Today, anyone has the opportunity to find information about relatives and loved ones who died or disappeared during the Great Patriotic War. Many websites have been created to study documents containing personal data of military personnel during the war. "RG" presents an overview of the most useful of them. Therefore, do not despair if you were unable to find any data about your relatives in the bank of unpresented awards of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta - the search can be continued on other Internet resources.
Database
www.rkka.ru - a directory of military abbreviations (as well as regulations, manuals, directives, orders and personal documents of wartime).
Libraries
oldgazette.ru - old newspapers (including the war period).
www.rkka.ru - description of military operations of the Second World War, post-war analysis of the events of the Second World War, military memoirs.
Military cards
www.rkka.ru - military topographic maps with the combat situation (by war periods and operations)
Search Engine Sites
www.rf-poisk.ru - official website of the Russian Search Movement
Archives
www.archives.ru - Federal Archive Agency (Rosarkhiv)
www.rusarchives.ru - industry portal "Archives of Russia"
archive.mil.ru - Central archive of the Ministry of Defense.
rgvarchive.ru - Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). The archive stores documents about the military operations of the Red Army units in 1937-1939. near Lake Khasan, on the Khalkhin Gol River, in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. Here are also documents of the border and internal troops of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR since 1918; documents of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and institutions of its system (GUPVI Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR) for the period 1939-1960; personal documents of Soviet military leaders; documents of foreign origin (trophy). You can also find on the archive website
Before you is the main page of the portal with the main thematic sections: War Heroes, Combat Operations, Military Graves, Documents of Units, Information about the Combat Operation, Interactive Map, Blocks of Additional Information, Access to the Personal Archive.
Enter the last name, first name and patronymic of the person you are looking for in the search bar. Click the "Find" button or the "Enter" key on your keyboard.
The line for searching for personalities is also located at the top of the page in the “War Heroes” section. The search engine will return all results that match your query.
To the right of the "Find" button is the "Refine" advanced search button. After clicking on it, an additional search menu will open into which you can enter data known to you for a more accurate search: a person’s military rank, place of birth, conscription, retirement or burial, date of retirement or death and other parameters.
You can also refine your search by indicating sources of information - documents on awards (record card, anniversary card file, award documents); documents on losses (reports on irretrievable losses, documents from hospitals and medical battalions, documents clarifying losses, documents on prisoners of war, etc.).
So, by studying authentic archival documents of the war step by step, you can find out what your relative’s everyday life was like in combat.
In the search results, in addition to the person’s full name, the name of the award (medal, order), date and place of birth, data source (consolidated card file, anniversary card file) may be indicated; place and reason for departure (killed, died of wounds, missing); data from a military transit point.
The system also automatically displays a selection with similar data on a war participant. This information may be more accurate or may vary. You can independently select the information relevant to your request.
By clicking on the full name of the person that matches your search, you will be taken to a page with an archival document, where the line relating specifically to the person you are looking for will be highlighted, and on the right - information about the archival document itself.
In the line with the person’s full name, you will see icons offering to view a digital copy of the document, save it, or add the page to your personal archive.
Awards and exploits
If the person you are looking for has been awarded orders and/or medals and has a Hero Star, information about this is available on the portal. You will see a highlighted line in the award list, and you will be able to go to the description of the accomplished feat, the award sheet.
Having learned about the place and time of the feat, you can completely reconstruct the circumstances of your relative’s service using military documents.
To work with found documents, create and save a selection of archival documents for a person or event, use the “Personal Archive” section.
Battle path
To find out the details of the service and restore the combat path of a participant in the Great Patriotic War, pay attention to the active link Combat path of the Hero/unit.
By clicking on this line, you will be taken to an interactive service, which includes documentary and geoinformation parts.
To the left of the map are the milestones of the battle path. By clicking on the “Recruitment Place”, you will “move” on the map to the corresponding point and see the active link “Heroes conscripted at this military registration and enlistment office.”
The next line after “Place of recruitment” will be the line about the first military operations in which the Red Army soldier took part. The system will determine their date, place on the modern and historical map, and also select documents that reflect military realities. These can be Military Operations Logs of front headquarters, Units' Combat Operations Logs, orders, reports, reports, maps, reports, reports, etc.
Based on the dates of the units' actions and geographic location, you can get an idea of combat operations, determine the movement of Soviet troops, and find out all the details of the course of the war.
On the main page, you can select the activity displayed in the center of the page using the time slider. Simply move the time slider to the date you are interested in.
