On this page we have collected resources that will help you find a soldier (deceased relative or friend), search for those killed and missing in the Great Patriotic War.
The volunteer project “Archive Battalion” to restore information about participants in the wars of the 20th century accepts and processes applications to study the combat path of participants in the Great Patriotic War.
At present, the fate of more than 4.7 million defenders of the Fatherland who went missing during the Great Patriotic War has not been established. To this day, the remains of a large number of Russian soldiers and officers remain unburied.
The People's Memory project was implemented in accordance with the decision of the Russian Victory Organizing Committee of July 2013, supported by the instructions of the President and the Decree of the Russian Government in 2014. The project provides for the publication on the Internet of archival documents and documents about the losses and awards of soldiers and officers of the First World War, the development of the projects previously implemented by the Russian Ministry of Defense about the Second World War OBD Memorial and Feat of the People into one project - Memory of the People.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation presents a unique open access information resource, filled with all documents available in military archives about the progress and results of major combat operations, exploits and awards of all soldiers of the Great Patriotic War. As of August 8, 2012, the data bank contains information about 12,670,837 awards.
The generalized data bank contains information about the defenders of the Fatherland who died and disappeared during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period. The work was done on a large scale: tens of thousands of documents were collected and converted into electronic form, with a total volume of more than 10 million sheets. The personal information contained in them amounted to more than 20 million records.
The all-Russian public civil-patriotic movement “Immortal Regiment of Russia” collects stories about participants in the Great Patriotic War. The database is updated daily. Here you can not only add your veteran soldier to the all-Russian “piggy bank”, but also search for existing ones.
“Immortal Regiment - Moscow” together with the “My Documents” State Service Centers are collecting information about residents of the capital who took part in the Great Patriotic War. Now there are already more than 193 thousand names in the archive.
Soldat.ru is the oldest portal on the Russian Internet for establishing the fate of dead and missing military personnel and searching for their loved ones.
With our project we want to thank by name the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War living next to us and talk about their feat. The “Winners” project was created for the 60th anniversary of the Victory. Then we managed to collect lists of more than a million veterans living near us.
The site also contains a stunning interactive and animated map of the fighting of the Great Patriotic War.
On the social website “PomniPro”, each registered user can create a memory page, a photo gallery of a deceased loved one, talk about his biography, honor the memory of the deceased, leave words of memory and gratitude. You can also find a deceased relative and friend, search for those killed and missing in the Great Patriotic War.
The site is conceived as a people's encyclopedia, a virtual Memorial to the fallen participants of the Great War, where everyone can leave their comments on any entry, supplement information about the War Participant with photographs and memories, and turn to other project participants for help. There are about 60,000 project participants. More than 400,000 cards have been registered.
The site has a large database of participants in the Great Patriotic War. The chronicle is maintained by community members. Now there are more than 400 thousand names in the archive.
When checking data about a person, open the “advanced search” tab and make attempts by typing only the last name, then the last name and first name, then the full data. Also try to check the information by setting the last name parameters, and the first and patronymic parameters only with initials.
The request must be sent to the address: 142100 Moscow region, Podolsk, Kirova St., 74. "Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation."
Enclose the letter in the envelope, clearly stating the information you have and stating the purpose of the request. Enclose one blank envelope with your home address as the recipient's address.
If you do not have information on awards, you can go to the “Feat of the People” website. In the “People and Awards” tab, enter the information requested.
There are additional ways that can also help you find and identify information about your veteran. The website “Soldat.ru” presents a list of search technologies, we draw your attention to some of them:
"Find out why your grandfather didn't receive a medal!" - we addressed the readers of Rossiyskaya Gazeta and users of our website three years ago. And on the same day as today, Defender of the Fatherland Day - February 23, 2015 - we opened, together with specialists from the Central Archive and the Main Personnel Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the search project "Stars of Victory".
The initial base of 8208 front-line soldiers, whose military awards at that time remained unpresented, by this day, through the efforts of partners in TsAMO and GUK, had increased eightfold. And now confirmed information about 65,843 such orders and medals is open for search in the public database on the RG website.
