Soviet Private Aleksei Yakovlevich Verozubov

[Ed_Haynes]

A single OPW 2, screw-post shortened, #803579.

Edited October 9, 2007 by Ed_Haynes

[Ed_Haynes]

Documents not fully translated, but if you help me I PROMISE it will be well worth the effort (I have a precis from my colleague who does Russian history). Cross my heart.

Record card front.

Edited October 8, 2007 by Ed_Haynes

[Ed_Haynes]

Reverse.

[Ed_Haynes]

Reccomendation, part 1.

[Ed_Haynes]

Part 2.

[Ed_Haynes]

Reverse, part 3.

[Ed_Haynes]

And part 4.

Read it and weep.

(And thanks! )

[Guest Rick Research]

ARC =

Aleksei Yakovlovich Verozubov, Private, born 1906 Sarkansky raion of Alma-Atinskaya Oblast, non-Party, Russian

In Red Army July 1942-November 1945

in 206th Independent Machine Gun-Artillery Battalion, 52nd Army as "line supervisor." (!?)

At time ARC was filled out (20.3.48) was Track Master of a trestle bridge, city of Angren, Uzbek SSR-- living at No 14 Shkolnaya Ulitsa ther.

Ukaz of 6 November 1947 awards this OPW2.

Citation

calls him GUARDS Private, called up at Akhan-(Garaneny?) RVK, Tashkent Oblast, at commander of military education something, city of Angren.

In Patriotic War 20.8.42 to 7.12.45 on Volkhov Front, same unit, again "line supervisor."

One light & one severe wouynd (unspecified)

Medals: For Defense of Leningrad, Victory Over Germany.

Citation text--

"Guards Red Army Private Verozubov, Aleksei Yakovlovich participated in the Patriotic War from 20.8.42 to 7 December 1945 on the Volkhov Front in the rankis of the 206th Independent Machine Gun-Artillery Battalion of the 53rd Army in the position of line supervisor-signalman.

Took part in the defense of the district of the village of Gruzin-Kiritsky district of Leningrad Oblast and was severely wounded by a machine gun in the left buttock. Consequence of this wound: amputation of (unknown word), which took place per cerificate of Hospital No. 1148 of 13.3.43.

Since that time worked for the commander of military instruction (position? non-dictionary-- the Soviet equivalent of the German word "Stelle?") city of Angren. Character of work positive.

For active participation in the Patriotic War and in consequence of receiving maximum mutilation, to award Guards Red Army Private Verozubov, Aleksei Yakovlevich the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd Class.

For Akhan-(Saransky?) Local Veterans Commissariat, Senior Lieutenant Proskuryakov, 21.9.46

Conclusion of Commander of Oblast Vet Com, signed, OPW2 28.11.46

Conclusion of Military District Military Council, signed,OPW 2 31.3.47

By decree of the Presidium of the USSR of 6 November 1947 awarded OPW2."

Note casual discrepancy in number of the ARMY.

[Ed_Haynes]

Thanks. But, er, Rick, please check again. Are you SURE abouit "left leg"? My understanding is that some, well, "special vocabulary" is being used? Think it was rather worse than that?

[Guest Rick Research]

Possibly.

I do not know THAT word and it is not in EITHER dictionary I have. I assumed from the posterior location that the resultant amputation was...

well.

Some things you do NOT learn in school.

[Ed_Haynes]

My colleague was amazed at the metaphorical, we-don't-want-to-actually-say-THAT, usages in play here.

The source for the item summarizes it as:

Awarded to Russian private in the 206 Independent Machinegun-Artillery Battalion, 53 Army. He was a signal corps line supervisor.

Served since AUG 42 and severely wounded near Leningrad in the buttocks. As a result, his testicles were amputated - yes, you read this correctly. Service member was from near Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Submitted for OPWII, downgraded to RS, upgraded to OPW I, and finally granted the originally requested OPWII. . . .

Apparently, it was the left first, then both. Gangrene?

This may explain the bouncing back and forth of the recommendations. What exactly do you give a comrade for that sacrifice for the Motherland?

Edited October 9, 2007 by Ed_Haynes

[order_of_victory]

My colleague was amazed at the metaphorical, we-don't-want-to-actually-say-THAT, usages in play here.

The source for the item summarizes it as:

Apparently, it was the left first, then both. Gangrene?

