How to find out about the grandfather who participated in the wwii. How to find out about the fate of an ancestor who died or disappeared during the Great Patriotic War

The Great Patriotic War took, according to various estimates, from several million to tens of millions of lives. A huge percentage of participants in the Second World War are considered missing. With the help of the Internet, it became possible to trace the combat path of soldiers in order to find them and perpetuate their exploits.

The entire Soviet people took part in the Great Patriotic War - from an ordinary working person to the famous artist Yuri Nikulin - the participants of the Second World War, whoever they were, brought the great Victory of the USSR over Germany and its allies.

Of the tens of millions of participants in the Second World War, less than half returned alive.

The Great Patriotic War took a large number of lives - the Soviet people suffered the greatest losses, because it was on them that the main blow of the German military machine fell. And although foreign sources deny this, it was the Soviet Union that made a key contribution to the victory over Nazism and fascism. The death toll still cannot be calculated accurately.

Many families want to know if their loved one is on the list of participants in the Second World War and what fate befell him during the hostilities.

Now the search for participants in the Second World War is still a difficult task. Despite the fact that the World Wide Web has made it possible to work with databases much faster, many documents remain lost. It is worth noting that there are many such resources (sites for finding the dead, missing and veterans), and they are all in the public domain - anyone can visit the electronic database and try to find their loved one.

Since many of the participants in the Second World War are considered missing, their bodies are still found. Monuments to the participants of the Great Patriotic War are installed at the expense of the state - the organization of the funeral also falls on the shoulders of special bodies of the Russian Federation and other CIS countries.

The search for the victims of the Second World War began on a large scale relatively recently - in the early 2000s. Historians began to actively close the dark pages of history, and there was a desire to perpetuate the memory of the participants in the Great War. The Internet has played a key role in this. It allowed the creation of electronic databases, which are much easier to work with than with archives.

At the same time, organizations such as the "Immortal Regiment" began to emerge, many sites were opened, with which it is easy to work - it is enough to know the basic data about the participant of the Great Patriotic War. Knowing the full name of a participant in the Second World War, a person has a high probability of finding the deceased and missing.

Losses in the Great Patriotic War

According to various sources, the losses of the USSR range from 7 to more than 40 million people. At the same time, the number of missing persons remains extremely large even this year.

The figure of 7 million is called by domestic historians, while foreign ones believe that the real losses are hushed up and the death toll is much more catastrophic - about 40 million people, including the civilian population.

The official death toll in the war was constantly changing. For example, Stalin named 7 million people, while under Khrushchev a much more catastrophic figure was named - 20 million.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, estimates of 7 and 20 million victims were constantly criticized. According to the documents, only in the first year of the war, when the Red Army suffered one defeat after another, fell into the boilers, the losses amounted to more than 3 million - and this is only the military. Another example is the Battle of Stalingrad. In it alone, about 1.2 million servicemen were killed - these are those who were found. There were also bloody battles near Moscow, Leningrad, the Battle of the Kursk Bulge, the storming of Berlin, and so on. Many are still missing.

It is also difficult to calculate the losses due to the fact that many participants in the Second World War died in German captivity. The terrible conditions, constant executions, hard work and a meager diet led to the fact that only a small percentage of the prisoners were able to return to their homeland. In recent months, the Germans have burned documentation regarding the atrocities in concentration camps, trying to hide information from the world, and therefore this data is considered irretrievably lost.

It is still impossible to determine the exact number of victims, since historians do not have access to all the documentation. During the hostilities, recruitment into the army was so chaotic that mistakes were often made in the names and surnames of recruits, which seriously complicates the work with documents. Some of the papers were lost or destroyed during the hostilities and the retreat of the Red Army in the early years of the war.

The documents of the second period of the Great Patriotic War were preserved in a larger percentage. The largest part of the missing are Red Army soldiers who tried to hold back the enemy's advance in the early years of the war. 1941-1942 years were extremely difficult for the Soviet republics (USSR) and the search for the names of participants in the Great Patriotic War of this period is the most difficult. Young men and old people were called up to the military registration and enlistment offices - many simply did not have time to write down and were immediately sent to the front, since the enemy was inexorably advancing and people were sorely lacking.

A huge number of bodies have yet to be found, and families want to find their relatives to bury them properly.

To do this, you can use a site such as "Memory of the people" Is a powerful Internet resource that searches for WWII participants by last name.

Main page of the site "Memory of the People"

On the site "Memory of the People" you can search for the awarded people by last name and first name - this will help a huge database that has been collected over the years. On the site, you can also search for WWII participants who returned from the war, in order to be sure that a person survived the hostilities.

In addition, this resource also helps to find out the burial places of soldiers, to obtain information about losses in a particular battle, to find information about the passage of the service of a soldier of the Red Army. The situation is more complicated with the rear workers, who also played a large role in the victory over Germany - there are much fewer such resources for finding them, as well as the documents with the data of these people.

There are many queries on the Internet: “I am looking for a WWII participant”, “Where can I find a veteran by last name?”. In this article, you will learn about all the ways to find missing relatives.

How to find a participant in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 by last name

Popular sites such as:

• http://www.obd-memorial.ru - allows you to find useful information about combatants who died or disappeared;
• http://www.moypolk.ru - allows you to find information not only about soldiers, but also who worked in the rear, children of war, was in the ranks of partisans;
• http://www.podvignaroda.ru - provides access to the lists of awarded combatants;
• http://www.pamyat-naroda.ru - one of the largest Internet resources, which is supported by the Ministry of Defense and provides access to all documents found during the Great Patriotic War;
• http://www.dokst.ru - a list of prisoners of war who died while being captured by the Germans and many others (alas, there are no names of those killed in the database).

On the above-mentioned resources, you just need to enter the last name you are interested in, and the search engine will give you all the relevant results.

A valuable source in the search for the dead participants in the Second World War are funerals- This is a document that is a notice of the death of a serviceman. These documents can also be found on the aforementioned sites.

If you have information about the awards, this will greatly simplify your searches, as you can access the lists of recipients and try to find the name you want there.

A careful analysis of official sources in the state archives will make it possible to find the grandfathers and great-grandfathers who participated in the Second World War, although this procedure takes a lot of time.

Ministry of Defense archive: search by last name of WWII participants

The military registration and enlistment office is a place where a WWII participant could be marked for the last time, and therefore their archives are also important - they should contain valuable information, including dates of birth, registration, surname, place of military service.

The archives of the military unit and the naval academy are no less important source. The archives of such institutions can also store valuable information about the participants in the Second World War.

The central archive of your city is a must-visit for those who want to find their missing relative who participated in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Anyone can visit it, because now all the archives of the USSR are in the public domain.

WWII awards: search by last name

A website was created specifically for searching by last name in the archives awarded in the course of and as a result of hostilities. "The feat of the people"... It is not difficult to find out about the awards to the participants of the Second World War, because all the lists are in the public domain.

The main page of the site "The feat of the people"

"The feat of the people" is a huge data warehouse, where all combatants who distinguished themselves in battle with the enemy are collected. Consequently, if your relative who took part in the hostilities received some kind of reward, he was entered into the "People's Feat" database.

In the catalog of orders and medals, you can find veterans, dead and disabled people who were awarded the "Red Star", a list of participants in the battle (battle) for Moscow, and so on.