You will see the name and description of the results of the combat operation. Below the description will be a list of military units and commanders with links to the corresponding pages of the military unit or military commander.
Having found information about the place and time of the death of your relative, you will be able to determine with a high degree of probability exactly what tasks were being solved by the unit, army, or front at that moment.
Memory
Similar to the “Combat Operations” section, you can also use additional search parameters in the “Military Graves” section.
In the central part of the page on the left is a list of burials (each of the names in the list is a link to the burial page); on the right is an interactive map with markers on the number of burials in a given area at the selected scale.
After zooming in, new markers with a more accurate location will be shown, and by clicking on the marker, you will see a window with information about the burial and a link to a page with more detailed information. The map shows modern burials, primary burials, disposal sites, hospitals and camps.
By clicking on any object (burial, hospital...), you will be taken to its page. For example, for hospitals there will be an active link to additional information and an alphabetical book of the deceased. The burial page will contain information, a list of those buried, and an object registration card.
View more details
“The data bank is like the Bible for us. It has made searching and identifying the names of soldiers more efficient, I’m afraid to say to what extent. We have always worked in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense... Even if we worked there ourselves, it took years. And now a few hours, "Even if it's night work, it's much faster. This is the highest achievement in recent years in matters of perpetuating the memory of the fallen defenders of the Fatherland."
Nina Kulikovskikh, chairman of the board of the Smolensk regional public organization "Search Association "Dolg".
Meeting of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev with representatives of search organizations. Smolensk, May 2017
We have been keeping the memory of the Great War of the 20th century and its heroes for more than 70 years. We pass it on to our children and grandchildren, trying not to lose a single fact or surname. Almost every family was affected by this event; many fathers, brothers, husbands never returned. Today we can find information about them thanks to the painstaking work of military archives staff and volunteers who devote their free time to searching for soldiers’ graves. How to do this, how to find a WWII participant by last name, information about his awards, military ranks, place of death? We could not ignore such an important topic, we hope that we can help those who are looking and want to find.
Losses in the Great Patriotic War
It is still unknown exactly how many people left us during this great human tragedy. After all, the counting did not begin immediately; only in 1980, with the advent of glasnost in the USSR, historians, politicians, and archive staff were able to begin official work. Until this time, scattered data that were beneficial at that time were received.
- After celebrating Victory Day in 1945, J.V. Stalin said that we had buried 7 million Soviet citizens. He spoke, in his opinion, about everyone, both about those who died during the battle and about those who were taken prisoner by the German occupiers. But he missed a lot, did not say about the rear employees who stood at the machine from morning until night, falling dead from exhaustion. I forgot about the sentenced saboteurs, traitors to the motherland, ordinary residents and siege survivors of Leningrad who died in small villages; missing persons. Unfortunately, they can be listed for a long time.
- Later L.I. Brezhnev provided different information, he reported 20 million dead.
Today, thanks to the decoding of secret documents and search work, the numbers are becoming real. Thus, you can see the following picture:
- Combat losses received directly at the front during battles amount to about 8,860,400 people.
- Non-combat losses (from illnesses, wounds, accidents) - 6,885,100 people.
However, these figures do not yet correspond to complete reality. War, and even this kind of war, is not only the destruction of the enemy at the cost of one’s own life. These are broken families - unborn children. This is a huge loss of the male population, thanks to which it will not soon be possible to restore the balance necessary for good demography.
These are diseases, hunger in the post-war years and death from it. This is rebuilding the country again, again in many ways, at the cost of people’s lives. All of them also need to be taken into account when doing calculations. All of them are victims of terrible human vanity, whose name is war.
How to find a participant in the Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945 by last name?
There is no better memory for the stars of victory than the desire of the future generation to know. The desire to save information for others, to avoid such repetition. How to find a WWII participant by last name, where to find possible information about grandfathers and great-grandfathers, fathers who took part in battles, knowing their last name? Especially for this purpose, there are now electronic repositories that everyone can access.
- obd-memorial.ru - here contains official data containing reports of units about losses, funerals, trophy cards, as well as information about rank, status (died, was killed or disappeared, where), scanned documents.
- moypolk.ru is a unique resource containing information about home front workers. The very ones without whom we would not have heard the important word “Victory”. Thanks to this site, many have already been able to find or help find lost people.
