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.
04-18-2012, 04:41 PM (This post was last modified: 04-18-2012, 10:10 PM by CtahhR.)
Now we have a target selected we need to get the name to become Cyrillic text to submit it in the site.
The Cyrillic alphabet is based upon the Glagolitic alphabet which according to most sources traces its way back to Saint Kiril and Saint Methodij of the Bulgarian Empire and was the first Slavic alphabet. Cyrillic evolved from that through disciples of the Sainted brothers. Disciples such as Saint Kliment. The alphabets were originally used to cater for Bulgarian dialects and sounds which were not covered by the Greek alphabet whilst spreading Christianity.
Cyrillic today has a few slight variations from country to country but they have all very much been standardised in the early-mid 20th century into the alphabet that is in use today. Cyrillic is also an official alphabet of the European Union. As podvignaroda is in Russian I will only present a guide to transliteration of Russian Cyrillic as not to confuse anyone with unnecessary information. Alekseij Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov was key in the post-revolution reform of the Russian alphabet and his reforms were implemented in 1918 with little change into the 21st century.
Here is a transliteration guide of the Russian letters you will find people's names written in. Some of the transliteration systems have varying results but the letters shown here have always been "true" to whatever situation I have needed them for and always works correctly when entering them into online translation sites.
Some Cyrillic letters look identical to their Latin counterparts but entering the "lookalikes" into the site will not work, you have to use the correct Cyrillic ones.
Аа = Aa
Бб = Bb
Вв = Vv
Гг = Gg
Дд = Dd
Ее = Ee
Жж = Zh zh
Зз = Zz
Ии = Ii
Йй = Jj (A Germanic J sound not an English J sound)
Кк = Kk
Лл = Ll
Мм = Mm
Нн = Nn
Оо = Oo
Пп = Pp
Рр = Rr
Сс = Ss
Тт = Tt
Уу = Uu
Фф = Ff
Хх = Hh (A hard H not a soft one)
Цц = Ts ts
Чч = Ch ch
Шш = Sh sh
Щщ = Sch sch
Ыы = Yy
Ьь = ' (not a letter in Latin but an apostrophe)
Ээ = Ee
Юю = Ju ju (Like Yugoslavia)
Яя = Ja ja (Like Yam)
There is sometimes a great difference between the typed letter and the hand written letter so assistance may be needed in identifying letters to begin with but with practice they will usually come to you. This is of course dependant on the clarity of the person writing them. There are many people knocking around this forum that are always willing to help people learn how to read Cyrillic so you can always feel free to ask if you need assistance. We all need a little help from time to time.
This person's name is Гергая, Аристрах Жаманович
The quickest and easiest way to get these letters into Cyrillic if you do not have a Cyrillic keyboard is to type them into Google Translate and tick the box saying "allow phonetic writing".
So type in Gergaja Aristrah Zhamanovich and it will automatically transliterate it into Cyrillic for you. Leaving you with Гергая Аристрах Жаманович to copy and paste into the Podvignaroda search engine.
Here is the search facility and the options are, in order;
Family Name
First Name
Middle Name
Year Of Birth
As the Medal Booklet does not include the year of birth this piece of information can not be entered. In many cases the year of birth will be a decisive factor in finding the person you want to.
This is how the search should be completed for this person.
You can now try searching again with two of his name or even only one (as this particular person has obscure names)
Гергая, Аристрах - No Result
Гергая, Жаманович - No Result
Аристрах, Жаманович - No Result
Гергая - Results but not our man.
Аристрах - Results but not our man.
Жаманович - Bingo!
Two of his names have been misspelled by whoever was entering data either when the original citation was written, when the award book was being written, when the site was being typed out or during all three stages.
Highlighted is what we are looking for.
GergOja AristARh Zhamanovich, awarded a Medal "For Bravery".
Now you can click on the "+" to make the citation larger.
Once you click the + highlighted you also get the option to save the citation to your computer and keep it for a rainy day.
To save the file click on the highlighted link. This will open the file in a separate window and allow you then to "save as" to your hard drive (or anywhere else you like).
As many of these citation run over the front and back of a single piece of paper if you click on the arrow to the right side of the picture of the document you can often see more information and also save it in the same way.
Once you have the jpgs of your citation it is up to you what you do with them. You can translate them yourself as I always try to do or supply them to someone else to translate at cost. The ball is now in your court.
Hope everyone here is now able to use this resource and has a thoroughly enjoyable time doing so.
Ja, thanks Ctahhr!
Here's something I found to help with cursive Cyrillic:
"patina imparts character" - PJS
A wise man said: 'you should not pay a premium for what you want beyond your comfort level, and always ensure there is a mutually agreeable return policy.'
