Soviet Research Order of the Great Patriotic War #130658

[Albert]

Yes indeed... Albert and I are typing and posting simultaneously, so I'll go away for a while. Spent the first half of today on scribbly German, so will take a rest from scribbly Russian!

There is a page showing slowly being promoted from private back through sergeant as he was "rehabilitated."

And people ask "is research WORTH it??????????????????????????????????"

The more the merrier.

How much is research? Maybe I should research some of my stuff ...

[deptfordboy]

Wow - many thanks for the the help guys - he indeed has a more interesting history than I hoped! Well that does explain why he was in the Red Army from 1939 but didn't receive any awards until later '44.

I had a few pm's asking why I don't commission a professional translation for all this research and supplying details of people who can do this. I think this makes sense and will investigate getting this done. In the meantime, I apprecate the time members have spent here on unravelling the mystery!

Cheers

Gilbert

[Gerd Becker]

Yes indeed... Albert and I are typing and posting simultaneously, so I'll go away for a while. Spent the first half of today on scribbly German, so will take a rest from scribbly Russian!

There is a page showing slowly being promoted from private back through sergeant as he was "rehabilitated."

And people ask "is research WORTH it??????????????????????????????????"

How true. Obviously a dumb question. Its allways worth the research.

Albert,

the award card is 40 Dollar

Citation is 15 Dollar

and service record is also 15 Dollar

in the most cases you get the award card and the citation. If you are lucky, you get the service record too. So the common price for research for a single piece is 55 Dollar, 70 Dollar with service record.

If you need a contact, let me know....

Gilbert, great research

best,

Gerd

[Ed_Haynes]

Research is a duty, and sometimes -- like this one -- it reveals something really interesting and important, and restores life and meaning to a simple blob of metal and enamel. To many, even to many collectors, it may seem silly spending more money on research than you spent on the medal itself, but the potential reward is too great not to do so! And I don't mean financial reward for, as we mave discussed before, you can pretty much count of many dealers and many (type) collectors trashing the research (and often even the documents) when a medal is changes custodians. Sad, but factual.

But when you research a medal like yours (or my simple Glory 3 -- http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=2329) and get a story like this (or that), then you see why RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH is our mantra!

Edited September 17, 2006 by Ed_Haynes

[NavyFCO]

From 16.10.1941 till 15.03.1942 Pasman lived in his home area which was occupied by the Germans. During that time he was a partizan. After he had gotten to the Soviet side he got demoted to private and put into an NKVD camp for a check "gosudarstvennaja spetsial'naja proverka". Only on 30.03.44 he got reinstated.

If the translations are correct, I can definately see where this guy fell out of favor. I've owned quite a number of groups (around a dozen) where the officer was encircled, but escaped to join fellow Soviet forces and nothing adverse ever happened. It looks like this guy was encircled and just....went home. He became a partisan but it might not have been for a while after he just left his unit during the encirclement. I think I'd punish the guy as well if I were the authorities - there were thousands of soldiers who escaped encirclement and didn't just go home....

Interestingly, on a side note, I always had understood that officers and soldiers who had been encircled were punished. However, when I was living in Russia the last time the father of the family I was living with was writing a biography with a veteran about that veteran's experiences during the war. This veteran had been an engineer officer and had been encircled, escaped, hoofed it back to Moscow and then went to Berlin and so on... really quite a fascinating wartime career. I asked them about being punished for being encircled and it was one of the few times I have been looked at where someone genuinely looked at me like I had a third eye. The veteran was very adamant about the fact that he had never had any reprocussions from his adventures during the war, nor had the father of the family I lived with heard of such a thing. Given that the father had grown up in an NKVD camp in Siberia because his father had been a White Army senior officer, I don't think he was simply one that had been brainwashed into thinking that punishment didn't exist... Just an interesting side note...

Dave

[Paul R]

That is a great story. I am glad that you had the OPW2 researched!!!

Thanks to Dave and Rick L, I am gradually getting everything researched! Waiting for each data return is simular to digging for treasure... you know something is down there but what is found is a mystery until the soil of time is removed.

[Guest Rick Research]

"I had a few pm's asking why I don't commission a professional translation for all this research"

Not necessary when your here can and will and do do so for FREE. Call it "community service."

