The size is standard 6 ¼" x 4 ½", postally used. The obverse shows a canceled 1947 postal stamp commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Moskva-Volga Canal. The cancel on the obverse is dated 7 July 1948. The destination cancel on the verso is dated 10 July.

In very good to excellent condition, showing very mild soiling and wrinkling to both sides. The cancels are perfectly legible, the stamp shows slight discoloration areas contained to the margins. The handwritten address is vibrantly black and perfectly legible.

The Moskva-Volga Canal was one of the most publicized of the Soviet 1930's industrial projects, both in the USSR and abroad, and also one of the deadliest, comparable perhaps only to the Belomor (White Sea - Baltic) Canal project which completed in 1932 by a workforce of 160,000 prisoner laborers of whom about 25,000 died during its construction. The workforce on the Moskva-Volga Canal project counted about 200,000 Gulag prisoners. As the Nazis were approaching Moscow in 1941, all the NKVD records pertaining to the prisoners were evacuated to Ulyanovsk (Lenin's birthplace) but were ordered to be burned right on the wharf there. Local historians estimate the death toll to be between 700,000 to about 1,500,000. To provide a frame of reference, the construction began in 1932 and finished in 1937. Even if you average out these numbers, that's over 600 deaths per day. For a detailed literary account see Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.