Mondvor

Forgot to explain. In Russian "ДЗОТ" means "ДЕРЕВО-ЗЕМЛЯНАЯ ОГНЕВАЯ ТОЧКА" or "FIRING POSITION COVERED WITH WOOD AND SOIL". So it is a pillbox.

As far as I can understand this terrible ( ) handwriting, the citation says the following: While being a subgroup commander on a main srtiking sector of division's offensive, comrade Nedashkovskij provided a takeover of an enemy's strong fortified area Nikolskoe. During this action his unit neutralized 6 pillboxes, 4 machine-gun positions, 3 mortar positions and eliminated up to 200 German soldiers. His divizion (not division - AK), despite strong enemy artillery fire and air strikes, provided the cover for our infantry units attack and capturing villages Nikolskoe, Novaya Derevnya and Golitino. Deserves the state award - Order of the Red Banner. Commander of 826 artillery regiment Major - Unclear. Military Commissar of 826 artillery regiment Battalion Commissar (political rank equal to Captain - AK) - Unclear. May 29, 1942.

Rotating-tool numbered Red Stars were produced since 1968. But even later - in 70th and 80th - there were still a lot of unissued Red Stars with hand-engraved numberes. And some of them were issued for Afgan War. For example Red Star # 3647782 was issued to Aleksandr Vladimirovich Gaas in according with Ukaz of Supreme Soviet Presidium from May 17, 1984 for actions in Afganistan. Majority of Afgan Red Stars were rotating-tool, but some of them were had-engraved.

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Here we go...

Sorry, I didn't get your question about cavalier books. What type of cavalier books do you mean - for full cavalier of Glory, Labor Glory or Crab? First two are OK, it's more or less easy to determine a fake orderbook. But for Crab... There were more Order of Victory awarded than 1st class of Crab. Do you really think you have a chance to buy one? All 1st class orders from private collections that I saw were fakes.

OK, now I see. Sure I do have some images of those. If you interested I can post them later today. I do not have an access to my files at the moment. We have to keep in mind that fake orderbooks for awards such as Order of Personal Courage, Order of Honour, Order of Friendship of People, 3rd and 2nd classes of "Crabs" are extremely difficult to recognize. At the end of 90th and early 2000 blank orderbooks of late type (with Gorbachevs and Menteshashvili signatures) were for sale in many places. I've seen them a lot in Kiev phaleristic club. So all you have to do - is to buy a blank unissued orderbook and accurately fill it with nice handwriting using black ink.

What do you mean by "late fake order books"?

Possibilities? No limits...

"Black dealers" often steal the pictures from our web-site to place them on EBay. Last time it was 3rd class Suvorov on suspension that belongs to my friend Eugene Rabkin. Eugene informed EBay moderators and they closed this item. If anyone wants to look at the REAL reverse of that RSFSR RB 2nd award - here it is.

This is the best book about Soviet Awards that has ever been published in English. Yours to discover

Revers of that RB is a conversion from a regular suspension order in s/n range appr. 120.000 - 180.000. Fake makers cut-off the ring on the top of the order, than they soldered fake screwpost and changed serial number. Mintmark looks real to me. To be 100% sure high-quality images are necessary...

No problem, I'll try to do my best.

It might be funny (or stupid), but in my passport my name indicated as Andriy. This is Ukrainian transcription. Even though my whole family and all my friends speak Russian, in official papers we have Ukrainian spelling since 1991.

My real name is Andrew or Andrei in Russian. I should agree that using a pseudonim could cause some difficulties. But as long as I can see many people on the Forum use pseudonims as well

Thanks a lot for amazing documents! BTW, who is Alex?

Hi stogieman, Excellent group, my congratulations. It's really hard to find mirror reverse RB in such a wonderful condition. Especially with a document. I've seen this group on Markov's website. Could you post his award citation card?

There was no cap badges in military uniform during 1917 October Revolution. The only element of Communist uniform was red ribbon sewed on the coat or on the hat. First more or less regular uniform for Red Army appeared during Civil War in 1919-21. They did have cap badges, however they were different. They displayed hammer and plow instead of hummer and sickle.

This is WW II cap badge. Brass hammer and sickle from that badge was often used to replace missing detail from GPW order (golden hammer and sickle).

What can I say? It's just beautiful. Escpecially considering the price