I would have expected a communist (i.e. poor) country to have more use for some properties of the paper system:
1. You can easily calculate the weight of that letter without a scale, and stick exactly to the 20g limit (or whatever) for the cheapest postage rate. (I remember doing this in the 1990s for air mail letters to relatives.)
2. You can crush 2, 4 or even 8 normal A4 pages onto a single sheet while photocopying, and save paper/money. Although maybe by the time photocopiers were available in your country, the cost of paper was no longer an issue. (I would press the 2-on-1 or even 4-on-1 button when printing at university, to halve the cost at essentially no inconvenience.)
1. You can easily calculate the weight of that letter without a scale, and stick exactly to the 20g limit (or whatever) for the cheapest postage rate. (I remember doing this in the 1990s for air mail letters to relatives.)
2. You can crush 2, 4 or even 8 normal A4 pages onto a single sheet while photocopying, and save paper/money. Although maybe by the time photocopiers were available in your country, the cost of paper was no longer an issue. (I would press the 2-on-1 or even 4-on-1 button when printing at university, to halve the cost at essentially no inconvenience.)