The work of these resources is not only to search for great people, but also to collect information about them. If you have any, please report it to the administrators of these sites. In this way, we will do a great common cause - we will preserve memory and history.
Archive of the Ministry of Defense: search by last name of WWII participants
Another one is the main, central, largest project - https://archive.mil.ru/. The documents preserved there are mostly isolated and remained intact due to the fact that they were taken to the Orenburg region.
Over the years of work, CA staff have created an excellent reference apparatus showing the contents of archival accumulations and funds. Now its goal is to provide people with access to possible documents through electronic computing technology. Thus, a website has been launched where you can try to find a military man who participated in the Second World War, knowing his last name. How to do it?
- On the left side of the screen, find the “memory of the people” tab.
- Indicate his full name.
- The program will give you the available information: date of birth, awards, scanned documents. Everything that is in the files for a given person.
- You can set a filter on the right, selecting only the sources you want. But it's better to choose everything.
- On this site it is possible to look at military operations on a map and the path of the unit in which the hero served.
This is a unique project in its essence. There is no longer such a volume of data collected and digitized from all existing and available sources: card indexes, electronic memory books, medical battalion documents and command directories. In truth, as long as such programs and the people who provide them exist, the memory of the people will be eternal.
If you didn’t find the right person there, don’t despair, there are other sources, maybe they’re not as large-scale, but that doesn’t make them any less informative. Who knows in which folder the information you need might be lying around.
Participants of the Second World War: search by last name, archive and awards
Where else can you look? There are more narrowly focused repositories, for example:
- dokst.ru. As we said, those who were captured also became victims of this terrible war. Their fate may be displayed on foreign websites like this one. Here in the database there is everything about Russian prisoners of war and the burials of Soviet citizens. You only need to know the last name, you can look at the lists of captured people. The Documentation Research Center is located in the city of Dresden, and it was he who organized this site to help people from all over the world. You can not only search the site, but also send a request through it.
- Rosarkhiv archives.ru is an agency that is an executive authority that keeps records of all government documents. Here you can make a request either online or by phone. A sample electronic appeal is available on the website in the “appeals” section, left column on the page. Some services here are provided for a fee; a list of them can be found in the “archive activities” section. With this in mind, be sure to ask whether you will need to pay for your request.
- rgavmf.ru - a naval reference book about the destinies and great deeds of our sailors. In the “orders and applications” section there is an email address for processing documents left for storage after 1941. By contacting the archive staff, you can get any information and find out the cost of such a service; most likely it is free.
WWII awards: search by last name
To search for awards and feats, an open portal has been organized, dedicated specifically to this www.podvignaroda.ru. Information is published here about 6 million cases of awards, as well as 500,000 unawarded medals and orders that never reached the recipient. Knowing the name of your hero, you can find a lot of new things about his fate. The posted scanned documents of orders and award sheets, data from registration files, will complement your existing knowledge.
Who else can I contact for information about awards?
- On the website of the Central Election Commission of the Ministry of Defense, in the section “Awards are looking for their heroes,” a list of awarded soldiers who did not receive them was published. Additional names can be obtained by phone.
- rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm - encyclopedia of the Red Army. It published some lists of the assignment of senior officer ranks and special ranks. The information may not be as extensive, but existing sources should not be neglected.
- https://www.warheroes.ru/ is a project created with the aim of popularizing the exploits of the defenders of the Fatherland.
A lot of useful information, which sometimes is not found anywhere, can be found on the forums of the above sites. Here people share valuable experiences and tell their own stories that can help you too. There are many enthusiasts who are ready to help everyone in one way or another. They create their own archives, conduct their own research, and can also be found only on forums. Don't shy away from this type of search.
WWII veterans: search by last name
- oldgazette.ru is an interesting project created by ideological people. A person who wants to find information enters data, it can be anything: full name, name of awards and date of receipt, line from a document, description of an event. This combination of words will be calculated by search engines, but not just on websites, but in old newspapers. Based on the results, you will see everything that was found. Maybe this is where you will be lucky, you will find at least a thread.
- It happens that we search among the dead and find among the living. After all, many returned home, but due to the circumstances of that difficult time, they changed their place of residence. To find them, use the website pobediteli.ru. This is where people searching send letters asking for help in finding their fellow soldiers, random encounters during the war. The project's capabilities allow you to select a person by name and region, even if he lives abroad. If you see it on these lists or similar, you need to contact the administration and discuss this issue. Kind, attentive staff will definitely help and do everything they can. The project does not interact with government organizations and cannot provide personal information: telephone number, address. But it is quite possible to publish your search request. More than 1,000 people have already been able to find each other this way.
