03-13-2007, 10:32 PM
There are a multitude of reasons an award might be unresearchable:
1. It could be a labor award. Wait, you say, Red Banners aren't labor awards! Well, I had one to a civilian film producer who made military-themed films PLUS his Red Star... both were unresearchable.
2. It could be a Navy award. These are STILL finicky, I'm shooting at a 50% research rate still.
3. It could be a "state security" award - be that GRU, KGB, etc. NKVD and Smersh awards are normally researchable. GRU and KGB ones aren't.
4. The documentation could have been lost or destroyed during the War. Remember, while many of the early awards were being handed out, there units were being destroyed. I'd venture to guess it was the rare administrative officer who would risk his life to break out of an encirclement to deliver award citations to the chain of command! Usually that stuff was either burned/destroyed/captured and no longer exists.
5. The citation could be classified and the archivist might not have access to it.
6. If it's a late award, the citation might have stayed with the personnel record of the recipient, and at the end of the USSR, never forwarded to Padolsk for their archives.
7. If the award was pre-June 1941, your chances of getting the citation drop dramatically. The award card might be possible, but I have yet to see a pre-June 1941 citation.
Thus, if you have an unresearchable award, there are quite a few reasons why the research might not come back. There's no "single" reason for an award to be unresearchable, but really many different possibilities - the 7 I listed above are only the most common.
Hope that helps
Dave
1. It could be a labor award. Wait, you say, Red Banners aren't labor awards! Well, I had one to a civilian film producer who made military-themed films PLUS his Red Star... both were unresearchable.
2. It could be a Navy award. These are STILL finicky, I'm shooting at a 50% research rate still.
3. It could be a "state security" award - be that GRU, KGB, etc. NKVD and Smersh awards are normally researchable. GRU and KGB ones aren't.
4. The documentation could have been lost or destroyed during the War. Remember, while many of the early awards were being handed out, there units were being destroyed. I'd venture to guess it was the rare administrative officer who would risk his life to break out of an encirclement to deliver award citations to the chain of command! Usually that stuff was either burned/destroyed/captured and no longer exists.
5. The citation could be classified and the archivist might not have access to it.
6. If it's a late award, the citation might have stayed with the personnel record of the recipient, and at the end of the USSR, never forwarded to Padolsk for their archives.
7. If the award was pre-June 1941, your chances of getting the citation drop dramatically. The award card might be possible, but I have yet to see a pre-June 1941 citation.
Thus, if you have an unresearchable award, there are quite a few reasons why the research might not come back. There's no "single" reason for an award to be unresearchable, but really many different possibilities - the 7 I listed above are only the most common.
Hope that helps
Dave
