Soviet "Eggs"

[Stogieman]

Can anyone who has authentic "Honored Employee" Badges for KGB, MVD & NKVD please post their examples for me? Thanks!!

[HuliganRS]

Here's one for sale from one of my friends...

[Chuck In Oregon]

Here's my Cheka 15-Year Jubilee Badge. It is quite a bit different from Rusty's. Four rivets, no number, no proof or maker marks and so forth.

I keep thinking that I used to have another Honored NKVD badge than the one you have already seen, but I may have sold it. At the very least, I can't seem to find it at the moment.

Chuck

[Danny]

Here's one for sale from one of my friends...

Hey Rusty, I'm interested.... is your friend a member of this board?

[HuliganRS]

PM Sent.

[Stogieman]

Nobody has any real examples of these to share? Are they really that rare?

[Stogieman]

I'm hoping some of you will come forward with detailed dimensions and photos please!

Thanks!

[Vatjan]

I do not have any examples to show, but I got this cd and was really pleased with it and learned a great deal about these badges. It's a wealth of information for 12 US

http://www.geocities.com/huskeradmi/cheka.html

Jan

Edited February 1, 2006 by vatjan

[Vatjan]

This might also be of help

http://www.sadcom.com/pins/kgb_badges/badge1.html

And this one, if you have the patience for sloooooooow doooooownlooooooaaads

http://nkvdcollect.narod.ru/index.html

Jan

Edited February 1, 2006 by vatjan

[Stogieman]

Thanks Jan, I know of the 2 sites, but not of the CD

Thanks!!

[Stogieman]

Well how about that....... I know the author. Just had a nice eMail chat.

[Ed_Haynes]

Oh . . . I like these tasty eggses. More?

[Stogieman]

No, probably not. Even amongst the acknowledged, experienced collectors and dealers there seems to be very little consensus on what's authentic. Pretty funny too.... but that's a story for another day.

[Chuck In Oregon]

I'm hoping some of you will come forward with detailed dimensions and photos please!

Thanks!

* * * * *

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

[Dudeman]

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

The Red Star Bordello in Odessa. They served great margaritas and mai-tai's!

[Chuck In Oregon]

The Red Star Bordello in Odessa. They served great margaritas and mai-tai's!

* * * * *

Oh, then you DO know Odessa?

Thank you for the very good laugh, Dudeman. Close, but no cigar.

Chuck

[kimj]

It's the Mecca of the Soviet Union: The birthplace of Stalin in Gori!!

I guess comrade NKVD-man is doing some PC soviet-sightseeing. Wonder if he showed slides when he got back home....

Here is one in colour from: http://www.expatmonkey.com/photos/georgia_...gia03072018.htm

Nice pic Chuck!!

/Kim

[Stogieman]

...... so much for a "working-class" start... pretty fancy digs.

[HuliganRS]

The shack inside is the birth place.

The big shell is there to protect the little house...

Rusty.

[Stogieman]

OK, that makes way more sense...... big fancy building behind must be a museum??

[Chuck In Oregon]

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