- 1941-1945.at Veterans do not abandon their own. Here on the forum you can communicate, make inquiries among the veterans themselves, perhaps they have met and have information about the person you need.
The search for the living is no less relevant than the search for dead heroes. Who else will tell us the truth about those events, about what they experienced and suffered. About how they greeted victory, the very first, the most expensive, sad and happy at the same time.
Additional sources
Regional archives were created throughout the country. Not so large, often standing on the shoulders of ordinary people, they have preserved unique single records. Their addresses are on the website of the movement to perpetuate the memory of the victims. And:
- https://www.1942.ru/ - “Seeker”.
- https://iremember.ru/ - memories, letters, archives.
- https://www.biograph-soldat.ru/ - international biographical center.
| Name: | Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 |
| Web address: | podvignaroda.ru, podvig-naroda.ru, podvignaroda.mil.ru |
| Site type: | database |
| Date of foundation: | 04/09/2010 |
“Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”- an electronic bank of documents relating to the period of the Great Patriotic War.
The contents of the data bank consist of documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO), namely award files and documents on the operational management of combat operations. It is planned to enter data on 30 million awards from the period of military operations of the Great Patriotic War into the database; in total, access will be open to more than 200,000 archival files with a total volume of about 100 million sheets.
Story
The initiator of the project is the Department for the Development of Information and Telecommunication Technologies of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, telecommunications support is provided by OJSC Rostelecom. The creation of the database is being carried out by JSC NPO "Experience", the total cost of work on the project is 22 million rubles. The technical implementation of the project is carried out by the Electronic Archive Corporation.
On the official website of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the project is called unprecedented and has no analogues in the world.
The site was launched in April 2010. Completion of work on filling the data bank is planned for December 2012. It is publicly available on the Internet at: http://www.podvignaroda.mil.ru/. To use the site, you must install Adobe Flash. The mobile version of the site is also supported at: http://195.68.154.73/podvig.
Access restriction problem
After June 2010, the OBD was not replenished for six months. A new update took place on December 8, 2010: data on 71,053 awards was added to the “War Heroes” section, and it was also possible to subscribe to notifications about updates in the document bank by e-mail.
At the same time, a notice appeared on the main page of the site: “Restricted access information provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation, as part of the OBD “Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” not published." The OBD denied access to information about award sheets about the military registration and enlistment offices of soldiers, as well as about the addresses of their relatives: this information in the award sheets was retouched and made inaccessible when viewed, as well as in the search form.
At the beginning of 2010, restrictions on access to previously posted information were already introduced on another resource of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Memorial OBD, but then the public managed to get all the data returned. In this case, the restriction on access to personal information (which, in the case of search teams, could significantly facilitate the identification of the remains of soldiers) also caused a negative reaction from the public. On December 12, 2010, participants in the Soldat.ru website forum sent a letter to the President of Russia, the Prime Minister of the Russian Government, and the Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia with a request to restore access to classified information. Two days later, information appeared that the President had read the letter and instructed the Russian Minister of Defense to look into the situation. At the beginning of January 2011, a representative of the Electronic Archive company reported that the Russian Ministry of Defense ordered that information about military registration and enlistment offices (but not addresses) and searches on them be returned to the site.
The People's Memory project is a large-scale electronic archive.
Where every visitor to the site can easily find all the necessary information about the role that certain relatives took in the Great Patriotic War.
Moreover, the user has the opportunity to track in which battles and engagements fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers took part, and what awards they received for valor and courage.
All events that occurred during the war, certified in writing, as well as sheets with lists of awardees, orders, and reports, are also placed in this file cabinet.
The totality of all this data allows you not only to obtain the necessary information, but also to save the necessary documents in your personal archive.
The search algorithm for the last name of a participant in the Great Patriotic War occurs in an accessible mode for any user.
The process of searching for WWII participants
In order to start searching by name, you need to go to the official website of the People's Memory project.
The main page of the portal will open in front of you, where the search bar occupies a central place.
The available data (last name, first name, patronymic, date of birth and other available data) can be entered in this line, or you can go to the “War Heroes” section and enter the data directly there.
In any case, after clicking on the “Find” button, the site system is programmed in such a way that automatically you will still be transferred to the “War Heroes” section, so
If the person you are looking for cannot be found based on the entered data, you must select the “Refine” function to the right of the search line.