Unfortunately, there is no 100% guarantee that you will find your loved one, since too many documents were lost during the war and for a long time no one was looking for the missing.

If you cannot find information on the sites, you need to visit the archives of those regions where the person you are looking for was born. For example, if he was born in the Republic of Bashkortostan, then you need to visit the local archives, where a list of participants in the Second World War, natives of this region, is presented.

The situation is somewhat more complicated with those who died abroad. For example, if a WWII participant died in Belarus (Belarus), you need to go to the embassy to open access to archives on the territory of this country.

The "People's Feat" website is supported by the Ministry of Defense. Their goal is to perpetuate the memory of all heroes of the great war, regardless of what rank they were and what scale the feat was accomplished. An equally important goal is the patriotic education of young people against the background of the exploits of their grandfathers.

The main source of information is archival documents that are digitized and entered into the database.

In terms of numbers, the "People's Feat" website has:

• more than thirty million records of awarding orders and medals "For Military Merit" and "For Courage";
• more than twenty million records on the awarding of the Orders of the Great Patriotic War I and II degrees, which were awarded to the fortieth anniversary of the Victory;
• one hundred million sheets, which in total make up more than two hundred thousand archival files.

There are three search options available on the "People's Feat" website, among which are:

• search for decrees and orders for awarding;
• search for people and their awards;
• search for data by place and time.

On the "People's feat" website, you can see the lists of people and their awards, study the real award lists of the Great Patriotic War participants, which are a valuable source of information. Award documents are posted in the public domain and there should be no problems in working with them - the main thing is to be patient.

On the "People's Feat" website, you can also find the anniversary card index of awards to the participants of the Great Patriotic War - it contains all the names and surnames of the soldiers who received the anniversary awards for the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory. It describes a wide range of information about the participants in the Second World War, including their dates and place of birth, and other valuable data.

Also, here you can see the movements of armies and military units, which makes it possible to trace the combat path of a participant in the Second World War.

Unfortunately, the "People's Feat" website has one drawback - it will be useless for those who are looking for information about the combatants who have gone missing, but for this there are other Internet resources, which were also discussed in the article.

WWII veterans: search by last name

Missing persons, veterans, victims and heroes of the Great Patriotic War can be found using regional, regional and city directories.

The popular Internet site http://moypolk.ru/, which is supported by the all-Russian action "Immortal Regiment", whose work is only gaining momentum in recent years, provides substantial assistance in the search for living veterans who have already died or died as a result of hostilities.

Do not forget to visit the archives of those cities in which, first of all, the veteran was born or where he served. For example, if he was born in the Tsivilsky district, look through the lists of participants in the local regional archives.

Immortal regiment of Russia

The Immortal Regiment is a large-scale social movement whose purpose is to preserve personal information about participants, witnesses of the Great Patriotic War, home front workers, workers at factories for the production of military equipment and ammunition, and so on.

The "Immortal Regiment" was created in Russia - in the city of Tomsk, by three activists: Igor Dmitriev, Sergei Kolotovkin and Sergei Lapenkov.

Initially, the scale of the movement was small, but now it operates in eighty countries around the world.

All the initiators of the movement are journalists who came up with the idea of ​​creating an "Immortal Regiment" after they began to notice every year that fewer and fewer veterans come to the Victory Day parade.

During the first march (happened in 2012) in Tomsk, more than five thousand people took to the streets of the city, carrying posters with photos of their relatives who fought in the Great Patriotic War.

The first march of the "Immortal Regiment" in 2012 in the city of Tomsk

This action was immediately covered in the media and began to rapidly gain momentum throughout the country and beyond.

The main logo of the movement was the crane bird. The creators of the logo were primarily inspired by the song "Cranes", which is dedicated to the soldiers who died during the hostilities.

Immortal Regiment logo - crane

On the official website of the "Immortal Regiment" http://moypolk.ru/ anyone can independently determine the fate of their loved ones who died during the hostilities in the Great Patriotic War or disappeared without a trace. Every month, thanks to the site, people manage to find dozens of dead heroes who brought us victory over Nazism.

Database of those killed in the Second World War

One of the largest databases on the Internet on those who died in the course of hostilities, in the post-war period, as well as on missing persons is located on the website https://obd-memorial.ru/html/

OBD "Memorial" offers an advanced search for participants in the Great Patriotic War by last name. In it, you initially need to enter the last name, then the first name or initials of the soldier.

The archival data of the participants in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 are in the public domain, and therefore you can be sure that if the information about the person you are interested in exists, you will definitely find it on this site.

The victory in the Great War over the Germans and their allies came at a high price - millions of those who died, hundreds of thousands simply disappeared, but their memory should not be forgotten.

Activists continue to search for the burial places of the soldiers. The President of the Russian Federation fully supports the work of such organizations like the "Immortal Regiment" by issuing special decrees and instructions.

With the help of the Memorial website, millions of people can find the burial places of their loved ones who died at the hands of the enemy. A large-scale campaign was carried out to create this resource. As a result, we got access to an information and reference system of truly global importance, which simply has no analogues in world practice.

Winners: soldiers of the Great War

For the 60th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, a project was created "Winners", which aims to once again remind and perpetuate the feat of the period of the Great War.

Every year the number of veterans is decreasing - these people are leaving. Many even began to forget when they last saw a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the victory over the German, the organizers of the Winners project managed to create a list of more than one million veterans who still live with us and should never be forgotten.

Participants of the "Winners" movement believe that no matter how the assessments change and how history is interpreted, the feat of our grandparents should never be forgotten. And the day of May 9 should remain the Day of the Great Victory over the Nazis.

The names of those who fought in the Second World War should always remain in the memory of all generations to whom the participants in the hostilities gave a peaceful life.

Great help in collecting the names of the veterans was provided, first of all, by the presidential administration, which helped to find more than one million heroes. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation also provided lists of WWII veterans who went to retire - there were more than one hundred thousand winners on the lists.

In the very first days, the creators of the site began to receive letters in which the relatives of the participants in the hostilities wrote that they had found their loved one on the site, whom they considered dead.
Regardless of where your loved one served during the Second World War - in the NKVD troops or an ordinary ordinary soldier of the Red Army, if he is on the list of veterans we have collected - you can find him.

It would seem difficult not to find a loved one for the whole sixty years. However, at that time in the country there was a catastrophe of a global scale and many did not manage to get to their home, and especially if it was completely destroyed by a German.

At the moment, the site functions to the best of its ability - the creators of the project, unfortunately, do not have the current addresses of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

The creators of the site believe that the Internet provides new opportunities for telling the younger generation what this Great War was like for our grandfathers and grandmothers, who shed blood for their Motherland and loved ones.
On the site "Winners" there is a special multimedia map of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, which will allow you to learn in detail about the course of hostilities, the movements of armies, and so on.
The site managers considered it necessary not to delete the names of the already deceased veterans - they celebrated the 60th anniversary of victory and always remain alive. Therefore, on the site you will not see the date of death of the veterans.

Find a soldier - a memo for those who are looking for their heroes

The organization "Immortal Regiment" decided to provide assistance to those people who are just trying to find their loved ones who fought in the Great Patriotic War for the first time.

