Interesting Article about awards in WWII

[HuliganRS]

The article Russian News reports about awards that were never issued during WWII. The article in Russian can be found HERE

Below is a basic overview of the article:

It states that during WWII 2.5 million less orders were delivered than ordered and in total around 3 million decorations were not awarded.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War the president of Russian Federation decided to finish finding the remaining people who have outstanding awards to be issued. If the person is dead then the family will get their award(s).

Right after the war the personnel from the Central Archive submitted nearly 2.2 million queries. As a result nearly 528,000 people received awards and 660,000 people were found to be awarded already. The remaining queries (about 1 million) brought mixed results, either the person was dead, unable to be located or the queries came back blank. Out of that number almost 750,000 queries were never sent because they were missing vital information needed.

In 1956 active searches ceased even though the count was around 1.8 million awards not issued. The leaders of the country decided that there are other more important items that need to be addressed. The job of finding the recipients was left mainly to single individuals - enthusiasts. As a result of these individuals we found out about the Brestskoy compound, fighting around Moscow and Leningrad. Many people were awarded because of the job these individuals did.

Only in 1989 the active search for cavaliers resume again. For this job Ministry of Defense put together a special group of 12 people and Central Archive hired 20 people.

Unfortunately because of the gap, 33 years of inactivity took its toll. Between 1989 and 1992 923,000 queries were sent out and only 274,000 came back with information resulting in decision to award. At the same time 546,000 queries returned with no results and almost 100,000 people vanished without a trace. Only 109,000 veterans can receive the awards personally and 138,000 are dead with no family to accept the award. 24,000 already received their awards.

At some point because of changes to addresses the employees decided to use newer database that was created in 1985 and use it to match it up to the old data. In 1985 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War leaders of the country decided to award all surviving veterans with a special Order of Patriotic War. As a result as of today there are 1.5 million awards not issued. Out of that 180,000 are post war decorations for years served and for wounds. Currently around 464,000 people are unawarded that are being located. Since 1989 till today almost 90,000 awards were given to the veterans and over 68,000 documents given to heir families.

Not to mention that finding the remaining veterans became even more difficult since the collapse of USSR. So the number of remaining people is around 464,000 and the leaders of Russian Federation decided to finish finding and awarding veterans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of WWII. On May 1, 2005 the country will find out the last hero who will receive the last award for WWII.

[yolkin]

Very nice article Rusty.

Also, as a note, these movements for "Award to find the Awardee" were very apparent in and around 1985. Since Brezhnev was a war veteran, he made sure that many of the unawarded medals were awarded. That is why we sometimes see the "1985 version" of Liberation and Capture medals.

Eric