Soviet Union

Commons applies present Russian law. Article 1259 of Part IV of the Russian Civil Code, in force since January 1, 2008, puts official symbols and signs such as flags, emblems, orders and money outside copyright, and Russia's postal law of July 17, 1999 counts postage stamps among official signs of postage.¹ Commons says Russia is the legal successor of the RSFSR and the USSR under intergovernmental and international treaties, so the license tag it uses also covers their stamps and postal stationery.² The tag warns that a stamp can carry a work, such as a painting, that keeps its own copyright. The exemption covers the stamp as a whole; extracting that work could infringe, and the denomination and country name should stay on the image.³¹

The Soviet Union existed from December 30, 1922 to December 26, 1991.² The RSFSR issued its first stamps in 1918, the first Soviet stamps appeared in August 1923, and Soviet stamps were issued until 1991.⁴⁵ The Commons license tag for these stamps applies to official signs at the union level and says those of the 14 other Soviet republics fall under the law of their own successor states.³ Commons names twelve former republics as legal successors of the USSR, those that formed the Commonwealth of Independent States; the three Baltic states took the position that they had been occupied and did not join.² Commons' stamp note relies on Russia alone and does not say how the other successor states treat Soviet stamps.