This may explain the bouncing back and forth of the recommendations. What exactly do you give a comrade for that sacrifice for the Motherland?

That must be ultimate sacrifice for the motherland

Fantastic citation

Order of Victory

[Ed_Haynes]

Have received better translations:

1. Award card

Order booklet 113472

1. Last name: Verozubov

2. Name and Patrionymic: Aleksei Yakovlevich

3. Rank: Private

4. Sex: Male

5. Birthyear: 1906

6. Birthplace: Alma-Alta Oblast, Sarkanskii Region

7. Party Membership: n/a

8. Education: elementary

9. Nationality: Russian

10. Service in the Red Army: 7.1942-11.1945

11. Place of service and duty position at time of awarding: 206 Independent Artillery-Machinegun Battalion, 52 Army; Line Supervisor

12. Place of service and duty position at the current time: Uzbek SSR, Tashkent Oblast, Angren, Road Master

13. Home of Record: Angren, School St. #14

14. Awards

Award Serial Number Awarder

Patriotic War II 803.579 Edict dated 6.11.47

Verified 20 March 1948

2. Award Citation

Award Sheet

1. Rank, last name, name, and patrionymic: Guards Private Aleksei Yakovlevich Verozubov

2. Duty at Present:

3. Commissariat on File, Place of Work and Duty Position: Akhan-Garanskii Regional Military Commissariat, Tashkent Oblast, Chief of Military Records, Angren

4. Birthyear: 1906

5. Nationality: Russian

6. Party Membership: n/a

7. Participation in Patriotic War: 20.8.42 through 7.12.45 on the Volkhov Front, 206 MG-Artillery Battalion, Line Manager

8. Wounds: One Light, One Serious

9. In Red Army: 1942-1945

10. Earlier Awards: Medal ?For the Defense of Leningrad? and ?Victory over Germany?

11. Home of record: Uzbek SSR, Tashkent Oblast, Akhan-Garansk. Region, Angren, School Street #14

Submission for Order of the Patriotic War II Class

Guards Private Aleksei Yakovlevich Verozubob was a participant of the Patriotic War from 20.8.42 through 7.12.45 on the Volkhov Front as part of the 206 Independent Machinegun-Artillery Battalion, 53 Army as a Line Manager-Communications Soldier.

While defending the village of Gruzin (Kirishskii Region, Leningrad Oblast) he was seriously wounded by a bullet in the left buttocks. As a result of his wound, his testicles were amputated on the basis of a report from Evacuation Hospital #1148 dated 13.3.43.

At the present he works as the Chief of Military Records in Angren and his work receives positive reviews.

I am recommending Guards Private Aleksei Yakovlevich Verozubov for the Order of the Patriotic War II Class for his active participation in the Patriotic War and subsequent wounding.

Signed Regional Military Commissariat Representative Senior Lieutenant Proskuryakov on 21 September 1946

Recommended downgrade to Order of the Red Star by Oblast Commissariat Lieutenant Colonel Rakhimov on 28 November 1946

Recommended upgrade to Order of the Patriotic War I Class by Commander of Forces, Turkestan Military District General of the Army Ivan Petrov on 31 March 1947

Awarded the Order of the Patriotic War II Class by Edict dated 6.11.47

Edited October 18, 2007 by Ed_Haynes

[Paul R]

Another great set of research.

[Sergei]

My colleague was amazed at the metaphorical, we-don't-want-to-actually-say-THAT, usages in play here.

The source for the item summarizes it as:

Apparently, it was the left first, then both. Gangrene?

This may explain the bouncing back and forth of the recommendations. What exactly do you give a comrade for that sacrifice for the Motherland?

Ed,

Is your consultant a native speaker? Could you possibly ask your colleague which bit of the text he/she found methaphorical?

The Russian text looks utterly transparent to me. Sadly, his balls got chopped off, that's the deal.

There's a better question though, have the alternative awards been pre-printed (in which case I am going to say the doc is bogus) or entered with a stamp (looks very neat though).

Sergei

[Guest Darrell]

...... Sadly, his balls got chopped off, that's the deal........

That's getting to the "point"

[Sergei]

That's getting to the "point"

Yeah, Darrell, I am afraid that's how things used to be in a totally, shall we say, non-letigiuos state? In this particular case, I can sort of see the sequence of the events. The guy gets a bad wounld, it's being classified as a heavy one (no kidding when your motherland is under attack!) so he's written off for the Army purposes but then the medics look at him and they go "No way! Your life or or your balls".