There is also a more expensive result. 70 years after the war, through the joint efforts of employees of the military commissariats, the Central Archive and the Main Personnel Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, with the support of readers and journalists of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, it was possible to find 28 living front-line soldiers among the participants in the Great Patriotic War who were not given the due awards. And now in 27 cases - St. Petersburg, Kazan (two front-line soldiers), Shakhty, Moscow (six front-line soldiers), Rostov (two front-line soldiers), Smolensk, Novosibirsk (two front-line soldiers), Khimki, Moscow region, Azov, Maykop, Essentuki, Kushchevskaya village and the village of Akhtyrsky, Krasnodar Territory, Kirov, Volgograd, Sterlitomak, Meleuz (Republic of Bashkortostan), Kaliningrad, Simferopol - this injustice has been corrected: 30 military orders and medals have been transferred to their rightful owners.
We dare to hope that in the shortest possible time, Viktor Vasilyevich Chinarov from the village of Uspenskoye in the Serebryano-Prudsky district of the Moscow region will receive the Order of Glory, III degree. Confirmation of his non-delivery of the award came to us from TsAMO only this week, which we immediately reported to the front-line soldier’s family, to the military registration and enlistment office at his place of residence and to the school next to his house...
Our project, which is only three years old, will continue. Therefore, we do not sum up the results, but only want to recall the names of our heroes and wish health to those of them who are with us to this day.
GORBUNOV Vasily Yakovlevich(1926-2016) - Order of Glory, III degree. Awarded for distinction in battles during the liberation of Belarus. The 70th anniversary of the Victory was celebrated in Kazan, where at a ceremonial meeting the acting president of the Republic of Tatarstan presented the long-awaited order to the front-line soldier. And that same summer, a house was renovated in his home village, which was closer and dearer to the veteran than his daughter’s city apartment with all the amenities...
KIPA Ivan Tikhonovich- Order of the Red Star. A former tanker, he lives in his house in the city of Shakhty, Rostov region. Nearby are a son and grandchildren. And together we do not give up hope of finding traces of Ivan Kipa’s fellow soldiers and collecting the “Immortal Crew” from their descendants.
VOROBEV Nikolay Efimovich- medal "For the Defense of Leningrad". Even before being drafted into the Active Army, as a teenager, he worked at a defense plant in besieged Leningrad. Among his military awards there was no medal “For the Defense of Leningrad,” and officials, when he asked about this, said from the door: “It’s not allowed!” . The front-line soldier was touched, and he, with the support of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, broke through the bureaucratic blockade.
STOROZHENKO Mikhail Petrovich- Order of Glory, III degree. Former machine gunner, sergeant, squad leader. In Azov, Rostov region, before his 91st birthday, a veteran received a lost order. Russian President Vladimir Putin then sent his greetings to the front-line soldier. The touched veteran called the editorial office that same day and began to thank him, believing that it was the journalists who organized everything. But we did not take credit for something that we really didn’t do... And on the eve of 2018, there was a call from Azov again: Mikhail Petrovich conveyed New Year’s greetings from himself and the whole family and wanted us to continue our work.
OSHLOKOV Pavel Averyanovich- Order of Glory III degree. He distinguished himself in battles against the Japanese invaders in August 1945 and was seriously wounded. Celebrated the Victory Anniversary in Essentuki. And the daughter of a front-line soldier found the unpresented order in the electronic database. “This became the brightest event of the year for my father and for us,” Irina Pavlovna responded to the phone call.
MILYUKOVA (nee ABAKUMOVA) Alexandra Gavrilovna- Order of the Red Star. During the war - military paramedic, lieutenant of the medical service. She was awarded the Order of the Red Star in the summer of 1945, but found out about it only in 2015, although she is an active person, lived and worked in Moscow, in Khimki, and after retiring, she was a member of the regional Veterans Council for a long time. Through the efforts of employees of the district military registration and enlistment office and the Military Commissariat of the city of Moscow, the award was solemnly presented to Alexandra Gavrilovna in the summer of 2015.
THAGAPSOVA (nee AVAKUMOVA) Anna Mikhailovna- Medal of Honor". She was a scout in the partisan detachment of Nikifor Kolyada - the legendary "Bati". And he personally presented him with the award in the spring of 1942. The medal from the war came to Anna Mikhailovna in the city of Maykop, Republic of Adygea.
SUKHIKH Anatoly Mikhailovich- Medal of Honor". During the war he was a signalman; many times he had to repair a broken telephone cable under fire. At one of these moments he was wounded and ended up in the hospital. The medal with which he was awarded for military distinction was found only now and came to the village of Akhtyrsky, Krasnodar Territory, where the front-line soldier worked as a school teacher before his retirement. And the award was presented exactly on the birthday of his wife, Raisa Nikolaevna, who taught Russian language and literature at the same school. “This was a gift from the war,” summed up the head of the family.