Just a question of TIME, what with other commitments.

Very often the records do not match up from one version to another (as in the exact date he started signals school), and items are found on ONE set of paperwork not on another. I have to admit that I am totally baffled most of the time by military abbreviations and the Soviet habit of making "words" out of compound abbreviations but at least we are

passably

familiar with Soviet military paperwork and what is--or isn't-- "normal." Some things are important because they are left unsaid. Other things matter because of how they are said. Being "placed on the reserves" 1937/38 for a prime example is most often the euphemism for being arrested during the Great Purge.

Somebody with language skills who is unfamiliar with Soviet military paperwork isn't going to be able to "interpret" these nuances.

I would have to agree that the DURATION of the behind-enemy-lines was likely the problem, and him being unable to ACCOUNT for "missing" time.

The very first Order I ever had researched was for an "encircled" officer-- but from the time and crcumstances, he was with other survivors of his unit and spent the entire time working back to Soviet lines-- alibiing each other presumably. No repercussions

...

although he was not retained in the postwar army, either:

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1115&hl=Kolesnikov

So "punishment" could have taken less... obvious... forms.

[Albert]

If the translations are correct, I can definately see where this guy fell out of favor...

...I asked them about being punished for being encircled and it was one of the few times I have been looked at where someone genuinely looked at me like I had a third eye. The veteran was very adamant about the fact that he had never had any reprocussions from his adventures during the war, nor had the father of the family I lived with heard of such a thing. Given that the father had grown up in an NKVD camp in Siberia because his father had been a White Army senior officer, I don't think he was simply one that had been brainwashed into thinking that punishment didn't exist...

Dave

Dave,

This is not a translation just a loose summary. The things said about the guy are correct though.

The term "encirclement" at this stage of the war is to be seen and understood in the proper historical context. And that brings us to the questions how the Soviets treated service members who got pocketed and made it back to their side, and, more importantly, how the Soviets treated their POWs who made it back from the Germans. Your understanding is/was correct. However, this was not considered "punishment"... and should not be generalized; btw: the roots of this policy can be traced back to the Napolionic war. Anyway, there are also encounters of traitors being simply reinstated, and there even were /are members of the SS living a pieceful life after rehabilitation (reabilitatsija) in post war Soviet Union and now its successor states.

Impossible for me to understand the father of your host family, as the ill treatment of own POWs and encirclement escapees is a very painful part of Russias past with which they are dealing today. There are pretty good modern-day Russian movies out there dealing with exactly that theme.

But it also is a fact that a great many Russians are living in denial...

Best regards,

Albert

[Mondvor]

My Great Grand Father was a Lieutenant NKVD officer in a position of a platoon commander in the Independent NKVD Battallion. This Battallion provided security to Headquarters of South-Eastern Front. If you are familiar with a basic history of WWII, you might know about the tragedy happened with whole South-Eastern Front in September 1941, when German troops encircled and finally captured Kiev. Front Commander HSU General-Colonel Kirponos, Front Chief of Staff General-Major Tupikov and many other top-ranking staff officers were killed trying to penetrate through enemy lines. Many others (including the Commander of 5th Army General-Major Potapov) were captured by Germans and became prisoners. Only few Soviet soldiers and officers (appr. 1 out of 10) made it through German lines and united with Soviet troops. My Great Grandpa was one of them. He spent about three month in some sort of a prison, where they questioned him, compared his story with stories of other survivers, asked him to write down his story again and again, hoping he would make a mistake. But finally they released him and returned him his rank. The main reason why they did forgive him was the fact that he kept his Communist Party ID card, his military ID card and his personal handgun. Some people destroyed their papers before the breakthrough and their fate was really grim.

However, they didn't send him to the frontlines again. The rest of the war he spent in internal NKVD troops and his only award was Victory over Germany medal. Later he got some jubilee medals, Valiant Labor medal and For defence of Kiev medal. He was retired from Army in early 60th at the rank of Major.

[deptfordboy]

Thanks Guys for all the great help on this! It does indeed seem that our man was under suspicion after his encirclement (whether he went home or not) and was only rehabilitated towards the end of the war. Who knows what else he might have been awarded had things turned out differently, as he seems to have been a brave chap.

Cheers

Gilbert