Mondvor

Yes he was. But (1) this exception only supports general rule, because every rule should have some exceptions. And (2) I'm not sure that information on this article was entirely correct. I would not make any conclusions without award card or citation. It was a chance that he received Nevsky still as a regimental commander (date of Prikaz), but the delivery of award was delayed, so he was bestowed with it few months later already as a division commander.

Afanasiev was not a General. He was a Colonel. And we were discussing Nevsky orders, presented to Generals. Still, for his Nevsky it would be interesting to see the citation.

That is correct only on the paper. In a reality no Army or Corps commander would recommend one of his division commanders to Nevsky. If you want your divisions to fight well, you have to give some positive reinforcement to people who are under your command. Giving them low graded Nevsky instead of higher graded Suvorov 2nd class would be an example of stupid behavior

Another General with Nevsky...

Actually, you can find some generals wearing Nevsky. Here is one of them - General Krupskij, commander of 9th Ground-attack Air Corps. He was promoted to General on February 4, 1944. So his Nevsky might be awarded before that date.

This is all because of my poor English I was trying to say there that Nevsky should not be counted as regular award for Generals. Their list might consists of GPW 1st class, 1st and 2nd class "polkovodets" and Red Banner.

I would trade Glory 3rd for long service Red Star if this Red Star belonged to HSU

Gentlemen, Finally I've reinstalled operational system on my computer and now I have an access to the forum from my home place Of course I'll agree with Wild Card, but with one small addition. We can create "the hierarchy" or "scale of value" in terms of how we imagine it. But for real World War soldiers it might be slightly different. Each veteran (private or general) have had his own unique point of view on the subject which award is more valuable. I think that we all should agree that long-service awards must stay aside in this evaluation. It's all about awards for some real concrete merits. We also should exclude some unusual presentations (like Lenin to Private or "For Valor" to Colonel). They are exceptions. If we analyze hundreds of award sets, we can probably see that the number of awards to non-officer ranks limited to MM, Valor, Glory, Red Star and Patriotic War (both classes). Everything else was very rare. For junior officers (from Jr. Lieutenent to Captain) it was Valor, Red Star, GPW, Red Banner, Nevsky and rarely 3rd class of Sv, Kt or Hm. Senior officers (up to Colonel) should eliminate Valor medal from the list. For some of them (who hold certain positions) we can add 2nd class of Sv, Kt and Hm. Generals should eliminate Red Star and 2nd class CPW as well as Nevsky. Also 3rd classes of "polkovodets" we can replace with 1st class. 2nd class awards stay also. Of course this is only my opinion, that describes situation "in general". Exceptions are possible for every group I have described. Lenin... Well, Lenin is a strange award. If we would not count long-service cases and HSU cases (for the case of HSU related Lenin it would be definitely top value award for both private and general), then the events of bestowing Lenin as a single award are not very common. That mostly happened at the beginning of the war (in most cases for Air Force members). By the way, at pre-war period Lenin was not very valuable award comparing to Red Banner. One military bomber pilot received Lenin for Finland War and complained to his wife about that. He said that his gunner got Red Star, his navigator got Red Banner and he received Lenin. "What the hell" - he said. "Even a milkmaid can get Lenin, but I'm a military pilot". He was right. At the end of 1930th hundreds of Lenins were given to collective-farmers for their labor achievements.

That is really interesting to see how the guys from USA and Western Europe at the beginning of 21st century discussing the REAL value of Soviet Awards during WWII. It's very easy to make any assumptions and conclusions according to your own judgement. But to find how it was in reality, I think you should ask REAL soldiers of WWII. Only they could give you exact answer. Unfortunately, not many of them are still alive now. Personally, I mostly agree with Dave that there was no universal rules for awards hierarchy. Who brought the idea that Glory was more valuable than Red Star? How about 1943? There was no Glories yet. Everything was quite different and the values of the awards would change from one cavalier to the other.