POPOV Vladimir Ivanovich- Medal of Honor". He went to the front at the age of 17, as soon as he learned about the death of his father. He fought bravely in an artillery regiment, for which he was nominated twice - in October and November 1944 - for the medal "For Courage". Both awards were found after the war: one in 1983, and the other only in the fall of 2015. In the village of Kushchevskaya, Krasnodar Territory, there is now a double holder of the most revered soldier's medal.
IVANOV Nikolay Stepanovich- Medal "For Military Merit". Participated in the war with Japan, machine gunner of the 138th Infantry Regiment. He was awarded in September 1945, but the soldier found his combat medal only 70 years later - in Rostov-on-Don.
ZUEV Petr Mikhailovich(1925 - 2015) - medal "For Military Merit". A belated award from the war found him in Novosibirsk and literally lifted him from his hospital bed. Pyotr Mikhailovich gathered his remaining strength, returned home, stood like a soldier and listened to the award order, and the medal took pride of place on the lapel of his jacket. And a week before the new year 2016, sad news came from Novosibirsk from Lyubov Podzolkina’s niece: 90-year-old Pyotr Mikhailovich Zuev died. It turned out that the medal “For Military Merit,” which the 19-year-old fighter was awarded back in 1945, could only be found and awarded to him two months before his death.
PRICHEPA (nee - KOSMACHEVA) Anna Savelyevna- Medal "For Military Merit". During the war I was an orderly, a nurse, and a cook in a hospital - but this was already in 1945, after the Victory. If he remembers that time, it is briefly and with pain: blood, sweat, tears. The first years after returning to her native Smolensk she restored what had been destroyed by the war. And then she was in the public eye, for many years she worked as a technical secretary in the Smolensk regional party committee. But they couldn’t find her to present the award for 70 years. And even that year, when the medal was finally discovered, its presentation was unjustifiably delayed. By September 25, when City Day and Liberation Day of the Smolensk region are celebrated in Smolensk, they did not have time to pick up the already issued award in Moscow. They brought it a few days later and handed it over “at home”...
KATKOV Pavel Vasilievich- medal "For the Defense of the Caucasus". During the war, he was a rifleman in the 6th Guards Brigade and the 151st Rifle Division, received a severe bullet wound to his arm, and was demobilized in November 1945. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of May 1, 1944, he was awarded the medal “For the Defense of the Caucasus.” Through the efforts of employees of the Moscow Military Commissariat and the district military registration and enlistment office, the award was found and presented on May 7, 2015 at a ceremonial meeting in the Moscow Government House on Novy Arbat.
ALEXEEVA Olga Dmitrievna- medals “For the capture of Berlin”, “For the liberation of Prague”, “For victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”. During the war, she was a weapons technician in the 110th Guards Attack Aviation Regiment - she prepared the Il-2 for a combat mission: she loaded aircraft cannons and machine guns, and together with her partner she hung bombs and missiles on the wings. In the summer of 1945, the women from the regiment were the first to be demobilized, and instead of the medals they were entitled to at that time, they were given supporting certificates. At the military registration and enlistment office, where Corporal Alekseeva registered, the papers got lost over time. But in the year of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, Olga Dmitrievna decided to “go to victory.” Thanks to her persistence, supporting documents were found in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense. And on December 5, 2015, at a solemn meeting of veterans on the anniversary of the first victories near Moscow, Olga Dmitrievna Alekseeva was presented with all three awards.
DOLGOPOLOVA (nee KOZLOVA) Zinaida Ivanovna- medal "For victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." After graduating from Kolomna Medical School in 1942, she was an operating nurse in the evacuation hospital EG-4844 of the Western Front, and from February 44 to December 45 - in EG-671 of the Third Belorussian Font. The medal “For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945,” which she did not receive in a timely manner, was awarded on May 7, 2015 at the Moscow Government House on Novy Arbat.
PODOLSKAYA (Berezina) Zinaida Nikolaevna- medal "For victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." She was a nurse on the 232nd military ambulance train. Seventy-three years have passed - a whole life, and the sanitary worker Zina Berezina still remembers the first flight of the ambulance train with which she went to her war. And the Kazansky station, and even track No. 1, from which they were seen off. In the sixth car, her partner was Potapova Masha, and the head nurse was Lydia Lomakina. I didn’t remember the three numbers that a military hospital train necessarily had in its name, but Zinaida Nikolaevna remembered the name of the commissar - captain Nikolai Kozyrev. Ultimately, this helped to find supporting documents.