Domestic archives, as well as foreign ones, the official website of the Ministry of Defense, special Internet resources - they are your best assistant in finding participants in the war.

In a special memo "Find a soldier" they talked about ways to find veterans, which are now relevant and will help you find your loved one.

The search procedure is as follows:

1. Visit the Memorial website at the following address: http://obd-memorial.ru. To try to find a person, you need to open the "Advanced Search" tab. Initially, it is advised to enter only the person's surname, then you can add the name and other data. In addition, try to write the last name in full words, and write the first and patronymic initials.
2. Go to the Russian state archives.
3. Seek help from the Russian Ministry of Defense by submitting a request for information on a participant in the hostilities. To do this, you need to fill out a letter and send it to the following address: "Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation", Kirov Street 74, Podolsk, Moscow Region, 142100. You must state your request in the letter in as much detail as possible, provide all available information and attach it to the letter blank envelope with your home address.
4. Look for information about a loved one on the "People's Feat" website. At the following address: http://podvignaroda.mil.ru, you can see if there is a person you are looking for in the lists of awarded veterans. If you only know your first and last name, then you should go to the People and Awards tab - the search engine will give you all the relevant results.
5. This item will help you if you are sure that your combatant relative is buried outside. There are several ways to find a relative: contact the embassy of the Russian Federation in a particular country, or find help in the Russian House of the EU member states.
6. The popular Russian website Soldat.ru talks about many other ways that you can find your relative: send a questionnaire to the International Red Cross Tracing Service, make inquiries of a socio-legal nature to the archives, visit a database of Internet links to school museums in RF, in which there may be expositions about the combat routes of formations and units of the Soviet Army.

If such search options have not brought you success - visit the site http://soldat.ru - in it you will find many more tools for work and, perhaps, one of them will help you find the person you have been looking for for decades.

Site "Soldier"

If you know the initials, full name, surname, or at least patronymic, it is much easier to find the burial place of a Great Patriotic War participant.

Memory book

"Book of Memory" Is another Internet project that was created specifically to perpetuate the memory of the exploits of the Red Army soldiers, home front workers and partisans who fought in the Great Patriotic War.

In addition, the "Book of Memory" project provides significant assistance to the search teams, allowing them to check the printed volumes about the information they contain about the soldiers of the spacecraft (Red Army).

The "Book of Memory" project has a global character - there are books in many countries, for example, in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In addition, certain regions also create "Books of Memory" - educational institutions such as schools are also engaged in this, and it does not matter where they are located - in a village or a city.

Now the "Book of Memory" project is fully supported by the "Immortal Regiment". At the moment, the project is actively developing - the society actively supports the search work and is supportive of the creation of printed publications with stories of eyewitnesses, victims and veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

"Book of Memory" of the Kaliningrad region

The electronic memory book is constantly updated with new stories and names, revealing to the younger generation more and more details of life during the Great War with the Germans and their allies.

The electronic version of the "Memory Book" of Russia can be found at http://narkompoisk.ru

Immortal Regiment

As already mentioned, officially "Immortal Regiment" was created on the territory of the Russian Federation in the city of Tomsk. And although the movement was initiated in 2011, it officially exists since 2014.

Before the "Immortal Regiment" there were other movements, but none of them received such weighty support from the society wishing to perpetuate the memory of the participants in the Great Patriotic War.

In 2012, there are already fifteen large cities of Russia showed to organize a procession of people on Victory Day with posters of photos of participants in hostilities.

In 2013 countries such as Ukraine, Israel and Kazakhstan... These states also suffered greatly during the fighting in 1941-1945, as well as repression by Nazi Germany.

In 2014 the number of cities supporting the "Immortal Regiment" movement has grown up to five hundred, and the number of countries is now seven. In connection with the growing popularity of the movement, its organizers have created their own website - on it every relative of a combatant can try to find a dead, missing or veteran.

In 2015 The Immortal Regiment has already passed in seventeen countries of the world and covered over a thousand cities.
In 2016 there was an incredible surge in the popularity of the "Immortal Regiment" - the action was joined by forty two countries.

On the official website of the "Immortal Regiment", as of 2016, more than 350 thousand stories were published. It is interesting that not only the stories of the participants in the hostilities are published here, but also of those who spent the war in German captivity, and provided the work of the rear. A separate place is given to the stories of children of the war, who were no less difficult than adults.

The Immortal Regiment calls on everyone to help promote the organization, because it pursues noble goals - to help find relatives who died during the hostilities, living veterans and to immortalize the heroic deeds of the Great Patriotic War.

In 2015, when the country celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Victory, the march of the "Immortal Regiment" was attended by the President of the Russian Federation - Vladimir Putin, which provides significant support to the movement.

At the moment it is impossible to establish all the names of the participants in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, but the help of the "Immortal Regiment" of everyone who is not indifferent will help to get closer to this number.

Thanks to the aforementioned resources, grandfathers and grandmothers were found who are participants in the Second World War and who have long been considered dead. Tens of thousands of families were able to find the bodies of the dead and missing relatives in order to bury them with dignity and perpetuate their memory.

Everyone who fought in the Second World War must be known, everyone must know their names.

We all know from childhood how destructive and bitter the Great Patriotic War turned out to be for the entire Soviet people. The war, which claimed the lives of more than 26 million of our compatriots, still echoes the tragedy in many families, because not only those who have lost their fathers and mothers are still alive, but even those who met the enemy with weapons in their hands.

The number of missing persons alone after the war was estimated at almost 5 million. At the present time, despite all efforts, it was possible to find out the further fate of only 1 million people, of which 500 thousand died under unclear circumstances, and the other 500 thousand remained abroad. The fate of more than 3 million people is still unclear.

Today, not only the surviving veterans are in old age, but also their children. In this regard, the main share of those who are now looking for the missing or simply want to learn about the combat path of their relatives are the grandchildren of the participants in the war.

How to find out where the grandfather by last name fought?

Recently, a lot of resources have appeared on the Internet that help with the search for information about veterans, their combat path or burial places, all this was achieved thanks to the digitization of a huge amount of paper archival data.

You can start from the site obd-memorial.ru Is an electronic database of the central archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO), contains a large number of records about the soldiers of the Red Army who died in the Second World War. On it you can find where the grandfather fought by last name, first name, patronymic and year of birth.

If the search does not return any results, you should definitely try to change some letters, especially if the surname is difficult to pronounce or to enter one consonant when writing doubles correctly, for example, replace “Filippovich” with “Filippovich”. Often, the data was filled in with errors and was poorly readable, you need to take this into account and try to enter data into the search engine with the appropriate amendments.

On the site moypolk.ru contains information not only about the dead, but also the missing and survivors after the war, the database is still replenished with the help of participants in the "Immortal Regiment". On it you can also find out where your grandfather fought in the Second World War and about his future fate by last name, first name and patronymic.

If your grandfather disappeared without a trace, then he could very well be among the prisoners of war, since over 4.5 million people were captured in German captivity throughout the war. Information about those killed in German concentration camps is available on the website dokst.ru

During the search, you may more than once come across full namesakes, so it is very important to collect as much information as possible in the family about where he was born, where he was called up, whether there are front-line photographs (by the insignia, you can establish the rank and approximate time, by form - type of troops).

