Ferdinand

Great picture indeed! Khrushchev was promoted to Lieutenant-General on 12 February 1943, so what is his rank on this picture? The Lt.Gen. equivalent of Komkor?? I'm not really familiar with pre-1943 rank insignia.

His first name is 'Zinovy'.

To all, here's a link to the other topic about the FoP: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=10160

Or how about this late war Red Banner for $717? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=170198456037

I think the abbreviation is 'oiptabr' - Otdelnaya Istrebitelnaya Protivotankovaya Artilleryskaya Brigada (Independent Destroyer Anti-Tank Artillery Brigade). The city might be Zaporozhe?

Sorry, my mistake - I confused the Hero Star # 1 with a Sukhbaatar.

Wasn't # 1 Stalin's? http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?s=&showtop...ost&p=41846

Miguel, you should take a look at http://mondvor.narod.ru - they have an excellent page about the Order of Glory 2nd Class: - http://mondvor.narod.ru/OSlava2.htm Even if you don't speak Russian, the site can be understandable if you translate the texts of it with http://babelfish.altavista.com. Auke

Well, 25 Dec is still later than 21 Aug, so, Gorbachev is still the one and only correct answer

Yep, that's the correct answer. In just over three years Golovanov made it all the way to Chief Marshal of Aviation. Your turn, Christophe! Auke

OK, this question shouldn't be difficult either. I was born in 1904. When the GPW started, I was a Lieutenant-Colonel and commander of a bomber regiment. In 1941 I commanded a bomber division, which bombed Berlin, K?nigsberg, Danzig and Ploesti. My career was really successful; During the war I was promoted to a higher rank six times. Among my received awards are three Orders of Suvorov 1st Class. Who am I? And what were my rank and position at the end of the war?

As Beevor gives his name as Arno Babadzhanyan I never realised this was the famous future Chief Marshal Amazasp Babadzhanyan! I keep learning here every day. I will think of an interesting new question. Auke

His name is Arno Babadzhanyan. Grossman heard that he died in combat while defending a small piece of land with his 395th Rifle Regiment. Grossman wrote about him in The Immortal People, as in Grossman's opinion this event symbolized the heroism and steadfastness in the Red Army. A couple of years later Grossman met Babadzhanyan again, a tank brigade commander at that time, and was embarrassed as he had let Babadzhanyan die in his novel. Auke

Strange, as we all use the same research intermediary. I submitted my requests early December 2007 and the research took less then two months. Unfortunately I still have some requests from 2006 and early 2007 pending - I think I can write these off as dead-end research. I hope you guys will get some results soon too. Auke

I received quite a lot of research results over the last couple of months, the last batch two weeks ago. I'm not experiencing any slowing down at all

Where do you guys read the catalogue costs 20 EUR?

If the booklet is not messed with, 2000 USD is a really fair price for this group. The sniper story could easily have been made up; there's no way to tell if it's true from these items. Not every female awardee was necessarily a sniper.

Have a look at auction # 110225016930... A type 3 OPW I with a stolen picture of a type 2... Sellers like this guy should be banned from eBay

That's Idi i Smotri, or Come and See: http://imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ In my opinion, this was the worst movie I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot. The first 1,5 hour was a collection of incoherent scenes with irritating background noise. The actors were very inveracious and the forest scene with the laughing and crying was simply annoying, as were the long close-ups of Florya's face. After that it's just about portraying the Germans as badly as possible. Gripping, but I won't recommend it to anyone. It's interesting to see that people rate this movie either excellent or terrible. Auke

I mjst have missed that one, can you post the item number?

Marc, did you mean Lieutenant-General of Aviation I.I. Borzov? In their book about the Order of the Red Banner Durov and Strekalov list the S/N's of the Red Banners 1 to 6 of Borzov: Nr. 10731 # 2 nr. 494 # 3 nr. 577 # 4 nr. 74 # 5 nr. 86 # 6 nr. 15 So, if your 'Burcev' is 'Borzov', the group above might not be real, as it has no RB # 4. Also, Durov doesn't list a # 7 in Borzov's list, as they did with Pstygo for example (# 7 S/N 2).

Very nice picture of these tanks, with the banner of the 6th Tank Regiment!

Ed, as Marc wrote, if you go through the pages carefully, you can still figure out the classification and the serial number ranges. It requires a bit of attention, but it is definately doable. You can also use babelfish.altavista.com to translate the pages. The translations will be clumsy, but understandable. Christian, 'Raznovidnost' can be literally translated as variety, diversity or difference. Andrew doesn't give an explanation as to what a Tip, Variant or Raznovidnost exactly is. I have to go now, I can give a more detailed explanation about the differences between these later.

Andrew has Types, Variations, Sub-Variations and Sub-Sub-Variations. A Type is 'tip' (Тип), a Variation a 'variant' (Вариант), a Sub-Variation is a 'Raznovidnost' (Разновидность) and Sub-Sub-Variation are lettered, not numbered, after the Sub-Variation. So, for example, an Order of Lenin type 5, Variation 1, Sub-Variation 2, Sub-Sub-Variation 1 is a Tip 5, Variant 1, Raznovidnost 2a.

Andrew started translating his site into English, but at the moment there are only a few pages available: http://mondvor.topcities.com