CHERNETSKY Oscar Evgenievich- medal "For victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." Professor of the Rostov State Medical University Oscar Chernetsky received this award only at the age of 92, although he received the title of war veteran back in 2005, but did not enjoy any benefits.
SUSLOV Alexander Pavlovich- Order of Glory III degree. “We couldn’t even imagine that such a modest person lived next door to us: for 70 years he knew that he had been awarded the order, but he didn’t even talk about it,” this is how residents of the city of Meleuz in Bashkortostan reacted to the news of the award
90-year-old veteran of the Great Patriotic War Alexander Pavlovich Suslov received the Order of Glory, III degree.
PLOTNIKOV Nikolay Fedotovich- Order of the Red Banner. An error in the award list delayed the award for 70 years. By that day, Nikolai Fedotovich Plotnikov could only move with the help of others. But he came to the ceremony at the Battle of Stalingrad Museum-Reserve in full parade. There they presented the hero with the Order of the Red Banner - a very rare award for a Red Army soldier of an infantry regiment, which had been waiting for this hour for 71 years.
SYRAEV Fathul- Order of the Red Star. Sergeant Syraev kept his promise - he waited for the Red Star and accepted it on his chest. The Order for distinction in battles during the liberation of Belarus was presented to 91-year-old front-line soldier Fatkhul Syraev by the President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov. Ever since the war veteran found out that his undelivered military award had been found, he lived in anticipation of this day.
SKOROKHOD Boris Fedoseevich- Order of Glory, III degree. They awarded the brave Red Army soldier at the age of twenty for courage in battles in the spring of 1945. And the order on the lapel of his jacket sparkled when the veteran front-line soldier passed ninety. My granddaughter helped me find the order and collect supporting documents. The award was solemnly presented at the Sterlitamak Palace of Culture.
POPOV Nikolay Vasilievich- Medal of Honor". The order dated January 22, 1945, handwritten, states that the assistant platoon commander of the 9th Infantry Company of the 1191st Vyborg Infantry Regiment of the 358th Leningrad Infantry Division Nikolai Vasilyevich Popov was nominated for the medal "For Courage" - for the fact that during the breakthrough of the German defense on January 13, 1945, he acted boldly and courageously. And Nikolai Vasilyevich Popov received his soldier’s award at the age of 91, having by that time become an honorary resident of Kirov and the founder of one of the first commercial banks in the city.
PYZIN Petr Alekseevich- Order of the Red Star. The order for this award was signed in May 1945. But this front-line award came from the war for more than seventy years. And who knows - I would have gotten there if the front-line soldier had not happened to move from the Donetsk region to Kaliningrad in his declining years...
KOROLEV Vasily Ivanovich- the front-line soldier received two Orders of the Red Star in one day. Together with the awardee, his relatives had been waiting for this event for a long time and with hope.
SHIRINYA Kirill Kirillovich- Order of the Patriotic War, II degree. This award was presented to the 96-year-old front-line soldier by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. “Over the past 70 years,” the veteran said in response, “the reward has become 70 times more expensive.” And on the anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, Kirill Kirillovich Shirinya was a guest of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta and answered numerous questions from fellow journalists with enviable patience.
BRATUSHEV Stepan Vasilievich- Medal "For Military Merit". The award was given to a resident of Simferopol in early January, which coincided with the front-line soldier’s birthday. And before that, while Crimea was under Ukrainian jurisdiction, no one wanted to help the veteran in finding and completing the necessary papers...
Rossiyskaya Gazeta journalists Svetlana Braylovskaya (Kazan), Vera Chereneva (St. Petersburg), Elena Melikhova and Larisa Ionova (Rostov-on-Don), Natalya Reshetnikova spoke about the military awards that came to living front-line soldiers in the Stars of Victory project. and Nina Ruzanova (Novosibirsk), Dmitry Raichev (Smolensk), Tatyana Pavlovskaya (Krasnodar), Elena Brezhitskaya (Stavropol), Andrey Andreev (Kirov), Roman Merzlyakov (Volgograd), Gulnaz Danilova (Ufa), Ulyana Vylegzhanina (Kaliningrad), Mikhail Sukharev (Stavropol), Ilya Izotov (Simferopol).