It is worth noting that the names of many settlements have changed since then. In order to find out exactly what those areas were called during the war years, you need to use historical reference books.

It is imperative to look for letters from the front, the envelopes were marked with the number of the field postal station, which can be used to determine the number of the military unit. Information on the postal numbers of those years and their correspondence can be found in the reference books on the website soldat.ru/spravka/ ... On the site's forum, you can also use the advice of experienced search engines on how to find out where your grandfather fought.

The Internet project of the Ministry of Defense of Russia "Podvig of the People" is intended to facilitate those who wish to study the history of those years. Indeed, this project contains tens of thousands of documents on awards for deeds performed by ordinary Soviet people during the Second World War and the war with Japan. In this article I will describe how to search by last name in the People's Feat, tell you about the functionality of the website of the Ministry of Defense, and also explain how to use it.

"The feat of the people" - an unprecedented project of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, dedicated to the awards of the soldiers of the Red Army in the Second World War

The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history of our people. Millions of dead, thousands of destroyed cities and villages, tens of thousands of destroyed enterprises, collective and state farms - the price for the Victory was simply enormous. The past years are gradually erasing the details of those years from the memory of generations, the outlines of what has happened look more and more vague, the direct participants in the victory over Nazism remain alive.

The importance of searching for participants in the Great Patriotic War in the "Podvig of the People"

The Internet resource "Feat of the People" is a generalized databank of awards received by Soviet soldiers and commanders during the Great Patriotic War (as well as the Manchurian operation that ended with the surrender of Japan). This data warehouse includes the corresponding scanned documents from the Russian archives of the CA MO and TsVMA (several tens of millions of documents), including numerous records of awards with medals and orders "For Military Merit", "For Courage" of the "Patriotic War" (I and II degrees) , for the defense and liberation of various territories, and so on.

First of all, the website of the Ministry of Defense is aimed at finding information about awards and the conditions for receiving them, allowing you to get detailed information about the type of award, the date of the achievement and the circumstances of the feat, the place of service of a serviceman, and more.

The site began work in the spring of 2010, and to this day it continues to be filled with relevant documents (the last major addition of documents took place in 2015). In total, it is planned to add more than 30 million documents to the database.

The ELAR Corporation provided technical support to the project. The resource that previously existed in Flash has now been rewritten in HTML5.

Feat of the People search by last names, awards and those who returned from the war

To work with this service, go to the site podvignaroda.ru. At the very top of the site there are five main tabs:

For example, if you want to search by the full name of your relative, go to the "People and awards" tab, and in the corresponding window that opens, enter the full name (at least the last name) of your relative, and click on the "Search" button.

Use the PEOPLE & AWARDS tab to find the people you need

You will be presented with a list of found people whose full name matches the one you specified. Look for the person you need in this list, click on his data, and you will be taken to another page, where a list of orders and other documents for this person will be indicated.

By choosing any of the documents listed here, you will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with its digital form, and visually study all the documentation available on this resource about the award received.

Work on other contributions of the resource is carried out in a similar way through the functionality of the search bar.

Conclusion

In this article, I have described the "People's Feat" resource, as well as the features of its functionality. Moreover, this project of the Ministry of Defense is not the only one of its kind. One can also note the "Memory of the People" project, in which it is possible to search for data on the place of hostilities (there are data on more than two hundred military operations), according to decrees and other relevant documents. Access to unique historical data allows you to recreate a picture of the heroic past of our people, thereby contributing to the development of spiritual and historical ties between generations of our country.

It should be noted that the search for a burial place or the combat path of your grandfather / great-grandfather is a long, sometimes difficult, sometimes expensive business. From the very beginning, you need to tune in to the long painstaking work of collecting information and analyzing it.

However, in general it is a simple and straightforward process.

Data collection

Specify the surname, name, patronymic, year of birth, place of birth, place of residence before the war, the military registration and enlistment office, which is called up, the address of relatives, place of service, military rank, party affiliation, if there are letters - find the field mail number in them, if we are looking for the deceased or missing missing - specify the date of the last known letter.

Read the letters carefully, they may contain important information: about the type of troops, about the military unit, any details of the movements.

Type of troops, military unit - regiment, division, army - this information is sometimes the key to a search, for example, a burial

Primary search

The base is unique, there are no analogues in the world. About 14 million sheets of archival documents have been scanned and posted. The work on filling the base continues. Therefore, do not be surprised if there is no data on your relative yet.

Here you can find all possible (taking into account the fact that the database is being filled) mentions about a person: Books of memory, reports of losses, lists of buried, etc.

The base contains almost all military graves where soldiers and commanders of the Red Army are buried. From Murmansk to Crete.

Additional information can be obtained on the "People's Feat" website. There is information about the awards.

If you know about the awards of a relative, then from the award documents you can find out information about the military unit, place of birth, etc. And of course about exploits.

In addition, the "Heroic Deed of the People" has a section on the Geography of War. In this section, you can find information about the combat path of the military unit.

If you want to know where your grandfather fought, who lived to the end of the war, this is the main tool. But only if he was awarded.

Memory Books

In every region of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, a multivolume "Book of Memory" has been published. The Book contains information about those who did not return from the war. But! Information at the time of publication of the Book, and the information that the regional commissariat had at that time. Some Books have been reprinted.

The "Memory Book" is kept in the regional military registration and enlistment office. It is necessary to contact at the place of call your relative ..

There is an easier way to access the "Book of Memory" - to contact the Council of Veterans. There active grandparents will give you the "Book" and give you some more tea.

Memory Books can also be electronic. Then the link to them should be looked for on the websites of the central authorities of the region.

Most of the Books of Memory have been digitized and are kept in the Memorial HBS. In the "Advanced Search" section, you can search for these Books.

Request to TsAMO

If the previous search did not give the necessary results - send by registered mail request to the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense - 142100, Moscow region, Podolsk, st. Kirov, house 74.

The request looks like this:

======================================

142100, Podolsk, Moscow region

Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

QUESTIONNAIRE

on the search and establishment of the fate of a serviceman

1. Surname, name, patronymic (wanted)

________________________

________________________

________________________

2. Year and place of birth (region, district, village, city) _______________________________

3. Where he lived and worked before conscription (indicate the detailed address and name of the institution, enterprise) _________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

4. What military enlistment office is called, when and to what part is _____________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

5. Military rank ______________________________

6. Type of troops (by conscription and service) _______________________________________________

7. Party membership _________________________________

8. When the written communication stopped (year, month, day) _________________________

9. The address of the military unit at the last place of service (last letter) ___________

10. Who requests (surname, name, patronymic, relationship, home address)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Applicant's signature - _________________

Reception was conducted by __________________________

"______" _________ 20___

Request as a word file.

=============================================================

After some time, you will receive an official certificate of the burial place.

It will say:

1. Killed (indicating the place of burial)

2. Killed (without specifying the place of burial)

3. Died of wounds (indicating the place of burial)

4. Died of wounds (no indication of the place of burial)

5. Missing in action.

If the burial site is known, then take one more step:

After receiving an official certificate, write a request to the military enlistment office of the burial place (depending on the accuracy of the indication).

