Collecting East European awards - WHY?

[deValcourt]

You can always do a theme...Various red banner of labors made for a nifty display (Albania 2nd/Yugoslavia, Soviet, Czech, Mongolian, Korea, Albania 1st, Poland, Bulgaria, DDR 3rd)

That is exactly my plan, but using secret service/political police and then the Combat Cooperation medals from all the Warsaw Pact countries.

Phillip

[deValcourt]

You´re right. State Security awards´ designs were similar in all countries, including Poland. But they still kept their white eagle, instead of replacing it with the star/H&S. (BTW, do you know why they did so?:confused

That´s why I consider east bloc awards as historically interesting as soviet.

I always thought the Poles had contempt for the Soviet system and chose their eagle for many emblems in place of the hammer and sickle because they wanted to be different and not so completely Soviet dominated.

From what I know about Poland, which is mostly from a woman who grew up there under communist control, the Poles weren't particularly fond of any of their neighbors because they kept invading them over the centuries. However, like the Czechs, the Poles do/did hate the Germans (now this is a broad generalization based on limited information from people I've known that are of my generation or older). This was especially true of the part of the country the Germans took when Stalin and Hitler divided it up after their "peace" agreement in the early years of WWII. To this day, she still loves Russians, travels there often as well as to her home in Poland. The city she grew up in was on the German side before the end of the war.

So it would stand to reason that a country that has had to continuously defend itself and has been the butt of jokes from Europe to the US would be especially proud of the one symbol that remained constant for the longest period of time in their history - the royal eagle.

This is all "socio-logical" (intended word play) speculation, but I have to wonder; while I was thinking about other countries and their national "animals," the question arose as to what animal will we have to associate Russia with now? During the 1980s (and probably most of the Cold War) Russia was represented in political cartoons as a bear. A sarcastic line from an anti-war Pink Floyd song always sticks in my head when an out-of-control general is saying, "We've got to bring the Russian Bear to his knees / Well, maybe not the Russian Bear, maybe the Swedes". Now they've gotten the double-headed eagle back as their national symbol, so...? Just another of my thoughts...

Phillip

[Esteban_cool]

You can always do a theme...Various red banner of labors made for a nifty display (Albania 2nd/Yugoslavia, Soviet, Czech, Mongolian, Korea, Albania 1st, Poland, Bulgaria, DDR 3rd)

Nice collection!
BTW the korean order you have is not the order of labor; it´s the order of the banner of the 3 great revolutions. But it looks nicer than their order of labor (at least their last type).

[Jeffrey Meffert]

I know I cheated a bit on the korean one. One of the great revolutions was sort of labor related (technical) and it looked so much like the mongolian orbl it begged to be included.

[Commissar]

Before communist time, the eagle had a crown - which was removed after the war. I don't know if the crown is present today.

This is the present day coat of arms of Poland. It appears it has its crown back!

[EricFG]

You can always do a theme...Various red banner of labors made for a nifty display (Albania 2nd/Yugoslavia, Soviet, Czech, Mongolian, Korea, Albania 1st, Poland, Bulgaria, DDR 3rd)

I always enjoy seeing that collection. :thumbsup

[deValcourt]

It's strange, but while trying to reorganize my collection for better displays, I found that something had happened to my Warsaw Pact security services collection. I had started out trying to do as Jeffrey had suggested - pick a theme and get similar items from each of the Eastern Bloc countries.

As time has passed - together with finding a piece here and there from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, etc - I have managed to actually obtain a more extensive collection from some countries (Bulgaria in particular) than my original or "base" USSR collection. A prime example is in the second page of the following thread: http://www.soviet-awards.com/forum/sovie...dge-2.html

Clearly, I don't see this as a diversion from or abandonment of my Soviet pursuits, but as someone mentioned before, the "Soviet Satellites" are a natural extension of the Soviet Union - especially Bulgaria and in particular with regards to my specific interests.

The basic shared concept of a socialist/communist world is what got me to move to Russia for a few years in the first place and that same concept of a shared goal makes awards from the Eastern Bloc countries appealing, though admittedly not on the same level as that of the Soviet Motherland herself.

Phillip