Chuck In Oregon

* * * * * Hi David No, Beria would have been way too easy. Beria is far too identifiable for this thread. Chuck

* * * * * Yes, that's exactly right. Although the most important files were long since transferred to KGB archives in Russia, there were far too many to do that with them all. Some Georgian KGB offices were ransacked after the fall, including some of the archives. I have a couple of 1920s Cheka case files that I think came from that. I can't think of any other reason for them to have left the building. I don't think that simple theft of Cheka case files would have been a profitable crime, back in the day. "What's that you have there in your bag, comrade?" Well, ummm ... Chuck

Good onya, Kim and Rusty. Sure enough, the birthplace of one Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, "Koba" to his intimates and "Soso" to his family. The proud Polkolvnik is the first commandant of the museum. These days they are reduced to having a docent and a business manager. The room on the left is the room where Koba was born, and the large building behind, in the color photo, is indeed the museum proper. I have been to Gori more than a few times, some on business (mostly in the vain pursuit of reform, I confess) and 3-4 times to show visitors the museum and town. During my time in Georgia I met one person who said, and whom I believed, that she had met Stalin. Her husband, the father of one of my friends there, was the poet laureate of Georgia at the time. Mostly homages to Stalin, FWIW. She met Stalin briefly at a Kremlin function for Soviet artists. Stalin made an appearance at the dinner, accepted introductions, shook hands and left. She tells the story of asking her guard (everyone had their own) where she could get a hair-do before the big event. The guard was horrified and told her that under no circumstances could she change her appearance from that on the ID card that she had to wear at all times. Rules are rules. This fascinating and articulate woman, still beautiful in her 80s, hosted in her home the literary giants of her age from all over the world. Her walls are adorned with photos of them taken in her home and elsewhere. She also met Ho Chi Minh -- did you know he was a poet? -- on a culltural visit to Hanoi. She took a private walk (no guards! -- which panicked the security people from both sides) with him in his garden and he picked a yellow rose for her and put it inside one of his poetry books. I've seen it. Now she hosts non-entities like her son's friends, among whom I count myself. She calls him, and by extension us I suppose, "blank idlers". I wrote an essay by that name. Georgia is not nearly as stable as we are led to believe, thanks to the Russians. If you drive due north from Gori for half an hour or so towards Tskinvali, the site of a bloody war in the '90s, you will be pulled out of your car and, at the very minimum, forcefully detained. South Ossetia, of which Tskinvali is the so-called capital, is completely controlled by Russian "peacekeepers" who guard both ends of the Roki tunnel from North to South Ossetia, through which enormous amounts of goods are smuggled, not in secret, but in convoys. Reform. What was I thinking? Chuck

Simply addressed to Moscow Kremlin NKVD SSSR Tov. Beria. Lavrenty Beria must have gotten a lot of these. Plaintive appeals for the release of loved ones arrested by state security. But who knew they kept the envelopes?! It looks like they were all catalogued or at least kept with the prisoner's file. This envelope was in a stash of minor NKVD documents that I bought a couple of years ago. It has always appealed to me for some reason. Not much doubt about what happened to the prisoner, I guess. Chuck

* * * * * Oh, then you DO know Odessa? Thank you for the very good laugh, Dudeman. Close, but no cigar. Chuck

* * * * * Photos? Did you say photos? Well, you probably meant photos of just the badge, didn't you? Well, here's a photo of an honest-to-by-God NKVD Polkovnik wearing an Honored NKVD badge ... and smiling. Sort of. He's wearing (I think, it's definitely not my long suit) early variant NKVD shoulder-boards but he is a Polkovnik of NKVD Engineering Troops of the late era, 1946-1952. I like the full-on view of the uniform. And oh, yeah ... Does anyone know where he's standing? Anyone else, I mean. Maybe I should have put this in the Stump the Chumps thread, where I happen to be 0-for-the-thread. Chuck

Soviet's photo, like most of the topics in this thread, just stumps me. I've got a stack of Soviet books but I'm not inclined to leaf through them hoping to find Soviet's HSL. Having said that, though, I'd like to add a photo ID question of my own to this thread. I own this picture. Who is the guy in the middle and what was he known for? Any of the things he was known for will suffice. Two clues: 1) This is a picture postcard of the style so popular in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, when you had your picture taken and reproduced on postcards. It is dated 1/I/1927 on the back. I think that would make this the earliest known photo of him. It has never been published ... until now. 2) Many of you know that I was in Georgia for quite a while and I still enjoy close friendships there. So ... Warning: This picture was identified for me and I can not prove it is who I will say it is. However, the guy who ID'd him for me is an expert in this particular area. There is at least one other picture of this gentleman on the internet, but at a much more advanced age. Despite this man's notoriety (the guy in the photo, not my buddy), you're gonna have to be a real Soviet buff to pick him out. Good luck. Chuck