Head of the military registration and enlistment office of the Demyansk district of the Novgorod region

We ask you to establish the place of burial _______ Full name ______, check it with the passports of burials on the basis of the information we have from

1) Notice of death ____________

2) OBD Memorial (list of documents) _____________

I attach copies of documents _____________

In the absence of data on the full name in the burial passport, please enter the full name in the burial passport and immortalize his name

Copies do not need to be certified, ordinary copies are sufficient.

If a specific burial is indicated in the certificate, then you are looking for it using the Memorial HBS - Advanced search, Search for burials

If the burial place is unknown, then we do the following:

Died of wounds

Request to the archive of military medical documents of the Military Medical Museum of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (191180, St. Petersburg, Lazaretny lane, 2) and a repeated request to TsAMO with a request to clarify the location of the hospital for the period of death of the wanted person.

Very often, the passport of military graves (if it is hospital) contains information about the hospital.

If there is any information about the hospital, then - a guide to the deployment of hospitals in the Red Army in 1941-1945.

Killed or missing.

This is where the fun begins. You should be aware of the unit your grandfather fought in. This will be in the certificate from TsAMO or in the combined database "Memorial". Your task is to establish the combat path of the division / brigade / regiment. Not an army, but a division / brigade / regiment.

If there are letters and they contain the field mail number, then we decrypt this number.

If a part is known, then further - memoirs, maps, reports of hostilities, and so on. You can search in TsAMO and reports, orders for a narrow period of time. It is quite realistic, for example, to establish the fate of a separate tank, and from aerial photographs to suggest the place of its death, and after questioning the local population, establish a previously unknown grave. But this is a jeweler's work, and most likely the local search team can do it.

Burial

Sometimes, the military registration and enlistment office cannot give a complete picture, especially about the battles of 1941-1942. The maximum that they can give in this case is a map of the burials of the area. But there may be dozens of them.

Keep in mind that the burials were enlarged. Consolidation campaigns were carried out in the country 2-3 times. They are carried out now, the main reason is transport inaccessibility and the impossibility of leaving.

The history of the burials can be traced to the Memorial HBS. Sometimes, lists of burials are posted on official websites.

It may be that the burial was transferred only on paper. And where she really is - everyone has forgotten.

The mass grave, created in 1941 and noted in the documents, can simply "dissolve" on the ground during 2 years of occupation. Or it may be that the desired person will be listed in several graves.

Museums.

School and regional studies. No matter how strange it may seem to someone, but school museums exist and are actively working on specific subdivisions and parts. The most complete list of school military history museums is located.

Search squads

It is necessary to contact the search squad of your area / city, as well as the search squad of the area where your relative died / disappeared without a trace.

By request in Yandex, such as "Demyansk search unit", usually everything is also found.

If there is no information on the Internet, call the department for youth affairs of the required region and you will be given all the available information on the search units of the region.

If you want to establish the fate of your relative, who died or went missing during the Great Patriotic War, then get ready for long and laborious work. Do not expect that it is enough to ask a question and someone will tell you in detail about your relative. And there is no magic key to the secret door, behind which there is a box with the inscription "The most detailed information about Sergeant Ivanov II for his great-grandson Edik." Information about a person, even if it has survived, is scattered over dozens of archives in tiny, often unrelated fragments. It may turn out that after spending several years searching, you will not learn anything new about your relative. But it is possible that a lucky break will reward you after just a few months of searching.

Below is a simplified search algorithm. It can seem complicated. In fact, everything is much more complicated. Here are the ways to find information if it has been saved somewhere. But the information you need may not have survived at all: the most difficult of all wars was going on, not only individual servicemen died - regiments, divisions, armies were killed, documents disappeared, reports were lost, archives burned ... It is especially difficult (and sometimes impossible) to find out the fate of servicemen , killed or missing in the encirclement in 1941 and in the summer of 1942

In total, the irrecoverable losses of the armed forces of the USSR (Red Army, Navy, NKVD) in the Great Patriotic War amounted to 11.944 thousand people. It should be noted right away that these are not dead, but for various reasons excluded from the lists of units. According to the order of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense No. 023 of February 4, 1944, irrecoverable losses include "those who died in battles, who disappeared in action at the front, who died from wounds on the battlefield and in medical institutions, who died from diseases received at the front, or who died at the front. from other reasons and captured by the enemy. " Of this number, 5.059 thousand people went missing. In turn, of the missing, most of them ended up in German captivity (and only less than a third of them survived to be liberated), many died on the battlefield, and many of those who ended up in the occupied territory were subsequently recruited into the army. The distribution of irrecoverable losses and missing persons over the years of the war (recall that the second number is part of the first) is shown in the table:

Year	Irrecoverable losses (thousand people)		Killed and died from wounds (thousand people)
	Total	Missing
1941	3.137	2.335
1942	3.258	1.515
1943	2.312
1944	1.763
1945
Total	11.944	5.059	9.168

In total, 9,168 thousand servicemen died and died from wounds in the Great Patriotic War, and the total direct human losses of the Soviet Union for all the years of the Great Patriotic War are estimated at 26.6 million people. (The numerical data on losses are taken from the works of Colonel-General G.F. Krivosheev, 1998-2002, which seem to us the most reliable and least politicized of all known estimates of the USSR's losses in the Great Patriotic War.)

1. First steps

1.1. Home search

First of all, you need to know exactly the last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth and place of birth. Without this information, it will be very difficult to search.

The place of birth should be indicated in accordance with the administrative-territorial division of the USSR in the pre-war years. The correspondence between pre-revolutionary, pre-war and modern administrative-territorial division can be found on the Internet. (Handbook of the administrative division of the USSR in 1939-1945 on the site SOLDAT.ru.)

It is usually not difficult to find out the time of the call and the place of residence of the conscript. By place of residence, you can determine which District Military Commissariat (RVC) he was called up.

Ranks can be determined by the insignia on the surviving photographs. If the rank is unknown, then membership in the rank and file, command and political staff can be very roughly determined by the education and pre-war biography of the soldier.

If a medal or order with which a soldier was awarded during the war has survived, then the number of the award can be used to establish the number of the military unit and even find out the description of the feat or military merit of the recipient.

It is imperative to interview the relatives of the serviceman. Much time has passed since the end of the war, and the soldier's parents are no longer alive, and his wife, brothers and sisters are of a very advanced age, much has been forgotten. But when talking with them, some insignificant detail may come up: the name of the area, the presence of letters from the front, words from a long-lost "funeral" ... .2008 ". You need to record the source because conflicting information may appear (the grandmother said one thing, but the certificate states another), and you will have to choose a more believable source. It should be borne in mind that family legends sometimes convey some events with distortions (something is forgotten, something is confused, something the narrator "improved" ...).

It is very important at this stage to determine in the troops of which People's Commissariats (People's Commissariats, or in a modern way - ministries) your relative served: People's Commissariat of Defense (ground forces and aviation), the Navy (including coastal units and naval aviation), People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD troops, border units). Cases of different departments are kept in different archives. (Addresses of departmental archives on the SOLDAT.ru website.)

The main task at the first stage should be set - finding out the date of death and the number of the military unit in which the soldier was at least for some time.

1.2. If letters from the front have survived

All letters from the front were examined by the military censorship, the servicemen were warned about this, therefore, usually the letters did not indicate the names and numbers of military units, the names of settlements, etc.

