Anniversaries and Events 17.10.1977

The four stamps on this FDC portray stamps that mark important anniversaries and events in the year 1977. Brief details are mentioned below.

Revitalization of Handicrafts

Man and the Biosphere Programme.  The Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) of UNESCO was established in 1971 to promote interdisciplinary approaches to management, research and education in ecosystem conservation andsustainable use of natural resources.

Gymnasiade Orleans 1976. The Gymnasiade, or World Gymnasiade, is a quadrennial international multi-sport event which is organised by the International School Sport Federation (ISF). It is the largest event that the ISF holds – boy and girl athletes represented 37 countries at the 2006 Gymnasiade. Only children between the ages of 13 and 17 are eligible to compete. There are four sporting competitions at each Gymnasiade: athletics, artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, and swimming. There are 34 athletics events (17 for boys and 17 for girls), which are held in agreement with the IAAF rules. There are also 34 swimming events which are split equally between the sexes. Boys compete in eight different artistic gymnastics events, while girls contest six artistic, six rhythmic, and one all-round gymnastics event.

The first edition of the Gymnasiade was held in 1974 in Wiesbaden, Germany and it featured solely gymnastics competitions and swimming. The athletics competition was added to the programme in the following edition in Orléans in 1976. The Gymnasiade continued as a biennial event until 1990, when it was altered to a quadrennial schedule. The next edition will be held in Brasília, Brazil.

60th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution. 1977 marked the 60^th  anniversary of the Russian Revolution; an event which went a long way in shaping the 20th century in much the same way that the French Revolution shaped the 19th. That there appears to be nothing planned in Russia to mark the revolution shows a degree of nervousness by the government and the new Russian elite; a nervousness drawn from a fear that history just might repeat itself. There are two initial things to say about the Russian Revolution. When we talk of the anniversary we tend to refer to that event of October 1917 when the Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd and Lenin's address the next day to the Petrograd Soviet to make his famous announcement; "we will now proceed to construct the socialist order". In fact, the Revolution was really a serious of interconnected events which began with the overthrow of the Tsar in February 1917 and culminated in the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922.

Secondly; the revolution was based on a number of assumptions all of which proved to be erroneous leaving the revolution to engage in a grim struggle for survival before finally triumphing with the founding of the USSR five years later.

My Dear friend Merja gave me this very interesting First Day Cover.