These badges are exceedingly rare, awarded to surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War. If memory serves me correctly, the silver badge was awarded at the 30th anniversary of the war (1966-69) and the gold was obviously for the 50th (late 80's).
I have a JOMSA article somewhere listing the number of recipients and each badge was somewhere in the hundreds. Not hard to imagine the low number of people surviving the Spanish Civil War itself, purges, and Patriotic War, let alone 50 years.
desantnik Wrote:These badges are exceedingly rare, awarded to surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War. If memory serves me correctly, the silver badge was awarded at the 30th anniversary of the war (1966-69) and the gold was obviously for the 50th (late 80's)
Do you know were these badges awarded also to foreigners? I mean other than Soviets.
I found the article by the late Professor Victorov-Orlov in JOMSA volume 52 #6 - The Badges of the Soviet Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. For the 30th reunion in 1966 there were 478 veterans still living and in 1986, for the 50th reunion - only 98.
Your document appears to have Marshal Timoshenko's original signature too - nice! And also indicative of the few awardings of this award - I can't see him signing hundreds of these...