Locktsar

On 05/02/2016 at 21:30, JapanX said:

Without any doubts this is our Hero  

Yep. 

Don`t know about Heremitage, but Artillery museum in St.Petersburg certainly has this photo in its collection.

See http://www.prlib.ru/Lib/pages/item.aspx?itemid=120920

It was made somewhere between late 1915 and 1916.

It was published in the book that I mentioned earlier. 

Very famous photo.

Although the quaility of printing was pretty terrible 

Try to use electronic translator.

Like this one

http://translate.google.com/

Not top notch quality but better than nothing ...

Hi JapanX - long time no speak. What rank did you say he had? Not sure what Ensign correlates to?

Another question - any suggestions where one would start to try and find if any of these medals were recoverable? I mean are there are sites where these sort of medals are traded?

All suggestions welcome,

I can only concur Wild Card. Nick has done an excellent piece of work.

Nick - did you figure out what the last medal was? I went back over your reply and I might not have understood it.

Also - any idea why the hat is different between the 2 photos?

I also think the old "family legend" about a photo of him in Heremitage museum may well be wrong. It may just have been that a photo of him existed in a museum in St Petersburg.

We have tested the two photos with a few relatives and they all concur that it is him.

Nick - you are blowing us away here. A true oracle of knowledge. I say this because I had not mentioned his name in this search. His name was Ivan Romanov (Ibi Romanainen) from the village of Kolvasjärvi in the municipality of Repola (russian Rebola). The family was well off and had a large farm there. He was born, as far as we knew 29th sep 1890. He was known to be an avid hunter and scout, something that he maintained throughout his life. Looking at the photo there are distinct similarites with the photo you have found and the one we had. Eyes, mouth. He is probably just a few years older in the photo you have found. We have relatives that have said that in St Petersburg in the Heremitage there is a photo of Ivan with his medals - I wonder if it is the photo you have found. I assume you made the connections with the combinations of medals.

This is truly wonderful - there are too many details that are identical - I am pretty sure we have the same person identified. So are you saying the photos are from the village of Kolvasjärvi?

I am useless in Cyrillic but my wife should be able to read the article.

Still hard to digest this and the power of internet and people.

Trooper D, many thanks. You succeeded where I failed. Somehow I couldn't get the photo there in the 1st place. Like you say this will hopefully get more people to see and share their views.

Many thanks to you and to Nick (JapanX) and Claudius.

Thank you Claudius. So from what I gather the photo is of him when he is 25. He was born 1890 so that's how the photo allegedly is from 1915. He was born in the municipality of Rebola in Karelia. Not many Karelians made a career in the tsar army and allegedly unusual for someone to become that decorated. The "family legend" then says that he was imprisoned several times 1917 and onwards, one of the first should have been in Kronstadt and have been wounded (shot) in his leg. Legend further makes out that by coincidence he was spotted by tsar Nikolajs doctor who managed to get him from the prison to take him to a hospital ward ("..this man will die here unless he gets some medical attention...") and that is how he managed to escape. The era between late 1917 is somewhat unclear but we know that in 1927 he managed to get across the border to Finland where he remained until 1949 when the Russian (bolsjeviks) were on to him again and he again had to flee - this time to Sweden where he lived until his death.

The medals we believe were lost - they were stripped off him when he was captured.

New to this forum but in desperate need to get some help in trying to establish some family history.

This is a photo of a relative. The "family legend" tells that he served in the personal guard for the tsar family - and yes I know this can be a very wide description. There are lot's of different parts that are referred to as to tsar Nikolaj II personal guard. Nevertheless this is part of what I am trying to establish. The photo is from 1915 and he is 25 years old. It has always been said that he was highly (?) decorated and there was reference that he had been awarded the St Georges Cross in all 4 classes. Now from what I can make out from this photo - the 4 medals to the left do seem to be St Georges Cross - they are all identical from what I can see.

Anyone who can support that by looking at the photo?

Secondly - anyone have a guess on what the other medals might be? I make it to be 5 more medals - not sure if the last item is a medal or a symbol for the regiment?

Thirdly - anyone talented in identifying imperial Russian uniforms and could tell/guess what regiment he belonged to?

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