Databases for searching information about the participants in the World War II on the Internet. Collection of combat documents of the Great Patriotic War of the Ministry of Defense of the Great Patriotic War

Unique historical documents telling about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Among them are the first Soviet combat order and a captured map of the German plan "Barbarossa".

The documents were digitized by employees of the department of information and mass communications of the military department together with the central archive of the Ministry of Defense. Their publication is timed to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War. On June 22, Russia celebrates the Day of Memory and Sorrow.

Visitors to the site will be able to get acquainted with declassified archival documents - directives of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR, orders and reports of the commanders of military units and formations that were the first to take the blow of the German troops, award documents with descriptions of exploits and decrees on awarding orders and medals to the commanding and enlisted personnel of the Red Army .

Among the documents is a copy of the directive of the People's Commissariat of Defense No. 1 dated June 22, 1941, signed by the Chief of the General Staff Georgy Zhukov and People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko and handed over on the night of June 22 by the commanders of the 3rd, 4th and 10th armies; as well as a declassified copy of the handwritten combat order of the People's Commissariat of Defense No. 2 dated June 22, 1941, compiled by Zhukov with his own hand three hours after the start of the war - at 7:15.

The order instructs the Red Army "by all means and means to attack enemy forces and destroy them in areas where they violated the Soviet border," and bomber and attack aircraft to destroy enemy aircraft at base airfields and groupings of ground forces "to a depth of German territory up to 100-150 kilometers".

For the first time, the draft presents a trophy map of the initial stage of the Barbarossa plan, which details the deployment of Nazi troops near the Soviet borders and outlines the planned directions of the Wehrmacht's main strikes in the first days of the war.

"The placement on the portal of the Ministry of Defense of an unprecedented information resource dedicated to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War puts a damper on the growing falsification of history, debunks many of its false myths with documents, and becomes an important element in the system of military-patriotic education of young people," the military department noted.

