Eric Schena

Hi all: Thanks to a good friend of mine, I now have a complete set of communist period classes of the Order of Skanderbeg (Urdhёri i Skёnderbeut). Named after 15th century Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti, better known by his Ottoman name of Skanderbeg, the Order of Skanderbeg was established in 1945 and was awarded to senior armed forces officers for significant combat contributions during WW II. I have been "collecting" varieties of this order (yeah, I know what you're thinking, "Someone collecting varieties of communist Albanian orders? Who knew!"), and have identified a few different types. This is what I have so far identified. Please note that this is original research (and is still VERY much a work in progress), so if someone wants to "borrow" it, be my guest, HOWEVER, I'd appreciate if you just let me know beforehand before posting anywhere else... First Class: Gold ten pointed star upon which is a red enameled star, at the center, a separately attached grayed silver medallion on a wreath with the helmeted idealized bust of Skanderbeg. The Pr?wema screwback versions appear to be made of an anodized alloy rather than a gilt nickel alloy. 98 are believed to have been awarded by the mid 1980?s. a. Screw back made by IKOM (not observed but presumed to exist) b. Screw back made by PR?WEMA: i. Large marked screw plate ii. Small marked screw plate c. Horizontal pin back with dished central section on reverse (not observed but presumed to exist) d. Horizontal pin back with completely flat reverse (not observed but presumed to exist) Here's the 1st class - this one a PR?WEMA made piece with the larger (older) screwplate:

Hi all: Here's my latest addition to my collection of Albanian decorations and it is my first non communist medal as well. This is the silver medal to the Order of the Black Eagle. The Order was founded by Prince Wilhelm of Wied on March 26, 1914 and was awarded for distinguished civil and military service. It came in 5 classes (Grand Cross/Cordon, Grand Officer, Commander, Officer, Member/Knight) as well as 3 classes of medals (gold, silver, & bronze). It became obsolete when Wilhelm fled Albania on September 5, 1914 and was not resurrected by Zog. It is very possible that Wilhelm continued to hand out awards after he left Albania, as one source I found indicates that it continued to be awarded up to 1922. The order itself was made by Berlin jeweler Willibald Kluge, though I am not sure that they made the medal, as well. Supposedly, the official records (wherever they may be) state that the Grand Cross was awarded 6 times, the Grand Officer class 4 times and also claim that only 12 silver medals were handed out, however, that seems low. The medal usually seen is the bronze class, this is only the second silver class one I have seen. It is made out of silver and is the size of a crown sized coin.

I have some scans of his uchetnaya kartochka, but they are over the size limit. Let me see what I can do to get them down to a manageble size and I'll post them up here - it has some good biographical info, but sadly nothing in his post war career. The only other document I have for Artemchuk is the attestatsiya I posted above in translation. Gerd: thanks for the bio info on Artemchuk's commanding officer - that's quite a history in the counterintelligence world he had! Cheers, Eric

Hi all: This is my only fully researched Soviet decoration and one of the few researched Eastern Bloc sets that I have, but it's a doozy. I posted this a couple years back on another forum, but thought it might be worthwhile to post it here, too. Here is Podpolkovnik (Lt. Col) Aleksandr Arsentievich Artemchuk's Patriotic War 1st class, number 93018. He was born in Ukraine in 1900 and joined the Red Army in 1919 and member of the party since 1928. Prior to his award of the Patriotic War 1st class, his commendation stated he won the Medal for Valor in 1940 and the Red Star in 1942. His Awards Card also states that but he won a Red Banner on 11/3/1944, an Order of Lenin on 11/6/1945, as well as a Defence of the Caucasus, Capture of Budapest, Capture of Vienna, and Liberation of Belgrade medals. At the time of the awarding, he was assistant commander of the SMERSH (the mnemonic for "Smert' shpionam" - "death to spies") Counterintelligence Dept. of the 17th Air Army. The Attestatsiya reads: Comrade Artemchuk has been at the front since the first day of the Patriotic War. He began his combat service at the NKVD Special Duty Department, 37th Rifle Army. From 05/1942 to 03/1943 he occupied senior commander positions at the 4th Air Army, Southern and Transcaucasian Fronts. Comrade Artemchuk has worked as a commander of the SMERSH Counterintelligence Department of the 9th Combined Air Corps since April 1943. During his assignment he organized efficient work of SMERSH Departments within air divisions being part of the corps thus preventing possible intrusions of enemy agents and cases of betrayal to the Motherland or desertion. Since 01/1944, comrade Artemchuk has been working as an assistant commander of the SMERSH Counterintelligence Department of the Army. He greatly contributed to upbringing junior staff in the spirit of Bolshevism and relentlessness towards the enemy. Due to comrade Artemchuk's assistance and guidance the operational department unmasked a number of enemy reconnaissance agents, traitors to the Motherland, and German invaders' accomplices within the units of the Army. Comrade Artemchuk personally participated in this activity. Comrade Artemchuk has proven himself to be devoted to the cause of the Lenin-Stalin Party by his diligent and intensive performance. Comrade Artemchuk deserves to be awarded with an Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class for his active work during the Patriotic War and during offensive operations conducted by the Red Army units and for assisting the command to execute combat tasks. Signed: Commander of SMERSH Counterintelligence Dept., 17th Air Army, Col. Khotyakov 09/06/1944 Final Decision: Deserves to be awarded with an Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class Signed: Commander of SMERSH Counterintelligence Agency, 3rd Ukrainian Front Lt. Gen. Ivashutin 12/22/1944 ---------- When I first posted this, we figured this guy must have been a career NKVD man. I do not have the rest of his documentation, but I half wonder if he did any "special duty" in those oh so delightful resorts in Siberia - as an employee and not as a guest. This citation creeps me out somewhat, especially the bit about "...personally participated in this activity." If anyone wants to see scans of the paperwork I have with this decoration, let me know! Cheers, Eric

Hi David: I would love to go to Europe and tour around, and Albania would be high on my list. What little I know has been gleaned from a few books as well as conversations with folks whose relatives were in the Albanian military. It is SUCH a fascinating country: a "dapper dan"/playboy of a king who actually got involved in a gunfight outside of an opera house, the Italian occupation, the German occupation and decades of atrophy, xenophobia and repression under a bizarre and xenophobic dictator who ruled over the nation for 41 years. Too bad so little of this history is accessible. Albanian militaria shows up every so often. I have a great friend who picks up stuff for me and we do some horse trading. According to him, the labor decorations show up much more often than the military decorations. If those award numbers I quote above are vaguely accurate, that would explain why so little of this material shows up as well as a marked lack of photos of Albanians wearing them in old communist era newsreels. I am actually trying to write a sort of guide to these decorations, but it's a hit or miss project at this point. Cheers, Eric

Hi David: Albania has quite the laundry list of alliances in the Eastern Bloc: Yugoslavia helped to establish and to a certain extent rebuild the country in the 1940's after the Italian and German occupations. In 1948, however, Tito?s increasingly reformist policies combined with Yugoslavia?s aim to absorb Albania came to a head and Hoxha permanently cut off all relations with Yugoslavia and banned contact with the nation (as well as precipitating a massive purge of ?Titoists? from all aspects of the Albanian government). After the split with Yugoslavia, Albania turned to COMECON, joining in February 1949. Albania pretty much remained in the Eastern European sphere while Stalin was alive. This changed once Khrushchev took over the controls. Khrushchev showed greater acceptance of Tito?s ?separate road to socialism? as well as his policies of de-Stalinization, thus Hoxha became more concerned over resumed Yugoslav domination of the region. Beginning around 1958, Albania thus began to court China as an ally. By mid 1960, relations between the USSR and China became fractious at best and increasingly hostile. Throughout this period of Sino-Soviet discord, Albania allied itself with China, to which the Soviet Union retaliated by cutting off much of its economic support to Albania and eventually, in December 1961, Moscow broke all relations with Tirana. After the cutoff, Albania did not participate in the Warsaw Pact or COMECON. Despite the separation from COMECON, Albania did continue foreign trade with Eastern Bloc nations, however, I am not sure when that ceased. In 1966/1967, Albania followed its Chinese brethren in reorganizing the entire military structure by eliminating all forms of rank & insignia - the PRC proclaimed that such signs were "bourgeois displays of elitism incompatible with socialism". Warming relations between the West and China caused the Albania to once again break with a communist ally around 1976, after which Albania sought no further alliances in the communist world and remained essentially a "fortress of solitude" and a bastion of some truly hard core Stalinism. After Hoxha?s death in 1985, Albania sought limited international alliances under his successor Ramiz Alia. While Alia tried to reverse some of the economic decay with a series of limited reforms, Albania remained insular until the communist regime?s eventual downfall in 1992. The makers I have been able to identify for Albanian decorations are: 1. IKOM in Zagreb 2. Pr?wema in Markneukirchen 3. Mennica-Panstwowa (the Polish State Mint) in Warsaw 4. Zavod "Pobeda" in Moscow (seen on a 15th anniversary of the army badge) 5. Local Albanian manufacturer From what I have been able to tell given the sheer lack of any solid information at my disposal, the DDR made most of the decorations in the 1950's and 1960's.

Here's the last one I can show (I do not have a 10th anniversary medal sadly). This is the Order of the Red Star. This is a confusing oder. From what I can tell, this was awarded in one class originally but at some point (who knows when - I presume in the late 1970's when Albania seems to have restructured its award system after breaking with China in 1976) it was divided into three classes. This one is from the earlier period and I suspect it's from the 1940's - note that the ribbon is cloth. I hope y'all liked these. I'll make a point of showing some more of these seldom seen and less understood but really historically interesting decorations (what's the point of knowledge if you can't share it?) . Eric

Here's the Medal "Remembrance 1942-1943". This was awarded to partisans who participated in the anti Italian resistance campaigns in 1942 and 1943. This one was made by IKOM in Zagreb when Hoxha and Tito were still on speaking terms. That changed in 1948 when Tito embarked on his "different path to socialism" as well as Hoxha's not entirely unfounded claim that Yugoslavia intended to add Albania as a province - this may have helped form the basis for Hoxha's policy of almost unrelenting xenophobia in the 1960's and beyond. According to that same book (the same caveat applies), 690 of these were awarded until 1982 when awards ceased.

Now for the representative decorations. Here's the Order of Skanderbeg 3rd class. This one was made in the DDR by Pr?wema in Markneukirchen. Pr?wema seems to have been one of the prinicple makers of these screwback decorations in the 1950's and 1960's as I have seen far more screwback decorations with this mark than any others. There is a book that was printed in Albania in the 1980's about these decorations that says 472 3rd class Skanderbegs were awarded. I do not have a copy of this book (apparently it is rarer than hen's teeth) so take that number with a grain of salt.

...and here is his Medal for the Liberation of the Country. These early WW II awards carried a lot of prestige in Albania due to its fractioous and difficult history during their Italian and later German occupation. 20th century Albanian history is a very fascinating subject and well worth the effort to discover...

Hi all - thanks for the kind welcome! I've actually gotten a lot more research done on communist Albanian decorations since I wrote that thread in WAF, so I hope to refine it and post some of it here. I thought I'd actually show the gongs to which these ribbons represent. The first two medals I'm posting, the Medal for Bravery and the Medal for the Liberation of the Country, actually belonged to the wearer of this particular bar. I count myself very lucky in that while I don't have the complete group, I do have a couple of his medals plus a couple of photographs of their recipient when he was in Odessa in the 1940's. However, out of deference to the gentleman and his family (as well as my very good friend from whom I got this group), I'd like to keep him anonymous. First up, the Medal for Bravery...

Hello all: As some of you may know from the WAF, I have a penchant for communist period Albanian decorations (well, I should say, I have a penchant for little explored areas of interest), so I thought for my first post on this forum I would share one of my favorite items, an Albanian six place plastic/metal ribbon bar from the 1950's. The ribbon bars used in Albania in the 1950?s were painted plastic mounted onto a substantial metal frame. Some early newsreels of Enver Hoxha visiting with communist allies such as Stalin and Bulgaria?s Georgi Dimitrov show him in the uniform of a colonel-general wearing a ribbon bar setup like this one. However, I have to say, photos of Albanians wearing communist decorations are few and far between. This ribbon bar belonged to a member of the 8th Offensive Brigade who fought primarily around Visegrad, Yugoslavia, until April 1945. Afterwards, he was sent to a Soviet military academy in Odessa until 1952. He achieved the rank of Major until the abolishment of ranks in 1966/1967. The medals are: 1. Order of Skanderbeg 3rd class 2. Medal "Remembrance 1942-1943" 3. Order of the Red Star 4. Medal for Bravery 5. Medal for the Liberation of the Country (essentially the WW II victory medal) 6. Medal for 10th Anniversary of the Army (which dates this bar to about 1955) I hope you like this ribbon bar. I have been doing some research on Albanian decorations and I hope to share some of it here if it is of any interest. Cheers, Eric