Despite the efforts of some of our fellow collectors to turn WWII into a glamorous feeding ground for investment purposes, the war is what it's always been. It's when people die.

I am a little surprised I have not heard from the owner of this award though.

Sergei

[Ed_Haynes]

I received this medal and untranslated research from the previous custodian with only a very brief precis of the recommendation. While the previous custodian is not a native speaker of Russian, he has good professional skills in the language and has co-authored one well-known book and independently authored another book on Soviet awards. He is a member of this forum, but rarely posts here, preferring another venue.

In the interim, I showed the citation to a colleague in my department whose professional specialization is in Russian history and he gave a very brief (he was on the way to class) look through and confirmed in broad terms what the summary had said. He observed that the vocabulary used seemed to him odd, not clinical, but more vernacular, almost "street".

I then posted this medal and recommendation on this forum to both share what I thought was an interesting new award and get some guidance. Unfortunately, the discussion of this award rather quickly boiled down to a squabble between the native speakers of Russian and the non-native speakers. In frustration, I posted the difficult parts of this and the other problematic recommendation on another forum and the response was, to be frank, even less satisfactory. But I rather expected that. It reminded me why I have always preferred this community.

Finally, the previous custodian got around to providing the promised translations that I have given above.

To be quite honest, the directions this and some other recent discussions have gone are making me less and less interested in posting any items here. If everything is to boil down to a native speaker/non native speaker dispute, degenerating quickly into an implicit "foreigners can't understand this stuff and shouldn't even try, just leave it all to (and for) the Russians" debate, then the joys of posting and sharing in a "gentleman's" forum diminish. What I seek is helpful and interested e-friends who have enough linguisitc skill in both Russian and English to be able to comment in a useful and helpful and "gentlemanly" way. I do not see phaleristics as, in any way, a competitive sport. And, yes, I know that many do and that they tend to be concentrrated in certain sub-fields.

And once we get into the "well, I [sniff and shake of the head] think this is fake" territory, I start looking around for off-forum professional translation services and for the exit . . . .

[Guest Rick Research]

I'm no native speaker of Russian either. Indeed, it is so far down my list of language skills, I cannot THINK in Russian the way I can in English (watch it!!!! ), French, or German. But one eyed, and working from a dictionary to get the parts I can't gloss at first glance, I do what I can

and since it is FREE

everybody gets what they "pay" for.

I would CHEERFULLY turn over the online perpetual bulk volunteer translation service here to anybody (PLEASE) who can do better, but as seems all too often the case, nobody actually comes along and DOES the translating until AFTER I've spent hours at it. When several of you guys get in research all at once (and me with 4 out since New Years and not one word back, sniffle) it is OVERWHELMING.

I feel so... alone.

I've got too many things to do with the hours in a day.

Meanwhile, there are of course MANY problems which only native speakers who have grown up in a "situational context" can get. (My own learning of French and German, for instance, was PRE-COMPUTER, so that terms which I do not know in ENGLISH I have absolutely no understanding of in those tongues either. It is as if I have been in prison for 30 years while all the world changed around me.

Oh! I forgot! I have been in prison for 30 years while the world changed all around me! )

ANYWAY, in this precise anatomical case, I have the 1962 Moscow-published Russko-Anglisky Slovar' from the Gosudartvennoe Izdatel'stvo Inostranniikh I Natsional'niikh Clovarei and there is no word for "testicles" in there. Same ... anatomocal deficit in my 1976 A. S. Romanov's Russian-English/Emnglish-Russian Dictionary.

The "naughty bits" have been

if not SURGICALLY

... LINGUISTICALLY

removed.

... Some things they do NOT teach you in school!

Oddly (?) enough, gonads have never came up in any communications I've ever had in Russian!

Meanwhile, we all do the best we can, and the more input the better!

[Guest Darrell]

....ANYWAY, in this precise anatomical case, I have the 1962 Moscow-published Russko-Anglisky Slovar' from the Gosudartvennoe Izdatel'stvo Inostranniikh I Natsional'niikh Clovarei and there is no word for "testicles" in there. Same ... anatomocal deficit in my 1976 A. S. Romanov's Russian-English/Emnglish-Russian Dictionary.