I tried wat was suggested by Chuck, but it didn't help That's OK - sooner or later I'll figure it out. Here is a translation of the Postanovlenie. I do not have actual newspaper, because all JPEG images of all Postanovlenies and Ukazes would use lots of space on a harddisc. So everything was converted in Microsoft Word format, verified and stored that way. And it's way easier to update it (for example add known awards numbers to this information). About The Rewarding Of The Pilots Of The Red Army Military Air Forces. Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided: For outstanding personal results in the acquirement of the modern military aircraft technics and skillful leadership in military and political training of Red Army Air Forces, reward: Order of Lenin: 1. Abramichev S.I. - Major. 2. Aistov S.M. - Sr. Lieutenant. ...... 118. Shevchenko V.V. - Sr. Lieutenant. 119. Yakovenko A.S. - Military Technician 1st class. Order of Red Star: 1. Abramov P.M. - Military Engeneer 3rd class. 2. Avtonomov A.A. - Captain. ...... 57. Gulyachenko I.I. - Major. ...... 261. Yagushevsky V.V. - Brigade Comissar. 262. Yarovoy K.V. - Sr. Lieutenant. Order "Badge of Honor": 1. Akulshin I.K. - Sr. Lieutenant. 2. Ananiev I.N. - Military Engeneer 2rd class. ...... 178. Yaroshenko Y.S. - Sr. Lieutenant. 179. Yachmenev S.S. - Captain. Moscow, Kremlin. May 25th, 1936. Published in # 121 Rroceedings of Central Executive Committee on May 26th, 1936 Chairman of Central Executive Committee of the USSR M. Kalinin. Executive Secretary of Central Executive Committee of the USSR I. Unshliht.

Well, until 1938 there was a Central Executive Commetee of USSR and all awards were bestowed in according with Postanovlenie (Decree) of this organization. Since 1938 Cental Executive Commetee was replaced with the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR and since that time awards were bestowed in according with Ukaz of PSS. I'll try to put the translation, but it is just a basic description. No personal details in it.

Hello Gentlemen, By some strange reason I didn't have an access to the forum from my home computer. Every time when I hit a link, the blank web page poped up. The browser says "Done" like a page was found OK, but nothing is on the screen. Probably something went wrong with my settings. But other forums and web pages I can see normally. Anyway, I found the guy. This is Ukaz (to be more precise not the Ukaz, but Postanovlenie) about Military Aviation pilots, crewmembers and technicians. His rank indicated as Major. There were more than 200 Red Stars issued with this Postanovlenie (his number in the list is 67 if I do not mistaken) along with many Red Banners and Badges of Honor. I can do the translation of the description of merits in this Postanovlenie, but it is common to all recipients. I wish I can restore my access to the forum from my home computer

Me? What a surprise Well, I have about 80% of all Ukazes from 1934 to 1938 with the names and sometimes with a description of the merits (especially for labor awards). I'll check for his name tonight.

Who is "big M"? Is that Moiseev, Merezhko or McDaniel? As far as I know there were no citations for the awards prior to WWII. All you can find is award card and Ukaz published in the newspaper.

After I'll come home, I'll check for his Ukaz in my databaze. Might be something interesting.

Awesome documents. Looks like he was in aviation. Are awards available or papers only?

My Great Grand Father was a Lieutenant NKVD officer in a position of a platoon commander in the Independent NKVD Battallion. This Battallion provided security to Headquarters of South-Eastern Front. If you are familiar with a basic history of WWII, you might know about the tragedy happened with whole South-Eastern Front in September 1941, when German troops encircled and finally captured Kiev. Front Commander HSU General-Colonel Kirponos, Front Chief of Staff General-Major Tupikov and many other top-ranking staff officers were killed trying to penetrate through enemy lines. Many others (including the Commander of 5th Army General-Major Potapov) were captured by Germans and became prisoners. Only few Soviet soldiers and officers (appr. 1 out of 10) made it through German lines and united with Soviet troops. My Great Grandpa was one of them. He spent about three month in some sort of a prison, where they questioned him, compared his story with stories of other survivers, asked him to write down his story again and again, hoping he would make a mistake. But finally they released him and returned him his rank. The main reason why they did forgive him was the fact that he kept his Communist Party ID card, his military ID card and his personal handgun. Some people destroyed their papers before the breakthrough and their fate was really grim. However, they didn't send him to the frontlines again. The rest of the war he spent in internal NKVD troops and his only award was Victory over Germany medal. Later he got some jubilee medals, Valiant Labor medal and For defence of Kiev medal. He was retired from Army in early 60th at the rank of Major.

