Regional Military Commissariat Receipt For Orders.

[makov25]

Receipt for orders from " voenkomat"

[Nota Bene]

That's interesting! I've never seen one before.

Alexei

[Tal Inbar]

Alexei, could you tell us a little about thos stores?

Tal

[Nota Bene]

Tal,

The Soviet/Russian legal sistem is a complete mystery to me. As they say in Russia "harsh laws are softened by their non-enforcement".

The law required that all State awards, including orders and medals, with some minor exceptions had to be returned to the State after death of the awardee. At the same time I have never heard about anybody returning any medals to the State. Some say that families of "important" people were allowed to keep all the awards.

This document is a receipt for awards returned, and lists 2 Orders of the Red Star, 3 Orders of the Red Banner, one Order of Lenin, Order of Nevsky and Order of Kutuzov 2nd class, that belonged to Diatlenko, Kim Alexandrovitch, who had died in 1970. One would say that he might have been an important person. I might add that I know a family of a veteran, who died in 1973, and the family had kept all his awards, including Orders of Lenin, Red banners, Red Stars, etc.

Alexei

[Tal Inbar]

Follow-up:

What happened to the awards?

Did they used as "spares" and re issued to others? Or melted down?

Or, perhaps, "dissapeared" and sold illeagaly?

Who knows?

[Nota Bene]

Tal,

Officially the awards were and still are stored at Gohran, and were sometimes re-issued as duplicates.

Alexei

[otlichnik]

Alexei,

What about awards in museums? Where they donated by famillies or seized by the state or both? If from state sources was it through returned orders?? Did someone say - boy this is a nice set I think I will send it to the XXX museum?

Shawn

[yolkin]

Alexei, back me up on this,

but the law that is referenced about the return of (expensive) awards was in effect until 1976. Hence pretty much anything but the jubilee medals were to be returned to the Voenkomat.

In 1976 however, that "law" was overturned. and families were able to keep the awards of the veterans who passed away.

Eric

[Nota Bene]

Gentlemen,

I don't remember exactly when was the law overturned, but I believe it was some time in the 1970s. Still even before that the law was not always enforced.

Interesting question about awards and other items in the museums. The law required only the awards to be returned, not the awards documentation, uniforms, etc., that we see in museums. While I am sure that some families were "persuaded" to donate items to museums, many did that voluntarily. After Gagarin's death in 1968 his daughter had donated all his awards, uniforms and many personal belongings to museums, including his Hero Star # 11175.

Alexei