sender could sign one for a birthday, an anniversary or any family occasion. Every card here was printed between 1980 and 1991, most of them in 1984 and 1985.

Nearly all of these Soviet postcards carry a one-word Russian title, Pozdravlyayu or Pozdravlyaem. The ending changes the sender: the first means “I congratulate you”, from one person, the second “we congratulate you”, from a family or a workplace team. The earliest card is a Pozdravlyayu from 1980; the latest are two Pozdravlyayu and two Ukrainian-language Vitaiemo (“We congratulate you”) cards from 1991. Other formulas occur too, such as Zhelaem schastya (“We wish you happiness”) and the Ukrainian Zi sviatom (“Happy holiday”), both dated 1990.

A small separate group are invitation cards: Priglashayu (“I invite you”) and Priglashaem (“We invite you”) from 1986, two cards titled “Invitation” from 1987 and 1988, and a Ukrainian Prykhodte do nas u hosti (“Come and visit us”) from 1984.

Taken together, they follow one short greeting formula across the last twelve years of the Soviet Union.