The Russian post offices in Crete were established by Russia in the area of Crete it occupied as part of the joint occupying force that arrived in 1898.

Russia issued postage stamps for its district of Rethymno(n) in 1899. A first set of four stamps was produced by handstamping one of the two designs, both based on the imperial Russian double eagle emblem. The one design was inscribed with colorless Greek letters in colored scrolls; the one-metallik value was handstamped in green, while the two-metallik was in stamped in both black and rose-colored ink. The other design used colored Latin letters on a white background, and appeared only as a two-metallik value in blue.

Regularly-printed stamps came out later in 1899, using a design based on Poseidon's trident. They came in three values, one and two metallik and one grosion (equivalent to four metallik), and seven colors (orange, green, yellow, rose, violet, blue, and black. In addition, a variation on the design added five-point stars in the frame around the trident, and was printed in blue, rose, green, and violet, for a grand total of 33 varieties. The stamps also received a violet control mark , in the form of a double eagle, before being issued.

This issue of stamps is known without its control mark, and has been counterfeited.

The Cretan government issued its own stamps on 1 March 1900, and these eventually superseded the Russian issues; see postage stamps and postal history of Crete .

References

• Scott catalog
• Wellsted, Rossiter, and Flower, The Stamp Atlas (Macdonald, 1986, ISBN 0-8160-3146-2) p. 124-125