'The Campaign Medals of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' by Michael B. Riley

[EricFG]

'The Campaign Medals of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' by Michael B. Riley, monograph #21 of the Orders & Medals Society of America (OMSA).
ISBN: 978-1-890974-21-3

40 pages in 10.75" by 8.25" format with 59 photographs, most in color.

As the title indicates this book describes all the campaign medals of the Second World War issued by the Soviet Union and includes front and rear pictures of the medals and images of the award documents as well. Also included are some portrait photos of the medals being worn by awardees.
The book also gives a brief description of the battles involved in each particular campaign.

The book is soft-cover and in a larger format with high quality paper and glossy images. This size makes it easy to read and hold while sitting in a relaxed setting as opposed to larger and heavier tomes which almost always require a desk to support the work. The paper quality is excellent which means this book will stand up well to use and time and the image quality is excellent as well using large, color photos. Often books on similar subjects utilize small, grainy or black and white images which do little to help identifying particular portions of a medal or ribbon and the author and publisher are to commended for this decision.

The author goes into brief detail about the individual awards with information such as date instituted, variations and award criteria. Each of the 17 medals in this book are given two pages each for descriptions and images. This information makes it quite valuable for newcomers to the field of collecting Soviet medals and is also detailed enough that veteran collectors will find its contents useful for general reference.

There are many, many books dedicated to Soviet awards, some going into particular detail or focus but most, aside from 'The Comprehensive Guide to Soviet Orders and Medals' are written in Russian which makes it difficult, even in the age of online translations, to understand the characteristics of these awards for those who do not understand Cyrillic Russian. This book is written in the English language and is therefore beneficial for those collectors.

The book is not a price guide nor does it offer any sort of scale of rarity for various medals and their variations which is just as well as price and rarity change over time, sometimes drastically, making works that contain these grades quickly inaccurate.

Overall I can recommend this book quite highly to all Soviet collectors and with such a wide range of Soviet orders, medals, decorations and badges I can envisage multiple volumes of books such as this and fervently hope the author or publisher plan future, similar works.

The book can be ordered directly from the author at riley1965@sbcglobal.net and is an excellent value at $16 (plus postage).

ORB for scale :D
Images used without author's permission.