Soviet Rostov NKVD School -- Class of 1940

[Chuck In Oregon]

This is the proud Rostov-On-Don NKVD School graduating class of 1940, or at least part of it. I believe that the two guys in the front row with hard brim caps and rank insignia may be the CO and XO of the school. I can see a total of four badges on uniforms. Two look like they may be 10 Year jubilee badges of the revolution and the CO looks like he's wearing an Honored Chekist badge of some sort, but on his left breast, as opposed to the photo I posted in Rick's thread about "Eggs". I guess regs do change.

You can also see here the unusual custom, still common enough today, of white-washing the outside steps. It looks just great, for about a day.

The guy second from the left has (NKVD?) patches on both sleeves. The fellow in the front row-center is the only guy with a sword hanger. Maybe a Civil War vet and academy NCO? Who knows? He has a pen clip showing out of his breast pocket, which would have been out of uniform when I was in the Army ... back when Oregon was covered with glaciers.

So, who's the guy with the hard-brim hat and no insignia? Their commissar? Why does the guy on the far left front row have a completely different belt? Why does the guy on his right have no insignia on his budonnovka? Can that baby-faced guy, back row second from the right (Opie, is that you?), actually be old enough to graduate from anything beyond, say, eighth grade?

The guy in the back row, third from the right, the one with sleepy eyes and puffy lips? He's the subject of the order at the top. He went on to become the chief Georgian NKVD executioner.

I think the order, dated July 20, 1940, reads as follows:

CERTIFICATE

Having graduated from the Rostov Inter-Regional NKVD School in 1940, comrade ______ is ordered to NKVD SSSR, No. 911 beginning ______ and is awarded the special rank of ______ .

Secretary of the NKVD School

Shelduchenko

Yes, Rostov, not Tbilisi, and the stamp on the order is from the Rostov-On-Don NKVD. I can't explain that, but I'm pretty sure that I got the provenance right, that these guys were from Tbilisi. I'll speculate that maybe this is the Georgian contingent at the inter-regional academy. The distinctive edge folds and staple marks suggest to me that this document and photo were in a personnel file which was liberated somewhere along the line, maybe after independence. Someone may well have bady wanted this particular information ... or wanted it out of the file.

Chuck

[Stogieman]

Hi Chuck, I agree with the out of regs things, but it may have been nmore common than we think. That NKVD uniform I had in the pipeline bears a suspicious shadow on the left breast that is small enough/right shape to maybe be an egg there as well.