The faces of the heroes, of whom there are very few left, and these exciting moments of the living history that is passing away from us were captured by fellow photojournalists Arkady Kolybalov, Alexander Korolkov, Sergey Kuksin, Sergey Mikheev, Mikhail Sinitsyn.
Bright, expressive photographs of front-line hero Ivan Tikhonovich Kipa from the city of Shakhty were left as a keepsake for his family and all of us by a photojournalist Victor Pogontsev. Viktor Filippovich himself, our colleague, an extra-professional and a wonderful person, passed away at the end of 2015.
We will preserve the good memory of him and the departed front-line veterans, and we will continue the common cause.
P.S..
What to do and where to communicate if you find in our database information about an unpresented award to a front-line soldier you know? Or - did you find your father, grandfather, close relative?
The original base of 8,208 front-line soldiers, whose military awards at that time remained undelivered, by this day, through the efforts of partners in TsAMO and GUK, had increased eightfold. And now confirmed information about 65,843 such orders and medals is open for search in the public database on the RG website.
Over three years, thousands of Russians have used our tips and practical recommendations. Hundreds of families, children of front-line soldiers (and, since last year, grandchildren) have received and continue to receive certificates for their father’s orders and grandfather’s medals.
There is also a more expensive result. 70 years after the war, through the joint efforts of employees of the military commissariats, the Central Archives and the Main Personnel Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, with the support of readers and journalists of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, it was possible to find 28 living front-line soldiers among the participants in the Great Patriotic War who were not given the due awards. And now in 27 cases - St. Petersburg, Kazan (two front-line soldiers), Shakhty, Moscow (six front-line soldiers), Rostov (two front-line soldiers), Smolensk, Novosibirsk (two front-line soldiers), Khimki, Moscow region, Azov, Maykop, Essentuki, Kushchevskaya village and the village of Akhtyrsky, Krasnodar Territory, Kirov, Volgograd, Sterlitomak, Meleuz (Republic of Bashkortostan), Kaliningrad, Simferopol - this injustice has been corrected: 30 military orders and medals have been transferred to their rightful owners.
We dare to hope that in the shortest possible time, Viktor Vasilyevich Chinarov from the village of Uspenskoye in the Serebryano-Prudsky district of the Moscow region will receive the Order of Glory, III degree. Confirmation of his non-delivery of the award came to us from TsAMO only this week, which we immediately reported to the front-line soldier’s family, to the military registration and enlistment office at his place of residence and to the school next to his house...
Our project, which is only three years old, will continue. Therefore, we do not sum up the results, but only want to recall the names of our heroes and wish health to those of them who are with us to this day.
2015 Vasily Yakovlevich GORBUNOV (1926-2016) - Order of Glory, III degree. Awarded for distinction in battles during the liberation of Belarus. The 70th anniversary of the Victory was celebrated in Kazan, where at a ceremonial meeting the acting president of the Republic of Tatarstan presented the long-awaited order to the front-line soldier. And that same summer, a house was renovated in his home village, which was closer and dearer to the veteran than his daughter’s city apartment with all the amenities...
KIPA Ivan Tikhonovich - Order of the Red Star. A former tanker, he lives in his house in the city of Shakhty, Rostov region. Nearby are a son and grandchildren. And together we do not give up hope of finding traces of Ivan Kipa’s fellow soldiers and collecting the “Immortal Crew” from their descendants.
VOROBYOV Nikolai Efimovich - medal “For the Defense of Leningrad”. Even before being drafted into the Active Army, as a teenager, he worked at a defense plant in besieged Leningrad. Among his military awards there was no medal “For the Defense of Leningrad,” and officials, when he addressed this issue, declared from the threshold: “It’s not allowed!” The front-line soldier was touched, and he, with the support of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, broke through the bureaucratic blockade.
STOROZHENKO Mikhail Petrovich - Order of Glory, III degree. Former machine gunner, sergeant, squad leader. In Azov, Rostov region, before his 91st birthday, a veteran received a lost order. Russian President Vladimir Putin then also sent his greetings to the front-line soldier. The touched veteran called the editorial office that same day and began to thank him, believing that it was the journalists who organized everything. But we didn’t take credit for something that we really didn’t do... And on the eve of 2018, there was a call from Azov again: Mikhail Petrovich conveyed New Year’s greetings from himself and the whole family and wanted us to continue our work.
