Shanghai Air Defence Order.

[Rick Research]

This one has not been included in either the PLA Museum catalog or the 2000 book. I got it with the award certificate and photo of the Soviet recipient wearing it in the mid 1990s. So far I have seen or heard about FIVE of these Orders and no other award paperwork or photos in wear.

It is a nickle-silver like hard metal, so weakly gilt that it appears NOT to be gilt at all except in certain light and depending on whether it is scanned (very silvery looking) or photographed (the gilt shows better then). the obverse center disk is a separate piece with a painted star. Typical Chinese coiled wire tubes and pin reverse.

Electrical Engineering branch Guards Major Vasily Timofeevich Karambirov of the 1st Guards Anti-Aircraft Searchlight Regiment had this photo attested on 12 January 1954. That's a pretty good way to date it! :thumbsup

[Rick Research]

The award booklet is the standard Soviet style and size heavy paper meant to be folded to make 4 pages. This certificate was never even folded.

Front cover on the left says "Certificate Air Defense Order Shanghai" so no need to guess about the name.

In the second scan, page 2 on the right shows it was issued by the political Department of the 2nd Field Division. It is a "bearer" award document, with no space for a name to be filled in--and none has. At top is handwritten in Cyrillic "Shanghia." Page 3 on the left shows the red chop stamp of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Command Eastern Headquarters.

Sorry for the very bad quality and inaccurate color-- had to take this from an old camera photo and not a scan because of the size limits. It is actually creamy white with vivid yellow, and watermarks that cannot be seen by a camera, a scanner, or the eye-- but which show up on a black and white copier as if banknote anti-counterfeit paper!!!

[Rick Research]

This is more accurate for colors. But what may appear here to be slightly "uneven" plain yellow background is, in fact, the "anti-counterfeiting" type watermarking, which contains clouds and some kind of ? characters. can't be scanned, but a black and white xerox machine shows it plain as day.

[Nota Bene]

Rick,

Do you have any other awards to this guy? I was wondering if you tried to have him researched.

Alexei

[Rick Research]

Nope, I happened along just as each of these might have been dispersed forever (they were being sold separately :yow ), but none of his Soviet awards were there. From what he was wearing in the photo, he only got long service decorations and nothing for WW2--or Korean-- action.

When I got these, mid-1990s, no research was possible at all.

[Pobeda45]

I finally got one of these elusive awards to go along with my photo of Major Rybkin, also of 1st Guards Anti-Aircraft Searchlight Regiment. These are silver, and originally gilt.

I also had friends in China do some translation help for me.
The writing on the award is right to left: 自由的新上海 "the free and new Shanghai" or "the liberated new Shanghai" or "the freedom of new Shanghai".

Digging deeper into Russian sources, it appears that the award (referred to in Russia as "Medal for Defense of Shanghai") was awarded for 1950 service, during the final stage of the Chinese Civil War. Soviet anti-aircraft troops were used to assist against the Nationalist airforce of General Chiang Kai-Shek. More info may be found here (in Russian) Шанхайская группа войск ПВО

George

[CtahhR]

Here is an article from 1950 confirming that this was in fact an award of the Chinese Civil War and had absolutely nothing to do with the Korean War (as many dealers have stated in the past to add appeal).