And continue to enter additional data that you have to refine your search.
Of the possible data, you will be prompted to enter the following information:
- place of birth of a war participant;
- place of service;
- rank;
- date of discharge from the army;
- date of death, if the warrior is considered killed in battle;
- database entry number (ID).
It also happens that even additional information is not enough to find a fighter, and then you need to expand additional data entry lines and indicate all the facts known about the person.
You can also configure the Information Sources in which you want to search.
Very often, the personal data of WWII participants can be identical, and then the “Search Filter by Category” comes to the rescue, which will help narrow the search and remove inappropriate options.
Attention! Before you start searching for a participant in the Great Patriotic War, you need to find out all possible information about him, ask relatives or look up home archives and photo albums.
This will help when entering additional information and will speed up the result.
The above methods of setting up information search will help you not only find a person, but also the awards received by the fighter, a list of battles and battles in which he managed to take part or distinguish himself.
Ability to view and save documents
After completing the search, the “Memory of the People” portal allows its users not only to view the necessary information, but also to download it from the site for storage and transmission.
Thanks to this feature, you can save valuable information and manage it as you wish.
To download the document you need, to the right of the desired object you need to select one of the available actions:
1. View the original document.
3. Adding this information to your personal archive, which you can create directly on the “Memory of the People” website
Need to know! Due to the fact that access to the personal archive and all information stored on it may be limited during times of mass visits to the site (overload).
Additional information is available on the “Memory of the People” portal
After the desired WWII participant has been found on the “Memory of the People” resource, the user has the opportunity to find out all the available information about him.
To perform this action, you need to click on the link with the name of the fighter, after which we go to pages with additional information about him.
Reward Information
The list where the list of awarded awards was selected will reveal to us all possible information about medals and other incentives received by the fighter as a result of participation in the war: for what the award was received and when, the place where the feat was performed, the name of the one who awarded.
At the very end of the list you will see a scan of the document about the list of awards.
1. "Feat"— in the journals reflecting the course of military operations, all the information is revealed about how, where and when the feat was accomplished, after which the desired object was presented for a reward.
2. “Title page of the order”- information about which platoon the soldier served in, about the situation at the front during this period. Who made the award and for what exactly.
3. “Breastplate”- a certificate confirming that the search object was awarded for combat distinction, indicating the personal details of the fighter and a brief summary of the events.
In addition to the ability to view the original of such a document, the user can download the file to his device, with the ability to change the image parameters.
The Hero's Battle Path
In addition to viewing all the awards assigned to a fighter, the user of the People's Memory portal has a unique opportunity to trace the movement of the fighter along with his unit from front to front.
To do this, you need to go to the “Hero/Part Combat Path” menu.
This section opens a list of all combat units in which the desired object served and fought.
If you switch from one part to another, the user will see a map with visual indications of the fighter’s geographic movement and all the military actions in which his participation took place.
Each coordinate on the map is the designation of a specific battle, which is detailed in the table to the left of the map, indicating all dates and operations.
The scale of the map allows you to study in detail the terrain through which the combat unit was moving. The beginning of the journey will be considered a call for service in the local military registration and enlistment office, and its final point will be the end of the Great Patriotic War.
Patriotic War. Based on the symbols below the map, you can study the course of the war in detail.
Right down to the moments when the soldier was wounded and under what circumstances, what hospital he was in, where and when he was nominated for an award, and many other details of military operations.
If you are interested in a specific event or unit in which a soldier served, you can click on the coordinate you are interested in.
A pop-up window will appear in the upper right corner with all the information:
- name of the warhead;
- date of the event of interest;
- a list of documents testifying to the battle that took place.
After the portal has found all the documents related to the event, you can click on their number and go to the list.
The user has the opportunity to view all evidence in conditional order, or narrow the search using the filter settings.
Important! Each of the documents presented (be it a diagram or an order) was drawn up by participants in the hostilities and has survived to this day.
Each document belongs to a specific archive, information about which is also available on the website. All documents can be downloaded to your device or saved in a personal archive directly on the portal.
The “Memory of the People” project is not just an opportunity to find a participant in the Second World War, but also to trace all his movements during the war, participation in significant battles, and delve into the details of the events being studied.
Attention! All information on this site is presented for informational purposes only. The site does not collect or process personal data. Federal Law No. 152-FZ of July 27, 2006 “On Personal Data” is not violated.