OSHLOKOV Pavel Averyanovich - Order of Glory, III degree. He distinguished himself in battles against the Japanese invaders in August 1945 and was seriously wounded. Celebrated the Victory Anniversary in Essentuki. And the daughter of a front-line soldier found the unpresented order in the electronic database. “This became the most striking event of the year for my father and for us,” Irina Pavlovna responded to the phone call.
MILYUKOVA (nee ABAKUMOVA) Alexandra Gavrilovna - Order of the Red Star. During the war - military paramedic, lieutenant of the medical service. She was awarded the Order of the Red Star in the summer of 1945, but found out about it only in 2015, although she is an active person, lived and worked in Moscow, in Khimki, and after retiring, she was a member of the regional Veterans Council for a long time. Through the efforts of employees of the district military registration and enlistment office and the Military Commissariat of the city of Moscow, the award was solemnly presented to Alexandra Gavrilovna in the summer of 2015.
THAGAPSOVA (nee AVAKUMOVA) Anna Mikhailovna - medal “For Courage”. She was a scout in the partisan detachment of Nikifor Kolyada, the legendary “Bati”. And he personally presented him with the award in the spring of 1942. The medal from the war came to Anna Mikhailovna in the city of Maykop, Republic of Adygea.
SUKHIKH Anatoly Mikhailovich - medal "For Courage". During the war he was a signalman; many times he had to repair a broken telephone cable under fire. At one of these moments he was wounded and ended up in the hospital. The medal with which he was awarded for military distinction was found only now and came to the village of Akhtyrsky, Krasnodar Territory, where the front-line soldier worked as a school teacher before his retirement. And the award was presented exactly on the birthday of his wife, Raisa Nikolaevna, who taught Russian language and literature at the same school. “This was a gift from the war,” summed up the head of the family.
Bright, expressive photographs of front-line hero Ivan Tikhonovich Kipa from the city of Shakhty were left as a keepsake for his family and all of us by photojournalist Viktor Pogontsev. Viktor Filippovich himself, our colleague, an extra-professional and a wonderful person, passed away at the end of 2015. We will preserve the good memory of him and the departed front-line veterans, and we will continue the common cause.
P.S. What to do and where to communicate if you find in our database information about an unpresented award to a front-line soldier you know? Or - did you find your father, grandfather, close relative?
Procedure in typical cases
Other tips, tricks and addresses related to finding information about undelivered awards
Useful Internet resources to help those who are looking for information about war participants, including those killed and missing in action
In Moscow, December 5 is celebrated as Military Glory Day. Exactly 74 years ago, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive in the Battle of Moscow. But during all this time, the veterans never received about half a million awards for military services. The Ministry of Defense decided to correct this and organized a joint project with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
There must be at least three more medals on her chest. For the capture of Berlin, the liberation of Prague and the victory over Germany. They were awarded back in 1945 to 22-year-old Olya Alekseeva, and Olga Dmitrievna, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, received them shortly before her 93rd birthday.
She spent 2 years 11 months and 4 days at the front. He says don’t believe those who claim that it wasn’t scary. Everyone was afraid, every minute. And she prepared the planes for battle with fear, because she did not know whether she would see those she was sending into the sky again.
"Hang bombs - two 250 kg bombs, on winches, loaded and cleaned machine guns. There are 3 machine guns, 2 cannons and 2 missiles on the plane. We fully armed them. Girls, we cried all the time. Like who won't return from a mission... The planes are flying, we think - oh, one is missing. And this war lasted for us, it seemed, for centuries. And we wondered when it would end,” recalls Olga Dmitrievna.
She reached Berlin, but after the war she could not prove that her regiment participated in the capture of the city. And although they issued a certificate of the medals awarded, in order to receive them, other documents were needed, and they were classified for a long time. For various reasons, thousands of awards from the Great Patriotic War remained unpresented. So that they could finally find their heroes, a special project was launched about a year ago. Employees of the Ministry of Defense and journalists from Rossiyskaya Gazeta are studying the archives, checking names, dates and looking for those who have not yet received their orders and medals.
“Awards to living front-line soldiers came to the city of Kazan this year, the Order of Glory, III degree, to machine gunner Vasily Gorbunov. A tankman in the Rostov region received the Order of the Red Star. Veterans received medals in Novosibirsk, Smolensk, and the other day a former intelligence officer received a medal “For Courage,” she lives in the city of Maykop,” says Rossiyskaya Gazeta columnist Alexander Emelyanenkov.
