Soviet A Nice "Common" Labor Order

[NavyFCO]

All:

Here's one of my favorites. I have owned this one for years (I don't even remember where it came from) and thought about selling it numerous times. What saved it was the forelorn look on the photo of the recipient. She looked like she had been through so much and for the money I could get from it, it would be sad to see something bad happen to the group. So, I kept it in my "junk box." Years later, I found out that we could research labor awards and I gave this one a shot.

Turns out this young lady was a middle-grade teacher at School No. 59 in Arkhangelsk. Pretty neat! There were several hundred other teachers that were awarded the ORB at the same time on an Ukaz dated 14 December 1944.

Now, interestingly, after reading through some of the labor award research in these threads, I took another look at the research. I never looked past the initial Ukaz, and just today I found that there were several photocopied newspaper articles about her included with the research! I will post those up as I get them translated. Fun stuff!

Dave

[NavyFCO]

Here she is. Probably was fairly attractive as a young lady, but just imagine what she had lived through up to this time...

[NavyFCO]

Here's the order itself. Obviously worn with pride! What I love about it is that everything is 100% original... No changed ribbons, hanger, or anything like that.

[NavyFCO]

Finally, the inside of the book and the back of the award.

[Guest Rick Research]

Ahhhh! Post scans of that paperwork! We like to "work through" such things here-- part of the fun!

A RBL from this period is whole orders of magnitude "better" than one of the mass-awards from the 1970s, say. Nothing to do with low numbers, but with when an award actually MEANT something.

I always wondered, and just discovered in the new railways awards book by Vladimir Lapin, that by a decree of 27 January 1947 (at least-- whether your award was a "first wave" equivalent of the 3 November 1944 long service militray Red Banners, don't know--yet) a RBL was given to railways personnel for 25 years service (at this time, Badge of Honor for 20, Valiant Labor at 15, Distinguished Labor for 10). But that was altered by a new decree on 28 July 1949 which dumped the Badge of Honor, demoted the Red Banner of Labor to 20 years, and plunked in the Order of Lenin for 25 years.

Whether the ENTIRE civil service got these awards for similar long service is an interesting subject for future research--that may explain all those "lone" 1950s Lenins we find.

[NavyFCO]

Rick-

I would post up the newspaper articles, but they START at 600kb just in order to make them large enough to read!!!

I think that this might be a case in point where she got this as a 20 year service award. We'll see when the articles get done being translated!

Dave