• Issue 01 Preparation and breakthrough of the enemy's fortified defenses. The assault on the fortress and the city of Koenigsberg
• Issue 02 Breakthrough of the enemy's fortified zone. Organization, planning and conduct of an artillery attack. Fight in the depths of the enemy's defense. The actions of the assault groups. Overcoming water barriers
• Issue 03 Fighting troops in the mountains. Engineering support for an offensive operation (combat). Fighting assault squads and groups. The actions of mobile barrier detachments and groups of sappers-tank destroyers. Demining. Forcing water barriers
• Issue 04 Combat operations of artillery in an offensive operation (combat). Combat actions of artillery in a defensive operation (battle)
• Issue 05 Offensive and defense. The use of military branches and military equipment
• Issue 06 Offensive. Defense. Use of military branches in operation and in battle
• Issue 07 Combat use of aviation of the Soviet Army. Combat use of air defense forces
• Issue 10 Orders, Directives, Instructions and Instructions to the Troops on the Organization and Conduct of Offensive and Defensive Combat (Operation), Use of Arms of the Force in Combat (Operation) and Combat Support of the Troops
• Issue 11 Orders, directives and instructions of the commanders of the fronts and armies on the organization and conduct of offensive and defensive combat (operation), the use of military branches in combat (operation) and on the combat support of troops
• Issue 12 Orders, directives, instructions and instructions of the commanders of the fronts and armies on the organization and conduct of offensive and defensive battles and operations
• Issue 13 Orders, directives and instructions of the commanders of the troops of the fronts and armies on the issues of combat training of troops
• Issue 14 Documents characterizing the combat training of the troops of the combined arms army, which was on the defensive in the first echelon of the operational formation of the troops of the front, as well as documents on the organization and conduct of combat training of the troops of the combined arms army, which was in the reserve of the Headquarters or in the second echelon of the front
• Issue 15 Orders, directives, instructions and instructions of the headquarters of the armored and mechanized troops of the Soviet Army, commanders of the troops of the fronts, commanders of the armored and mechanized troops of the fronts and commanders of tank armies on the use of armored and mechanized troops
• Issue 16 Orders, Directives, Instructions and Directives of Commanders of Fronts and Armies, Commander of Artillery of the Soviet Army, Commanders of Artillery of Fronts and Armies on Organization of Antitank and Air Defense of Troops
• Issue 17 Orders, directives, orders and instructions issued by the commanders of the fronts, armies and chiefs of the combat arms of the fronts and armies on the organization of an offensive against the enemy, who fortified in populated areas, and on adapting our troops to the defense of populated areas
• Issue 18 Orders, directives, instructions and instructions of the chief of engineering troops of the Soviet Army, commanders of fronts and armies and chiefs of engineering troops of fronts and armies on engineering support for offensive and defense
• Issue 19 Orders, directives and instructions on command and control of troops and organization of communications in offensive and defense
• Issue 20 Orders, directives and instructions of the commanders of the fronts, armies, commanders of corps and divisions to ensure the flanks and joints. Index of documents obsessed in collections of combat documents of the Great Patriotic War Nos. 1-20
• Issue 21 Orders, directives, instructions, instructions and reports of front and army commanders and their deputies for armored and mechanized troops on the use of tanks and self-propelled artillery installations in offensive combat
• Issue 22 Orders, reports, reports and other documents of the commanders of armies, commanders of corps, divisions and their deputies in the rear, dedicated to the organization and work of the military rear
• Issue 23 Directives, plans, instructions, orders and instructions of the commanders of the fronts, armies and their deputies for logistics on the organization and work of the rear in the offensive and defense
• Issue 24 Orders, directives, plans and combat orders of the commanders of the troops of the fronts and armies, commanders of the corps and divisions on the offensive with the crossing of rivers
• Issue 25 Orders, directives, orders, instructions, instructions and reporting documents of units, formations and associations of the Soviet Army on the preparation, organization and conduct of hostilities at night
• Issue 26 Directives, orders, directives, instructions, instructions, planning tables of interaction, reports and extracts from the reports of formations and associations of the Soviet Army on the interaction of aviation with ground forces
• Issue 27 Orders, directives, instructions, instructions, plans, reports and reports of armies and fronts on issues of operational camouflage of troops
• Issue 28 Directives, orders, directives, instructions, reports, reports, operational and final summaries, summaries of generalized combat experience and extracts from combat logs of troops characterizing the organization and conduct of the pursuit of the retreating enemy by Soviet troops
• Issue 29 Directives, orders, directives, instructions, plans, reports, reports, operational reports, combat reports, summaries of generalized combat experience and extracts from combat logs of troops on regrouping and changing troops of formations and associations
• Issue 30 Directives, orders, directives, instructions, reports, reports, summaries of the generalized experience of military operations and extracts from the journals of military operations of troops, characterizing the organization and conduct of an offensive by Soviet troops with forcing rivers from the move
• Issue 31 Orders, instructions, instructions, combat reports and operational reports of the 1st and 2nd Guards Rifle Divisions (former 100th and 127th Rifle Divisions), characterizing the combat operations of these divisions in the period from June 22 to December 31, 1941 G.
• Issue 32 Orders, instructions, combat reports and operational reports of the 3rd and 4th Guards Rifle Divisions (former 153rd and 161st Rifle Divisions), characterizing the combat operations of these divisions in the period from June 22 to December 31, 1941.
• Issue 33 1941. Fighting armored and mechanized troops in the North-West direction. Fighting armored and mechanized troops in the Western direction. Combat operations of armored and mechanized troops in the South-West direction
• Issue 34 1941. Combat documents on the defensive operation in Lithuania and Latvia, carried out from June 22 to July 9, 1941 by the troops of the North-Western Front. Documents of the Directorate of the Baltic Special Military District and the Field Directorate of the North-Western Front. Documents of the field administration of the 8th army. Documents of the field administration of the 11th army. Documents of the field administration of the 27th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 10th Rifle Corps. Documents of the headquarters of the 16th Rifle Corps. Report of the commander of the 12th and report of the commander of the 1st mechanized corps
• Issue 35 1941. Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the Western Front from June 22 to July 5, 1941. Documents of the Directorate of the Western Special Military District and the Field Directorate of the Western Front. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 3rd Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 4th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 10th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 13th Army. Documents of the departments of the 2nd, 44th, 47th rifle corps and the headquarters of the garrison of the mountains. Borisov
• Issue 36 1941. Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the Southwestern and Southern Fronts in Western Ukraine and Moldova from June 22 to July 11, 1941. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Southwestern Front. Documents of the headquarters of the 5th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 6th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 26th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 12th army. Report of the commander of the 15th mechanized corps to the head of the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army on the combat operations of the corps from June 22 to July 12, 1941. Documents of the headquarters of the Southern Front. Documents of the headquarters of the 18th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 9th army
• Issue 37 1941. Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the Western Front and the Front of Reserve Armies (Reserve Front) from July 3 to August 7, 1941. Documents of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the General Staff of the Red Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the High Command of the Western Direction. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Western Front. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Reserve Army Front (Reserve Front). Documents of the headquarters of the 4th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 13th army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 16th Army. Documents of the headquarters of the 19th army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 20th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 21st Army. Documents of the headquarters of the 22nd army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 24th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 28th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 29th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 30th Army. Documents of the headquarters of the operational group of troops of the Yartsevo direction. Documents of the headquarters of the task force of Kalinin. List of abbreviations found in documents
• Issue 38 1941. Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the South-Western direction from July 11 to July 25, 1941. Documents Documents of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, the General Staff and the Headquarters of the Air Force of the Red Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the High Command of the South-Western Direction. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Southwestern Front. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Southern Front. Documents of the headquarters of the 5th army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 6th Army. Documents of the headquarters of the 9th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 12th army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 18th Army. Documents of the headquarters of the 26th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 27th Rifle Corps. Documents of the headquarters of the 64th rifle corps. Documents of the headquarters of the Kyiv fortified region. List of abbreviations found in documents
• Issue 39 1941. Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the South-Western direction from July 26 to August 6, 1941. Documents of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, the General Staff and the Headquarters of the Air Force of the Red Army. Documents of the Headquarters of the High Command of the South-Western Direction. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Southwestern Front. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Southern Front. Documents of the headquarters of the 5th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 6th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 9th army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 12th Army. Combat report of the commander of the 18th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 26th Army. Combat order of the commander of the 27th Rifle Corps. Documents of the headquarters of the 64th rifle corps. Documents of the headquarters of the Kyiv fortified region. List of abbreviations found in documents
• Issue 40 1941. Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the South-Western direction in the right-bank and left-bank Ukraine from August 6 to September 25, 1941. Documents of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, Deputy People's Commissar of Defense and the General Staff of the Red Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the High Command of the South-Western Direction. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Southwestern Front. Documents of the Field Directorate of the Southern Front. Documents of the headquarters of the 5th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 6th army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 9th Army. Documents of the Field Directorate of the 12th Army. Documents of the headquarters of the 18th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 26th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 37th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 38th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 27th Rifle Corps. List of abbreviations found in documents
• Issue 41 1941. Directive of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command to the troops of the Western Front No. 001254 dated August 25, 1941 on the development of an offensive operation to defeat the Smolensk enemy grouping. Documents of the field administration of the Western Front. Documents of the field administration of the 16th army. Documents of the field administration of the 19th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 20th army. Documents of the field administration of the 22nd army. Documents of the headquarters of the 29th army. Documents of the field administration of the 30th army
• Issue 42 1941. Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the Southern Front in the Donbass from September 26 to November 5, 1941. Documents of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. Documents of the field administration of the Southern Front. Documents of the field administration of the 9th army. Documents of the field administration of the 12th army. Documents of the field administration of the 18th Army
• Issue 43 Documents on the combat operations of the troops of the Bryansk Front on the Oryol and Kursk directions from August 16 to October 29, 1941. Documents of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the General Staff of the Red Army. Documents of the field administration of the Bryansk Front. Documents of the headquarters of the 3rd army. Documents of the headquarters of the 13th army. Documents of the headquarters of the 21st army. Documents of the headquarters of the 50th army. Documents of the operational group of the Bryansk Front under the command of Major General Yermakov. List of officials. Soviet operational art during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Soviet tactics during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. ))