On the website of the Victory Stars project there is information about more than 24 thousand unpresented awards. These are only those about which the information has already been verified one hundred percent. If the heroes are no longer alive, relatives, according to the law, are given not the award itself, but a certificate signed by the president of the country. Two of these at once - for the Order of the Red Star and the medal "For Military Merit" - will now be carefully kept in the Timoschenko family. The veteran’s children and grandchildren came to the ceremony in Moscow.
The total number of orders and medals earned during the Great Patriotic War, but not received, according to historians, is several hundred thousand. And every year there are fewer and fewer veterans to whom they can be presented. Therefore, the emotions of those who managed, albeit late, to receive their awards are priceless.
We have been keeping the memory of the Great War of the 20th century and its heroes for more than 70 years. We pass it on to our children and grandchildren, trying not to lose a single fact or surname. Almost every family was affected by this event; many fathers, brothers, husbands never returned. Today we can find information about them thanks to the painstaking work of military archives staff and volunteers who devote their free time to searching for soldiers’ graves. How to do this, how to find a WWII participant by last name, information about his awards, military ranks, place of death? We could not ignore such an important topic, we hope that we can help those who are looking and want to find.
It is still unknown exactly how many people left us during this great human tragedy. After all, the counting did not begin immediately; only in 1980, with the advent of glasnost in the USSR, historians, politicians, and archive staff were able to begin official work. Until this time, scattered data that were beneficial at that time were received.
Today, thanks to the decoding of secret documents and search work, the numbers are becoming real. Thus, you can see the following picture:
However, these figures do not yet correspond to complete reality. War, and even this kind of war, is not only the destruction of the enemy at the cost of one’s own life. These are broken families - unborn children. This is a huge loss of the male population, thanks to which it will not soon be possible to restore the balance necessary for good demography.
These are diseases, hunger in the post-war years and death from it. This is rebuilding the country again, again in many ways, at the cost of people’s lives. All of them also need to be taken into account when doing calculations. All of them are victims of terrible human vanity, whose name is war.
There is no better memory for the stars of victory than the desire of the future generation to know. The desire to save information for others, to avoid such repetition. How to find a WWII participant by last name, where to find possible information about grandfathers and great-grandfathers, fathers who took part in battles, knowing their last name? Especially for this purpose, there are now electronic repositories that everyone can access.
The work of these resources is not only to search for great people, but also to collect information about them. If you have any, please report it to the administrators of these sites. In this way, we will do a great common cause - we will preserve memory and history.
Another one is the main, central, largest project - https://archive.mil.ru/. The documents preserved there are mostly isolated and remained intact due to the fact that they were taken to the Orenburg region.
Over the years of work, CA staff have created an excellent reference apparatus showing the contents of archival accumulations and funds. Now its goal is to provide people with access to possible documents through electronic computing technology. Thus, a website has been launched where you can try to find a military man who participated in the Second World War, knowing his last name. How to do it?
This is a unique project in its essence. There is no longer such a volume of data collected and digitized from all existing and available sources: card files, electronic memory books, medical battalion documents and command directories. In truth, as long as such programs and the people who provide them exist, the memory of the people will be eternal.
If you didn’t find the right person there, don’t despair, there are other sources, maybe they’re not as large-scale, but that doesn’t make them any less informative. Who knows in which folder the information you need might be lying around.
Where else can you look? There are more narrowly focused repositories, for example:
To search for awards and feats, an open portal has been organized, dedicated specifically to this www.podvignaroda.ru. Information is published here about 6 million cases of awards, as well as 500,000 unawarded medals and orders that never reached the recipient. Knowing the name of your hero, you can find a lot of new things about his fate. The posted scanned documents of orders and award sheets, data from registration files, will complement your existing knowledge.
Who else can I contact for information about awards?
A lot of useful information, which sometimes is not found anywhere, can be found on the forums of the above sites. Here people share valuable experiences and tell their own stories that can help you too. There are many enthusiasts who are ready to help everyone in one way or another. They create their own archives, conduct their own research, and can also be found only on forums. Don't shy away from this type of search.
The search for the living is no less relevant than the search for dead heroes. Who else will tell us the truth about those events, about what they experienced and suffered. About how they greeted victory, the very first, the most expensive, sad and happy at the same time.
Regional archives were created throughout the country. Not so large, often standing on the shoulders of ordinary people, they have preserved unique individual records. Their addresses are on the website of the movement to perpetuate the memory of the victims. And:
