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I was just in Bishkek for a few days, and stopped by the Frunze Museum. I saw they had two screwback ORB's on display. One belonged to Frunze, but it was an "CCCP" version. The second belonged to anther civil war hero. It was an "RFSFR" version, very large with no protrusions below for the banner, etc. Maybe someday someone passing through here can get the manager/curator to let them pull the serial numbers from these awards. There were also a couple civil war era military banners hanging there. I didn't have my camera with me, so no photos!
Bishkek has kept a surprising amount of the "Soviet" bit of the city, with the giant Lenin statue still in place along with many other remnants. Tashkent has erased most all of this stuff, but Bishkek seems to operate differently. They haven't even renamed all the streets yet (even if they did rename the city from Frunze back to a phonetic version of the pre-Revolution name).
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Brian, all the awards (and surprisingly there were a lot) that I saw were museum copies.
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Bummer... It was under glass in bad lighting, and I've never held a real screwback ORB in my hands. Under those conditions, I don't know that I would know the difference. I kind of figured something like that might have been going on with the CCCP version, but I had thought maybe the early one might have been real.
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I know there were many Republican order copies. There may have been a real, late issue USSR Red Banner, but it would have been manufactured long after Frunze was dead so whether or not it was "awarded" to him is kind of moot.
Nevertheless, the museum is neat, has lots of interesting displays, and built around his childhood home, aka Stalin's in Georgia and others.
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01-01-2009, 09:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-23-2016, 11:51 AM by CtahhR.)
Just got back from the Ukraine where a number of us "Poles" did some manual labor for some elderly folk there. Mainly chopping firewood for those in their late 70's and early 80's.
While there one of the men I met was Filip an 84-year old gentlemen who stated that he served in the Leningrad Front shooting artillery. He finished up the war in Vilnius, Lithuania. Anyone have an idea of possible regiments he might have been with?
He stated that he had a number of medals but was so disgusted with it all that he let his kids play with them. Probably nothing big since he at the bottom of the totem pole. He said that he had all the documents but probably not the medals any more.
Anyway, I had my photo taken with him and when my friend sends it I will post it. I have asked my Ukrainian pastor friend to see if the guy is willing to sell the documents. Might be interesting to see what his kids wound up destroying.
Ok, so digging around a bit I found that possible there were three units within the Leningrad Front that dealt with artillery.
1st Guards Rocket Division
3rd Counterbattery Corps
18th Artillery Division
Anyone know if any of those three wound up in Vilnius at the end of the war?
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Yes your right. Yet, still no info.
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I don't want to disappoint you, but "artillery" was done to the rifle division level. Each rifle division had at least one artillery regiment assigned. Basically, without further information, he could have been in almost any infantry or artillery unit, or other type of unit receiving artillery support.