The first thing to determine: the number of the Field Mail Station (PPP or "field mail"). By the number of the teaching staff, it is often possible to determine room military unit. ("Directory of field postal stations of the Red Army in 1941-1945", "Directory of military units - field posts of the Red Army in 1943-1945" on the site SOLDAT.ru. ) It should be borne in mind that it is not always possible to determine a specific unit (regiment, battalion, company) as part of a military unit. ("Recommendations" on the SOLDAT.ru website. )

Until September 5, 1942, the address of a military unit usually consisted of the number of the PPS and the numbers of specific military units served by this PPS (regiment, battalion, company, platoon). After September 5, 1942, the actual numbers of military units were not indicated in the address, and instead of them, within each specific PPS, conditional numbers of addressees were entered. Such conditional numbers could include from two to five to six characters (letters and numbers). It is impossible to determine the actual number of the military unit by the conditional number of the addressee. In this case, only the number of the division or army can be determined by the number of the PPS, and the number of the regiment, battalion, company will remain unknown, tk. each army had its own unit coding system.

In addition to the PPS number on the postmark (in the center) there is the date of registration of the letter at the PPS (in fact, the date the letter was sent) - it will also come in handy in further searches. The text of the letter may contain information about the rank of a soldier, about his military specialty, about rewarding, about belonging to a private, junior command (sergeant), command (officer) or political staff, etc.

2. Internet search

2.1. United data bank "Memorial"

2.1.1. The largest resource on the Internet is the official website of the Ministry of Defense "Memorial United Data Bank". The databank was created on the basis of documents stored in TsAMO: reports of irrecoverable losses, journals of those who died in hospitals, alphabetical lists of burials, German personal cards for prisoners of war, post-war lists of those who have not returned from the war, etc. Currently (2008) the site operates in test mode. The site can be searched by last name, place of call, year of birth and some other keywords. It is possible to view scanned images of the original documents in which the found persona is mentioned.

When searching, you should also check the consonant surnames and names, especially if the surname is poorly understood by ear - with repeated rewriting, the surname could be distorted. The operator could also make a mistake when entering handwritten information into the computer.

In some cases, there are several documents for one soldier, for example: a report on irrecoverable losses, a personal list of those who died from wounds, an alphabetical list of those who died in a hospital, a military burial record card, etc. And of course, very often no documents are found on a soldier - this mainly refers to those who went missing in the initial period of the war.

2.2.1. In addition to the website of the Memorial WBS, there are several accessible databases on the Internet with a search by last name (Links page on the SOLDIER website.ru).

2.2.2. Regardless of the search results on the WBS Memorial website and in databases, it is necessary to search in several search engines on the Internet, specifying known information about a relative as a search string. Even if the search engine tells you something interesting on your request, you should repeat the search for various combinations of words, check synonyms and possible abbreviations of terms, names, names.

2.2.3. You should definitely visit genealogical and military-historical sites and forums, look through catalogs of military literature sections on electronic library sites. Read the memoirs of soldiers and officers who served in the same sector of the front as your relative found on the Internet, as well as descriptions of the military operations of the front, army, and division in which he served. This will help you a lot in your future work. ... And it’s just useful to know about the everyday life of that great war.

2.2.4. You should not completely trust the information obtained from the Internet - often no one is responsible for its reliability, so always try to check the received facts with other sources. If you fail to verify, then make a note or simply remember which information is obtained from an unverified source. In the future, you will often come across information that is unlikely, unreliable, doubtful, or even, most likely, false. For example, very soon you will have a list of namesakes, a wanted relative, whose biography facts coincide with the ones you need. You do not need to throw anything away, but be sure to indicate the source from which you received it for each new fact - maybe in a year you will have new information that will make you evaluate the information collected in a new way.

2.2.5. If you have a desire to ask your question at the military-historical forum right now, do not rush. To get started, read the posts on this forum over the past weeks. It may turn out that such questions have already been asked more than once, and regular visitors to the forum have already answered them in detail - in this case, your question will cause irritation. In addition, each forum has its own rules and traditions, and if you want to receive a benevolent response, then try not to violate the rules of conduct adopted on the forum. Usually, when you write the first message on the forum, you should introduce yourself. And do not forget to provide an e-mail address for those who want to reply to you with a letter.

2.3. Memory Books

2.3.1. In many regions of the country, Memory Books have been published, which contain alphabetical lists of the region's residents who died or went missing during the Great Patriotic War. Books of Memory are multivolume editions, you can get acquainted with them in the regional library and in the military registration and enlistment offices of the region, but it is difficult to find them outside the region. In some regions of the country, in addition to the regional Book of Memory, Books of Memory of individual regions have been published. Some Books are available in electronic versions on the Internet. Since the publications of different territories, regions, republics and districts were prepared by different editorial teams, the set of personal information and design of different publications are different. As a rule, the Books of Memory of the Regions indicate military personnel who were born or drafted into the army in this region. You should check both Books of Memory: published in the place of birth and published in the place of conscription. (Links to electronic versions of Books of Memory on the Internet at the SOLDAT.ru website.)

In the Books of Memory of some regions, on the territory of which the hostilities were conducted, information is given about the military personnel who died and were buried in the territory of the region. If you know in which region a soldier died, you need to check the Memory Book of the corresponding area.

2.3.2. A large database of dead servicemen is available in the museum on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow, and museum staff provide information both in person and by phone, but the database installed in the museum is abbreviated (contains only the last name, first name, patronymic and year of birth), and the complete database, funded by government money, is now privately owned and virtually inaccessible. In addition, with the appearance of the WBS Memorial website on the Internet, both databases can be considered outdated.

2.3.3. If you yourself cannot get access to the necessary Books of Memory, then you can ask to check the book of the required field on an Internet forum with military history or genealogical topics. In addition, many cities have their own sites on the Internet, and most of these sites have their own regional forums. You can ask a question or make a request on such a forum, and you will most likely be given advice or a hint, and if the settlement is small, then you can find out some question at the military registration and enlistment office or museum.

It should be borne in mind that there are also mistakes in the Memory Books, their number depends on the conscientiousness of the editorial team.

3. Obtaining information from the archive

3.1. On personal registration of dead and missing servicemen

3.1.1. This subsection provides brief information on the personal registration of servicemen who died and went missing during the Great Patriotic War. Knowledge of the main features of maintaining documentation is necessary for further work with archival documents.

3.1.2. It should be noted that during the war, the registration of the dead servicemen was organized quite clearly (as far as was possible in war conditions). With an interval of 10 days (sometimes less often), each military unit of the Field Army sent to the higher headquarters a list of irrecoverable losses - "Report on irrecoverable losses ...". In this report, for each deceased soldier, the following were indicated: surname, name, patronymic, year of birth, rank, position, date and place of death, place of burial, conscription office, address of residence and names of parents or wife. Reports from different units were collected in the Directorate for Manning the Troops of the General Staff of the Red Army (later - in the Central Bureau of Red Army losses). Similar reports were submitted by hospitals about soldiers who died of wounds and diseases.

After the war, these reports were transferred to TsAMO, and on their basis a card index of irrecoverable losses was compiled. The information from the report of the military unit was transferred to the personal card of the serviceman, the card indicated the number of the military unit and the number under which this report was taken into account.