It's a rainy Oregon day with little to do (that I want to do, that is) and I've mentioned these little jetons before, so I thought I would post them today. As you can see, soldiers from cadet to general gave these away as remembrances to those they loved. If you can identify units or branches from any of these, that would add a lot. As it is, I can only identify a couple of military branches and, of course, the ranks. I could have sworn that I have a couple of attributed examples, but I can't find them right now. I'll post them if I do. These were pretty common and I know there are others out there. Take a minute and share yours with the rest of us. Chuck

Excellent response to a good question, George. I like the jetons, too. I'd like to see some more examples posted here. I have been remiss in not posting my military "sweetheart" jetons. I'll try to get to that this week. Chuck

* * * * * Ah, jeez, Chris. Did you have to say that? I already feel older than dirt. Chuck

* * * * * Thanks, Rick. Be sure to check out today's, "Hidden Behind A Wall". Chuck

And here's the last item of interest ... what appears to be a counterfeit 10-ruble coin. Piecing together his talk with the couple and his general (and vast) knowledge of the topic, my MVD buddy Boria speculates the following: The officer's parents were scared when they received the letter and money. They had been inadvertently set up for two crimes, convictions for either of which could result in the death penalty. The first crime was communications with an enemy officer. That's pretty self-evident. The second was the crime of "unearned income". Back in the day, if you were found in possession of even a small amount of money that you could not show that you had earned, you were considered to be guilty of the crime of unearned income, a crime against the people. The sentence was up to 15 years in prison but if you were thought to be, say, a currency speculator, you could be shot. Or if there were special circumstances, like, say, that you had received the money from an enemy officer, even if he was your son ... well, good-bye. So the parents had a serious problem, what to do with the letter and money. What they decided to do, at no small risk to themselves, was to wall it up until better days came. Of course, the Cheka thought nothing of tearing down walls in search of incriminating evidence when they suspected someone of a crime. But they didn't, and the little tin chocolate box stayed there until 2004. The intrinsic value of this little group must be close to zero. The historic value, at least to me, is very high. It is documentation of what a real White officer did for his family, and what they did in turn, when he thought he was facing his final days. Sure, it's not Anne Frank, but it's just as real. Chuck

Here's a scan of the letter.

That piece of paper turned out to be a 1920 letter ... from the couple's great-grandfather to their great-great-grandparents. He was a White Army officer writing from Sevastopol. I would certainly welcome an accurate translation. What I think he is writing is that he is going to board a ship bound for Istanbul the next day. He is sending them all of his money. We might speculate that he didn't think he would ever have any use for it and better for them to have it than for him to be caught and killed with it. One of the ways that desperate Whites could escape was to board ships in Sevastopol bound for ports where the Reds couldn't find or trace them. This appears to be one of those times. Paper must have been pretty scarce back in the day. You can see that the letter was written on the back on an Imperial form of some kind. I guess they didn't figure there would be much use for those either.

The contents included Imperial Russian coins, a thick wad of paper money and that piece of paper with the broken wax seal.

Dave has already written about and shown us his White Army flag in the thread "" The Last Stand of Imperial Russia... White Forces Flag". I loved it and I envy him that treasure. As he told us, that was the end of the White Northwestern Front. Now I'm going to show you a little bit of history of the last stand of the White Army in the south. Much of central Tbilisi consists of 19th-century buildings -- apartments, homes, offices, even barracks -- that were collectivized into tiny residences during the early Soviet era. Very little has been done to improve them since collectivization. People live in these flats much as they did 80-125 years ago, even though to call these apartments run-down would be to under-value the word. In the summer of 2004 a couple was in the process of renovating one of those old flats. When they knocked down an interior wall, they found a small tin chocolate box sitting on a cross-piece between two of the studs. That's it you see in the first image. The second image is what they saw when they first opened the box.

* * * * * Hello George You're more than welcome. I'm glad there's a receptive audience for some of the things I enjoy. I'd sure like to see some more people posting here, though. That doesn't include you, of course. I really like your Imperial items, especially the early aviation and the medical. As I have said before, I'm here to learn and share and I need other people to post so that I can learn from their items and stories. I love pieces with history so much more than simply hardware alone. I wish I had a lot more, but I don't. Anyway, I think this is one of the most interesting things I ever came across. Tell you what. Tomorrow I'll post another small group whose history -- as opposed to its nominal intrinsic value -- should really interest you. Chuck

... And the final image of the tip on the other side. A final note. Georgian customs officials, then the Ministry of Culture, initially blocked me from taking this shaska home with me. Their position was that it was a national treasure and thus export was prohibited. Well, I try to do things legally and I wound up leaving it in the care of a good friend in Tbilisi. He initiated an appeal of the decision so that I might at least have a chance to get it home. The Ministry of Culture finally concluded that yes, their experts were right, it was a national treasure attributable to a legendary hero. However, it was a Dagestani national treasure not a Georgian one, and thus they decided that they had no authority to ban its export. That's how I finally got to bring it home. You can read a little bit about the Dagestani participation in WW I in an article about Hussein Khan Nakhichevanski in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_Khan_Nakhichevanski . Chuck

The other side ...

