Old postcards Baikal

This section covers Lake Baikal through two sets of views, from 1971 and 1978, which between them show the lake in different seasons and from different shores. Baikal is the deepest lake in the world (1,642 m) and one of the oldest, at 25–30 million years. Only one river flows out of it, the Angara, and the 1978 card “The Angara begins here. A holiday hotel on Baikal” was taken at its source.

The 1971 set keeps to classic scenery: “Cape Burkhan, or Shaman Rock”, “Malaya Kolokolnya Rock”, “The taiga river Kyngarga”, a storm on the lake and the steamer Komsomolets. One card shows the settlement of Davshe on the north-eastern shore, from 1946 the headquarters of the Barguzin Nature Reserve — the country’s oldest zapovednik (strict nature reserve), founded in 1916 to protect the sable.

The 1978 set ranges wider: Olkhon, the largest island on Baikal, and sunset over the Maloye More, the strait between the island and the western shore; the Baikal seal, found nowhere else; spring in the Barguzin reserve. Science appears too, with the Pisces submersible and the research vessel Vereshchagin, and archaeologists with a stone figurine found by the lake.

Vintage postcards of Baikal from two releases invite comparison, since some spots, Peschanaya Bay among them, were photographed seven years apart.