3.1.3. A notice of the death of a serviceman was sent by the headquarters of the unit in which the deceased served, as a rule, to the draft enlistment office. At the military registration and enlistment office, a duplicate of the notification was drawn up, which was sent to relatives, and on its basis a pension was subsequently issued. The originals of the notices remained in storage at the military registration and enlistment office. On the original of the notice there was a round seal and a corner stamp with the name of the military unit, or its conditional five-digit number. Some of the notifications by the headquarters of the military units were sent directly to the relatives, bypassing the military enlistment office, which was a violation of the established order. Some of the post-war notifications were issued by the regional military registration and enlistment offices on the proposal of the Central Bureau of losses. All notices issued by the military registration and enlistment offices bore the seal and requisites of the military registration and enlistment office, and the number of the military unit, as a rule, was not given.

The notice of the death of a serviceman indicated: the name of the unit, rank, position, date and place of death of the serviceman and the place of burial. (Image of the notice of the death of a soldier on the SOLDIER website.ru.)

3.1.4. It is necessary to distinguish between two ways of indicating the names of military units in open (unclassified) correspondence:

a) in the period 1941-42. the documents indicated the actual name of the unit - for example, 1254 rifle regiment (sometimes with the indication of the division number);

b) in the period 1943-45. the conditional name of the military unit was indicated - for example, "military unit 57950", which corresponded to the same 1254 joint venture. Five-digit numbers were assigned to NCO units, and four-digit numbers were assigned to NKVD units.

3.1.5. A serviceman who was absent from the unit for an unknown reason was considered missing, and the search for him within 15 days did not give any result. Information about the missing was also transmitted to the higher headquarters, and a notification of the missing was sent to relatives. In this case, the notice of the missing serviceman indicated the name of the military unit, the date and place of the disappearance of the serviceman.

Most of the servicemen, who were listed as missing, died during the retreat, or during reconnaissance in force, or surrounded, i.e. in cases where the battlefield was left to the enemy. It was difficult to witness their death for various reasons. The missing persons also included:

- captured military personnel,

- deserters,

- business travelers who have not arrived at their destination,

- scouts who did not return from the mission,

- the personnel of entire units and subunits in the event that they were defeated and there were no commanders left who could reliably report up to the level of specific types of losses.

However, the reason for the absence of a serviceman could be not only his death. For example, a soldier who lagged behind a unit on the march could be included in another military unit, in which he then continued to fight. A wounded man from the battlefield could be evacuated by soldiers of another unit and sent directly to the hospital. There are cases when relatives during the war received several notifications ("funerals"), and the person turned out to be alive.

3.1.6. In cases where the higher headquarters did not receive information about irrecoverable losses from the military unit (for example, in the event of the death of a unit or its headquarters in the environment, loss of documents), the notification could not be sent to relatives, tk. the lists of the unit's servicemen were among the lost staff documents.

3.1.7. After the end of the war, the district military registration and enlistment offices carried out work to collect information about the servicemen who had not returned from the war (door-to-door survey). In addition, the relatives of a serviceman who did not return from the war could, on their own initiative, draw up a "Questionnaire on the person who did not return from the war" at the military registration and enlistment office.

Based on information from the military registration and enlistment offices, the card index of losses was replenished with cards drawn up based on the results of a survey of relatives. Such cards could contain the entry "the correspondence was interrupted in December 1942", and the number of the military unit was usually absent. If, however, the number of the military unit is indicated in the card drawn up on the basis of a report from the military registration and enlistment office, then it should be treated as probable, presumptive. The date of the disappearance of the serviceman in this case was established by the military commissar usually by adding three to six months to the date of the last letter. By the directive of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was recommended to the district military commissars to set the date of the disappearance according to the following rules:

1) if the relatives of a serviceman who did not return from the war lived in unoccupied territory, then three months should be added to the date of the last letter received,

2) if the relatives of a serviceman who did not return from the war remained in the occupied territory during the war, then three months should be added to the date of the liberation of the territory.

Household survey sheets and questionnaires are also stored in TsAMO (department 9), and they may contain information that is not in the card. When filling out the card, not all the information given in the house-house survey sheet was usually entered into it. or a questionnaire because it was not possible to verify the information recorded from the words of the relatives. Therefore, if it is known that the family of a soldier received letters from him from the front, but later these letters were lost, then some information from these letters (PPS number, date of the letter) may appear in the records of the house-to-house survey. When answering a request about the fate of a serviceman, the archive workers are not able to find the records of the house-to-house survey. You will have to look for them on your own, but, most likely, during a personal visit to the archive. The RVC report number indicating the year is stamped on the back of the personal card. After the website of the Memorial WBS appeared on the Internet, it became possible to independently search for source documents.

3.2. Brief information about archives

Most of the documents relating to the period of the Great Patriotic War are kept in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO). Below, we will mainly describe the search for military personnel of the People's Commissariat of Defense (NPO) and, accordingly, links will be made to the TsAMO archive, since it is in it that the archives of the People's Commissariat of Defense (and then the Ministry of Defense) are stored from June 22, 1941 to the eighties. (Addresses of departmental archives on the SOLDAT.ru website.)

The card file of the dead and missing NCO servicemen during the Great Patriotic War is kept in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO). Similar loss files are available in:

a) the Central Naval Archives in the city of Gatchina - on the personnel of the fleet, coastal service and aviation of the Navy,

b) the Russian State Military Archives in Moscow - for persons who served in the bodies, formations and units of the NKVD,

c) the archive of the Federal Border Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation in the city of Pushkino, Moscow Region - by border guards.

In addition to the listed archives, the necessary documentation may be in the state regional archives and in departmental archives.

Part of the information can be obtained on the website of the "WBS Memorial"

To obtain information about the fate of a serviceman, it is necessary to send a request to TsAMO (or to the other archives mentioned above), in which briefly indicate the known information about the serviceman. It is also recommended to include a postage stamped envelope with your home address in the envelope to speed up the reply. (The postal address of TsAMO and a sample application on the SOLDAT.ru website.)

If the military rank of a soldier is unknown or there is reason to believe that he could have been awarded an officer rank, then in the statement to TsAMO you should write "I ask you to check the personal files and card indexes of losses of the 6th, 9th, 11th departments of TsAMO" (in departments 6, 9 , 11 are filed, respectively, for the political, privates and sergeants, officers).

It is recommended to simultaneously send in the same letter a statement with a request to "clarify the awards" and indicate the surname, name, patronymic, year and place of birth of the serviceman. TsAMO has a card file of all awarded servicemen of the Red Army, and it may turn out that the soldier in question was awarded a medal or order. (The image of the "Awarded Registration Card" and the questionnaire-request on the SOLDAT.ru website.)

Due to insufficient funding of the archive, the answer from it may come by mail in 6-12 months, therefore, if possible, it is better to visit the archive in person. (The address of TsAMO is on the SOLDAT.ru website.) You can also issue a request at the military registration and enlistment office, in this case, the request to the archive will be issued on the letterhead of the military registration and enlistment office with the signature of the military registration and enlistment office and the seal.