There were no ribbons for Republican Orders. They all were placed at the red "rosette" - specially folded piece of red cloth.

All right Darrell I'll scan the documents after I'll get home today. Will try to post them at the evening. Promise you would not laugh

Gerd, you've got a very nice duplicate. My congratulations Actually, 90 percent of all duplicates made out of regularly numbered pieces. Original number was scratched off (removed, deleted - not sure which word is correct) and the number of duplicate was stamped instead. Before entering duplicate's number the surface was sand-blasted, so sometimes it is hard to see that original number was removed. On Gerd's Red Star you can see different collor of patina around the number. So this specimen is the one with rubbed out original hand-engraved number.

Making fun of "crazy Russians"? Actually, by some reason all faces on Soviet-time ID pictures are very serious. Nobody is smiling. Strange, huh? I can post MY OWN Drivers License and Young Communist League Membership ID card and I am not smiling on those pictures as well (even though I was a teenager at that time). Can anyone explain this phenomenon?

Gerd, my congratulations with a cool Patriotic War citation. Very nice condition for early 5-digit number award. In my opinion you should order award card as well, and I can explain you why do I think so. If his GPW is out of the group, then there is a chance that his other awards also were for sale as a single items. If you know their numbers, then you can start to search for them. Chances to find something are pretty low, but if it was on the market during last 5 years it is traceable.

Doc, you are absolutely right. We all start our collections from some mistakes, but after some time we gain certain amount of experience. I was really lucky because I started to collect Soviet awards during the "Golden Age", when prices were low and even rare pieces were available in big quantities. Another good thing - I lived in Kiev at that time. Kiev was a capital for all collectors from former USSR, because in Russia this hobby was strictly prohibited. But in Ukraine it was fine. So dealers from Russia, Ukraine, Baltic Countries and other places brought their stuff to Kiev. I remember that dozens of screwback Red Banners were available every Saturday and the price was from 60 USD for excellent condition award to 45 for the one with broken enamel. Early Bravery and MM medals with hand-engraved numbers were for sale in many places, and most of them with original suspension. The price was around 25 USD. I remember that I refused to buy a set with Glory 2nd class, Glory 3rd class and 6-digit Red Star (all in good condition and with orderbook) for the price of 55 USD only because both Glories had their connection rings cut. I was looking for absolutely mint condition with intact silver-alloy soldered connection rings. Yes, I was really spoiled And I miss this time a lot!!! Everything have changed now and the prices in Kiev for some awards are even higher than in USA

Dave, I think we can add another important point - let's cooperate! We are all collectors, not dealers. So we can help each other and share the knowledge we have. Together we can resist even advanced fake makers

Gentlemen, I think we all should realize that there is no "single feature" that would determine wether or not particular order is real or fake. There are many components that we should pay attention to. Mintmark, serial number style, enamel color, patina, traces of wear, goldplating, "watermarks", similarity to close numbered "neighbours" and many other things. Understanding of all that staff normally comes with the experience. If one would examine carefully ten screwback Red Banners, then eleventh item would not be a hard one to detrermine it's authenticity. And no expert would help you. Even a Great Experts can make mistakes. Try to become your own expert. Start from simple things and then proceed further. Collect pictures and scans, compare them. Look for "watermarks". Read all possible literature. And after some time you'll greatly improve your skills.