How to use Podvignaroda.ru.

[CtahhR]

The Russian Ministry Of Defence Site Общедоступный электронный банк документов 'Подвиг народа' "Podvig Naroda/Achievement Of The People" is now a quintessential tool in the hobby or for some of us, lifestyle of collecting Soviet awards for deeds during the Great Patriotic War, the Winter War and Border Wars with Japan.

The site is not perfect but never-the-less it is the greatest weapon in the arsenal for easy, free and legitimate research.

As it is a Russian website the website text is in Cyrillic Russian and not Latin English. ALL of the citations are either hand written or typed in Russian and also only available in a picture format, so you can't copy and paste the information into online translation programmes.

So here is how you need to go about researching someone.

Firstly you need a name. Find one you think might return a "hit".
Here is a randomly chosen hit from my collection.

A Medal Booklet for a Medal "For Bravery". As we can see, there is only a single entry. This means we are looking for someone who only was awarded 1 award during the war.