A couple more images of the same side.

Here it is out of its scabbard along with the first detailed image.

I don't own a lot of blades. Some, maybe a dozen or so, but I have turned down far more than I ever bought. However, when I was offered this one I knew it was going home with me, no matter the price. I'll tell you the story as best I know it. Kautmas Alikhanov was a young Dagestani-Russian patriot who rushed to the front in 1914 as a junior officer with his group of Dagestani Irregular Cavalry. He served until the end of the war, then went back home. When the Civil War broke out he sided with the Whites. When that collapsed he became a -- well, it depends on your point of view -- a brigand, a patriot or a terrorist. Certainly, a passionate hater of all things Soviet. He and his remaining band of loyal Dagestani Irregular Cavalry -- by now he was a general -- continued to fight the Reds in the mountains wherever they could catch them to their advantage. That, of course, irritated the Reds no end. The Cheka relentlessly pursued Kautmas in the Caucasus until, one day in 1924 (as I recall), they surrounded him and his men and called for their surrender or death, promising that all would be spared if they surrendered. Kautmas made the mistake of accepting their terms and he surrendered his band to the Chekists. After they laid down their weapons the Chekists took them prisoner and immediately executed Kautmas. The Chekist commander took Kautmas' shaska -- Caucasus sword -- as a souvenir of the event. That Cheka commander, who name I have shamefully lost but will try to get, was killed in the Great Patriotic War during a German bombing raid in the Caucasus. By then the Chekist officer was an important NKVD official. That was the attack that nearly killed Beria and blew the leg off of a Soviet admiral. The shaska remained in the Cheka commander's family from the time he brought it home until I bought it in 2004. The first image is the shaska in its scabbard. The second image is the 1914 gold presentation attachment. It reads: Kornet Kautmas Alikhanov from the Officers of the Dagestani Cavalry 1914 g. The images that follow are merely detail views. I will add one comment at the end.

* * * * * I didn't know that. I thought that Congress did have a say in the matter. Live and learn, I guess. I thought/think that my sergeant's nominations got out of Army and were denied somewhere down the road, which I assumed was Congress. I must be mistaken. I guess I'll never know just what happened. Thank you for enlightening me. Chuck

* * * * * Boy, you really hit a nerve with me on that one. Let me tell you a story from my own personal experience. One of my sergeants during my year of flying Hueys in Vietnam was an extraordinary guy. Well, nearly all of them were, but this guy stood out even in that distinguished crowd. He was twice nominated for the (then) CMH. Both times it was approved all the way up to congress, with an expectation -- of course, or the Army wouldn't have pushed it that far -- of quick approval. BOTH times it was denied by congress, resulting in his award of two default DSCs. I was mad then and I'm still mad. Heck, it's only been 35 years. Those callous and ignorant and ungrateful men and women, none of whom -- or their children -- had ever served there or, for the most part, even so much as visited on a "fact-finding mission", denied the CMH to a man whose boots they were not fit to tie. I won't mention his name here, but Sarge, wherever you are, you'll always be my hero. Chuck

I haven't visited or posted in this forum before, usually hanging out in the two Russian forums with other unsavory types. However, when I came across New York's web site honoring its WW I Medal of Honor recipients, I wanted to share it, just in case it wasn't known here. You can find it at http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenweb/ww1moh.htm . I find the citations fascinating and awe-inspiring. I found, among so many others, Lt. Col. William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan's citation. His gallantry was well documented long before he founded the OSS. However, the one that most intrigued me was that of Marine Gunny Charles F. Hoffman, who later changed his name to Ernest August Janson. For his gallantry on June 18, 1918, near Chateau-Thierry, at age 41 Gunny Hoffman received both the Army and Navy Medals of Honor. In case you don't want to take a minute to look, he -- apparently alone and out of ammo -- charged an attacking 12-man German detachment armed with five light machine guns, bayoneted the two leaders and forced the others to withdraw. Then I read that Marine Sgt. Matej Kocak also won both medals on July 18, 1918, "in the Viller-Cottertes section, south of Soissons, France". I have read a lot about Medal of Honor exploits but I never before knew that two medals had been awarded for the same act. Maybe a few of you didn't know it either, so I decided to mention it here. Nice forum you've got here. Chuck