TacHel

Woa woa woa... Wait a minute! Hold the phone! Back up a bit! Did you say "cognac"?

All valid points... Had I not taken it upon myself to research the subject in great depth, the very few, horribly limited and incomplete Russian language only books written in the past 20 years would've limited me to a mere 50 or so pieces. To date, I've positively identified well over 500 "official" awards including their insitution orders/decrees. This lack of relevant "published" data has allowed dealers to peddle their baubles with great ease claiming ignorance. I can see where this would've pushed many to keep well away. And yes, makers of fakes really learned their lessons well with Soviet pieces, excellent copies of high end Russian ODMs were all over the market within months of the appearance of the real things (Order of Courage, Medal of Suvorov, etc). I regularly shop on Russian auction sites, for every official award, there's easily 15 to 20 "garbage" pieces. The darn thing is the bogus items are often much nicer looking and of much better quality than the official awards. The "themed" collections of most Russian collectors only makes matters worse... They don't care if a piece is official or not, as long as it falls within the parameters of the main theme of their collection.

Possible... But by the same token... Dang! How big of a war are we talking about here?

Dan, you make a valid point when you mention the original items that made it unto the Western market, the lack of hard data made it a veritable free for all! I myself purchased over a dozen unofficial medals before forcing myself to dig deeper prior to investing too much. Umalatovas, communist party, awards comittee, veterans of Afghanistan, airborne veterans, the list is long! I can see people being put off by all of the bogus stuff more often than not being advertised as official state awards by dealers that had no clue.

One particular question has been nagging at me for years now, I would really appreciate input from as many of you as possible. Please answer honestly without fear of insult (because it's my particular field of interest). I am a member of multiple militaria and phaleristics forums worldwide, one common point among all of these is the apparent lack of interest in anything and everything to do with modern day Russia. Tsarist and Soviet ODMs are still hot, but as soon as the wall came crashing down, so did the interest in what came next... I for one was drawn like a magnet to this completely new and unexplored field of collecting but seem to be a member of a minuscule group... So here's my question: WHY SO LITTLE OVERT INTEREST?

The Soviet Union is gone, it's been gone for 20 years now. The Russian Federation's ODM system was quickly reworked, minor changes here and there have improved it over the years, then in 2010 came the major amendment that completely severed all ties to the old Soviet ODMs. I started looking into modern Russian awards just over 5 years ago and was astounded at how little data was available in the West, so I turned my attention to the East joining multiple Russian phaleristics forums. What I found was the merest trace of any serious research or correlation of data. I found most Russian collectors had no notion of the terms we use in the West, namely "official" and "unofficial". Their collecting interests are centered around themes, naval, air, space etc. They will collect anything and everything even remotely associated to their chosen theme with little if any care whether the piece is official or a mere souvenir made for the collector market. At the risk of sounding a bit condescending (and it isn't my intention), most are "amassers" vice collectors IMHO. To each is own I guess... You can well imagine my surprise and frustration when I discovered I had accumulated more info than they collectively had! I went there seeking assistance and guidance, exactly the opposite happened! I showed up with ODMs they had never seen or heard of, I showed up with ministerial orders officializing awards they didn't believe were real or even knew existed, I proved many of there prized collectables were nothing more than mere baubles. I ended up educating most of them on there own ODM system!! To this very day I'm often their source of official decrees and orders on ODMs! I'm still at a loss to explain that... Shocking and frustrating... I decided to put together Wikipedia pages to catalog everything and share the research in order to promote interest in modern Russian ODMs. My pages contained 10 times what the Russian Wikipedia pages had. Within a year, most Russian Wiki pages were linked to mine! When requesting info on Russian forums, I was directed to my own research on Wiki!! Frustrating as H... What did this tell me? I was it. If anybody else had researched modern Russian ODMs in depth, he sure was keeping it a secret! Then the realities of Wikipedia set in... Morons changing stuff at will, skewing the data, changing translations according to their personnal interpretations, no respect whatsoever for other peoples' research... It got to be too much for me and I abandonned Wiki utterly disgusted with the entire experience. In retrospect, that's what Wiki is, I should've never gone there in the first place and should've made my own web pages but was too eager to share the data and believed Wiki the best place for that. I should've found a publisher and written a book! But I never seemed to have acquired enough data, there was always something new popping up on a weekly if not daily basis! Only just very recently have I had the feeling at having reached a point where a book might be warranted, having reached the 95+% mark of what's out there. When I say the 95+% mark, I'm talking about 500+ "official" awards from the State, ministries, departments, federal agencies... I've wanted to make a multilingual web site (English, French, German, Russian) for a while now containing everything I had amassed on the subject, then thought how great all of this would look in a book (in all 4 languages). But I simply do not have the time... Oh well... Maybe one day.

Sweet! Thanks for sharing! I'm really glad to see your selfless act of courage is not only remembered but still recognised by your compatriots!

Another current variant of the award.

Here's a picture of an EMERCOM brigadier-general wearing his badge in the manner prescribed by regulations.

I am still searching for the Ministerial Order establishing this medal of EMERCOM. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

I've only recently positively identified this medal as an official EMERCOM award when I found Ministerial Order 620 of December 6, 2010 amending its award criteria. I still haven't found the original ministerial order establishing it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

OUTSTANDING! :cheers:

I've only recently positively identified this medal as an official EMERCOM award when I found Ministerial Order 620 of December 6, 2010 amending its award criteria. I still haven't found the original ministerial order establishing it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I've told you this before... But I'll tell you again... For somebody who's restarting his collection... You sure have an eye for great items!!

Max, do you have a picture of the award you received from the МНС України ??

Thank you! Extremely informative! :cheers:

Once your bust is finished, send him pics and include your address, he'll probably stop by when/if in the area. He's a really easy man to talk to.

I did not know that... Can you retroactively request one?

Saw general Dallaire in Quebec city last Saturday, he was honoured during the Quebec City Military Tattoo. Your bust is coming along greatly!

Maxim, do you also have a picture of the neck badge?

I found the clasp below for sale on a Russian auction site. It is advertised as a copy. According to the seller, the picture of the cross with the clasp at right is supposedly from a book. The seller cites an August 19, 1917 decree approving this clasp for wear by officers on their St George crosses to differentiate them from ordinary soldiers. Can anybody confirm such a clasp really existed? This is a first for me... Below is another picture from the seller showing the clasp for sale on a cross.

Yes... Indeed... Huhhuh... Right... (No further comment)

Not even once to a nice night club? Women love heroes! They'd be real babe magnets! Nice monument in your town!

Really... What other award could I have possibly been talking about?

Tsarenko posted a pic of his Ukrainian award here: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php/topic/50899-ukrainian-star-for-courage/ Tsarenko, any chance of seeing a picture of you wearing both awards?