Soviet XX Anniversary of the Red Army

[Paul R]

I have noticed that there is no date marked on the document. Is this normal?

[Paul R]

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[Guest Rick Research]

Not unheard of. I've seen actual handed over dates and the date of creation (!) as the nominal date-- in the same way that the WW2 campaign medals on Awards Record cards always list the Ukaz creation date rather than the exact real date on the award paperwork.

Presumably there was--once--a Master List of ALL these by the award book numbers, but anything late 1930s pre-Patriotic War seems more deeply hidden away than Tsarist records.

Gee, I wonder why?

[Paul R]

Surely, 99.9% of these men have since departed this world... so why would the roster of these medals be such a closely guarded secret?

[Ed_Haynes]

Surely, 99.9% of these men have since departed this world... so why would the roster of these medals be such a closely guarded secret?

In part, because a fair number of the recipients fell afoul the purges. There is also -- and never underestimate this -- simple archival chaos and the general unimportance to most (dare I say "normal") people of things like registers of medal numbers matched up to names. Not exacatly a relevant document to national priorities of any State?

The fact that most are dead and that the State that gave these no longer exists would seem a perfectly good reason for any normal record manager to pitch out the registers. Of no interest to historians anyway. Only the genealogists keep such records alive and while the LDS is getting stronger in today's Russia, pre-purge stuff gets tricky (kind of like att those pre-Civil War southerners who are claimed to have "married Indians").