File:Soviet printed stationery 1962 (3230949637).jpg

English: In 1976/7 I used to visit a shop in Hackney Road run by a Mr Juras called the Baltic Stores. It was demolished in c 2004 after a long period of dereliction. It was the hub of a lively Lithuanian community in the area which must have arrived before world war I as the Lithuanian Church in the Oval was built at that time. I suspect the population was augmented by migration immediately after world war II. In a dealer's box of ephemera I found this reminder of the community which thrived there. It may well survive or may have joined the voluntary osmosis east into rural Essex. Political changes in Europe have resulted in yet another wave of migrants from Lithuania in the late 1990s and the 21st century. Perhaps the recipient was a stamp collector, or it came into the public domain through house clearance. Sent from Kiduliai, Lithuanian Soviet Republic in 1962 now located near the border with Kaliningrad. The name Petrauskas turns into a dative Petrauskam in the address, I suspect. As was often the case in the USSR, the stamp is printed onthe envelope - a Ganzsache in German. The Postmark is bilingual.