The "naughty bits" have been

if not SURGICALLY

... LINGUISTICALLY

removed.

Oddly (?) enough, gonads have never came up in any communications I've ever had in Russian!

Meanwhile, we all do the best we can, and the more input the better!

LOL. Reminds me of Grade school. All the little pervs running off to the Library to sneek a peek into the 5 inch thick MEGA dictionary (which I don't believe was EVER used) looking for all those naughty "F", "C" and "B" words

Edited October 19, 2007 by Darrell

[Sergei]

Ed,

Thanks for your post. I am here only because I am interested in uncovering historical truth. Cynicism I do not accept. Look back at your post number 11 in this thread and you will know what I mean.

As a native speaker, I can help non-Russians cope with some of the less formal usages of the Russian language in citations. If the citation implies a double speak I will say so. If not, I will explain why.

I am not interested in promoting a 'conspiracy theory' or otherwise. I do not have time for that.

Rick, I am very, very sorry indeed, I am a slow contributor and besides I am not that fluent in English/American military terminology although I understand all of their Russian equivalents. I do read most of the research you post here but it's physically impossible for me to translate everything. I know how you must be feeling and I am also a little (a lot, in fact) surprised that no other native speakers are making an effort given that there are so many Russians registered on this forum. Are they here for purely trading purposes? Weird.

As always, it is not my intention to offend anybody. The last time I had a problem understanding an old English joke about Bovril I simply asked the native speakers who knew what it was about without implying anything on the part of the generation that came up with the joke. I think this is how it should be.

Sergei

[Sergei]

Yeah, this forum!

Since there seems to be no active input on previous posts, I will just carry on talking to myself, clearing up in the process some misunderstanding with regard to a particular term in a citation. I admit, I should have done that sooner but the relevant volume was buried deep in a storage cupboard.

The citation uses the word яички which is quite hard to find in a small dictionary and which a friend of Ed's had associated with an informal (childish) usage of the language. Here's the story as complete as I am prepared to tell today when the sunshine outside is beckoning.

яички is a plural of яичко

яйца is a plural of яйцо

Most dictionaries do not do plurals.

Next, if you buy one chicken egg in a shop or order one in a restaurant in Russia you ask for

куриное яйцо (this is how they would appear on the price list) or куриные яйца if several.

Asking for куриные яички is okay(ish) but the waiter will start thinking that you are tipsy enough to shift into the less formal language.

In children's literature, fairy tales etc. the use of the word яичко as a diminuative for an egg is common and perfectly viable.

If a football player get hurt, a TV commentator will say 'a kick in the groin' in English or 'удар в пах' in Russian. A few-beers-later football fan will say 'a kick in the balls' in England or 'удар по яйцам' in Russia. The last too forms, even though they utilise accceptable vocabularly, are out of formal communication.

Medics refer to the relevant parts as testicles in English. My 1986 version of the Soviet Encyclopeadic Dictionary has the following entry: яичко - a male sex gland in mammals and humans.

It is possible that the medical vocabularly has been latinised in Russia in recent years and this usage has now been abandoned but as far as I can see the citation term яички for testicles was neither unduly coloquial nor impresise.

Off to my garden now to have a beer and a яичница.

See how we could co-operate if no-one was making hasty presumptions?

Have a good Sunday,

Sergei

Edited October 21, 2007 by Sergei

[Ed_Haynes]

Thanks, Sergei. As far as I can follow this it is very helpful.

[Sergei]

Ed,

I wish I were more coherent, but as I said, the sun (erhmm, the pint?) is beckoning!

If there's anything you'd like tidied up, just ask - only a few hours later, please.

Sergei

[Ed_Haynes]

Ed,

I wish I were more coherent, but as I said, the sun (erhmm, the pint?) is beckoning!

If there's anything you'd like tidied up, just ask - only a few hours later, please.

Sergei

No, Sergei, I think it is clear. It is just that I don't have enough Russian to fully follow what you are saying. I have enough trouble with English, Hindi, Urdu, scraps of Arabic and Pashto, and remnant German, plus trying to learn Mongolian (and not succeeding very well). As every year goes by and every beer goes down, there seems to be less space for languages.

And do go enjoy the sun!

Edited October 21, 2007 by Ed_Haynes