Since 2007, only citizens of the Russian Federation have been admitted to TsAMO - this is the instruction of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which apparently forgot that natives of all republics of the USSR fought and died in the war.

3.4. Received a response from TsAMO. Analysis of the response

Thus, a letter from TsAMO (or the result of an independent search in the Memorial WBS) may contain 4 answer options:

1) A message about the death of a serviceman with an indication of the number of the military unit, the date and place of death, the rank and place of burial.

2) A message about a missing serviceman with an indication of the number of the military unit, date and place of loss.

3) A report about a missing serviceman, drawn up on the basis of interviews with relatives, with incomplete, unverified or inaccurate information.

4) Notification of the absence of information about the serviceman in the card index of losses.

If you are lucky, and the answer from TsAMO contains the name of the military unit, then you can proceed to clarify the military path of the soldier (see below)

If you are VERY lucky, and in the catalog of the awardees of the TsAMO there was a registration card for your relative, and an extract from it was sent to you in the response of the archive, then you should familiarize yourself with the award list in the same TsAMO, which contains a brief description of the feat or merits of the awardee. The description of work in TsAMO is given below, and the description of the search in the military registration and enlistment office can be skipped.

If it was still not possible to establish the number of the military unit in which your relative served, then you will have to continue the search in the military registration and enlistment office and in other departmental archives. More on this below.

4. Search for information at the place of call

4.1. Brief information about the organization of work in the RVC on staffing the Active Army

4.1.1. In order to correctly draw up a request to the district military enlistment office (RVK), you should familiarize yourself with the organization of work of the RVC on staffing the Army in the Field (DA).

4.1.2. RVC made the call and mobilization of citizens, as well as their distribution to duty stations.

Citizens drafted into the army (i.e., who had not previously served) could be sent

- to a reserve or training regiment or brigade stationed at that time close to the place of conscription,

- to a military unit formed in this area.

Citizens mobilized from the reserve (i.e. already serving in the army) could be sent directly to the front as part of marching companies or battalions.

4.1.3. Marching companies (battalions) usually did not go directly to the combat unit, but first arrived at an army or front-line transit point (PP) or in an army or front-line reserve rifle regiment (or reserve rifle brigade).

4.1.4. Newly formed, reformed or resupplied military units were sent to the front and took part in hostilities under their own numbers.

4.1.5. Reserve regiments and brigades received an unprepared military contingent, carried out initial military training and sent troops to the front or to educational institutions. Sending to the front was usually carried out as part of marching companies or battalions. It is necessary to distinguish between permanent and variable composition of spare military units. The permanent composition included the military personnel who ensured the functioning of the military unit: the regiment headquarters, management, battalion, company and platoon commanders, medical personnel, a separate communications company, etc. The variable composition included military personnel enrolled in a spare part for military training. The period of stay in spare parts of variable composition ranged from several weeks to several months.

4.1.6. In the military registration and enlistment office for each conscript (that is, the first conscript and not previously served in the army) a "Recruitment card" was drawn up. It recorded data about the conscript, the results of a medical examination and information about the parents. On its reverse side, the penultimate item contains the number of the recruiting team and the date the command was sent. (Image of the draft card on the SOLDIER website.ru.)

4.1.7. A person liable for military service is a person who has completed active military service in the Red Army and the RKVMF, and is in the reserve of 1 or 2 categories. Upon arrival at the RVC at the place of residence from the service (or for other reasons), a conscript was assigned to a conscript, which did not contain information about relatives, briefly provided medical data, indicated the date of issue of the mobilization order and the place of registration, the conditional number of the conscription team , to which the person liable for military service was assigned when the mobilization was announced. Also, information on the issuance of a military ID, place of work, position, home address was entered into the registration card. The second copy of the registration card was at the headquarters of the unit to which the citizen was assigned. (Image of the registration card of a conscript on the SOLDIER website.ru.)

Under the numbers of the draft teams, the already existing cadre formations and their units were specially encrypted, which, when mobilized, were supposed to expand to the number of wartime states due to the call of the military-liable reserves assigned to them. Accordingly, lists of such recruiting teams can be saved in the RVC, and in different MVCs for the same cadre military unit the number of the recruiting team was the same, since the cadre military unit, which was followed by specific conscripts, is the same.

4.1.8. In addition to the above documents, each RVC kept the following journals:

- Alphabetical books drafted into the Soviet Army during the Great Patriotic War ...,

- Alphabetical books for registering the dead ...,

- Nominal lists of privates and non-commissioned officers registered as dead and missing ...

The aforementioned "Alphabetical books, drafted into the Soviet Army ..." were compiled on the basis of draft cards and registration cards of a conscript, but they have a much smaller set of information compared to the original documents. In many military registration and enlistment offices, draft cards and registration cards were destroyed after the expiration of the storage period. In some military registration and enlistment offices, these documents are still kept.

4.1.9. When the conscription team was sent to the military registration and enlistment office, a "Name list for the conscription team" was drawn up. In addition to the name list of servicemen, it contains the number of the military unit (conditional - "military unit N 1234", or actual - "333 SD") and the address of this unit. (Image of the name list for the team on the SOLDIER website.ru.) In many military registration and enlistment offices "Name lists ..." were destroyed after the expiration of the storage period. They are still kept in some military registration and enlistment offices.

4.2. Search for information in the military registration and enlistment office

4.2.1. If the response from the archive does not indicate the number of the military unit, or if there is no information about the serviceman in the archive, then you will have to continue the search at the military registration and enlistment office at the place of conscription. You can send an application to the military registration and enlistment office by mail or appear in person. The latter is, of course, preferable. If the exact address of the military registration and enlistment office is unknown, then on the envelope you can write only the name of the city (without specifying the street and house), and in the column "To whom" write: "District military registration and enlistment office" - the letter will reach. All known information about the soldier must be indicated in the application. (Sample application to RVC and postal codes on the SOLDIER website.ru.)

Since registration documents with different names were drawn up for conscripts and mobilized, and it is not always known whether the wanted person served in the army before the war, it is recommended in the application to the RVC to ask for copies of both documents: the draft card and the registration card of the conscript.

4.2.2. If the response received from the RVC contains the conditional number of the military unit, then you need to determine the number is valid. ("Directory of conventional names of military units (institutions) in 1939-1943" and "Directory of military units - field posts of the Red Army in 1943-1945" on the SOLDAT.ru website.)

4.2.3. It should be recalled that the archives of the military registration and enlistment offices located in the temporarily occupied territories in the western regions and republics of the Soviet Union could have been lost.

4.2.4. Finding information about the personnel and the direction of the marching companies and battalions is very difficult, tk. in the process of moving to the front line, the marching units could be redirected to transit points (PP) located along the route, or replenished in reserve rifle regiments and brigades of armies and fronts. The marching companies that arrived in the combat unit were sometimes, due to circumstances, immediately put into battle without proper enrollment in the unit's staff.

4.3. Spare parts and military units of the local formation

4.3.1. If there is no way to find out at the conscription office where the conscript was sent, then continuation of the search should be carried out in the funds spare and training units stationed at that time near the settlement of conscription. Usually they were sent to train conscripts who had not previously served. Further information retrieval should be done in the documents of these parts. in TsAMO... (Directory "Dislocation of spare and training parts" on the site SOLDAT.ru.)