Russian Mail to Mont Athos before 1870

From early in the 19^th century, the Imperial Russian government was actively involved - financially and diplomatically - in expanding the Russian presence on Mont Athos. By 1912, the majority of monks on Athos were Russian though in 1913 the Imperial government sent gunboats to Athos to arrest and deport about 800 of the 2000 Russian monks. They were accused of heresy, tried in Odessa, and internally exiled. For every two or three monks there was probably one servant and many or most of those were Russian too.

The major developments in Russification took place after 1850 and at some point  a ROPiT postal agency was established on Athos. But any ingoing or outgoing mail before 1870 is very rarely seen and I cannot find on the internet any example of ROPiT postmarks for Mont Athos before the 1890s, though inward mail in the form of Money Letters is common from about 1875 onwards. It always has Odessa transits but only in the 1890s do Athos marks  appear and then only on occasional items which were sent outside bags sealed in Odessa.

In previous Blogs I have illustrated the use of Free Frank privilege to send mail from mainland Russia to Athos, always via Odessa. I can now illustrate an early item on which I would welcome comment. 

Sent in 1869 from Novgorod under a Free Frank seal and Registry number it has no post office markings apart from the Novgorod despatch. On later mail, an Odessa transit is universally applied. In addition, the routing on this official item appears to identify a named individual at Odessa who is then meant to ensure the onward transmission to Athos. If this is the correct reading, then this item may indicate that even as late as 1869, the arrangements for sending mail to Athos were in a rather provisional state. Since this entire letter came from an Athos archive (ex Christou collection), it clearly arrived and the sender seems to have been clear about what they were doing.

Comments and scans please!

Here's the first Comment from Howard Weinert:

This document was issued by the bookkeeping office of the Novgorod administrative board, part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on 29 Oct. 1869. Sent to the New Russian hermitage of St. Andrew the First Called in Mount Athos, in care of an Odessa merchant. The message says that the five rubles sent by the hermitage on 10 Jan. 1869 to pay for the official publication "Provincial News" was received in Novgorod on 25 April and noted in the account book.
I have seen many covers from the 1870s addressed to merchant Grigory Mikhailovich Butovich in Odessa for transmission to Athos. (This is not the person named on the Novgorod letter).

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