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, 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 hard work of employees of military archives, 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 for and want to find.

Losses in the Great Patriotic War

It is not known 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 and politicians, archive workers were able to start official work. Until that time, there were scattered data that were profitable at that time.

• After the celebration of Victory Day in 1945, JV Stalin declared that we had buried 7 million Soviet citizens. He spoke, in his opinion, about everyone, and about those who lay down during the battle, and about those who were taken prisoner by the German invaders. But he missed a lot, did not say about the rear staff, who stood from morning till night at the bench, falling dead from exhaustion. I forgot about the condemned saboteurs, traitors to the motherland, ordinary people who died in small villages and the blockade of Leningrad; the missing. Unfortunately, they can be listed for a long time.
• Later L.I. Brezhnev provided other information, he reported 20 million dead.

Today, thanks to the deciphering of secret documents, search work, the figures are becoming real. Thus, you can see the following picture:

• Combat losses received directly at the front during the battles are about 8,860,400 people.
• Non-combat losses (from diseases, wounds, accidents) - 6,885,100 people.

However, these figures do not yet correspond to the full reality. War, and even such, is not only the destruction of the enemy at the cost of one's own life. These are broken families - unborn children. These are huge losses of the male population, thanks to which the balance necessary for good demographics will not be restored soon.

These are diseases, famine in the post-war years and death from it. This is the rebuilding of 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 a terrible human vanity, the name of which is war.

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

There is no better memory for the stars of victory than the desire of future generations to know. The desire to keep information for others to avoid such repetition. How to find a WWII participant by last name, where to find possible data about grandfathers and great-grandfathers, fathers - participants in the battles, knowing their last name? Especially for this, there are now electronic storages, access to which everyone has.

1. obd-memorial.ru - this contains official data containing reports of losses, funerals, trophy cards, as well as information about the rank, status (died, was killed or disappeared, where), scanned documents.
2. moypolk.ru is a unique resource containing information about home front workers. The very ones without which we would not have heard the important word “Victory”. Thanks to this site, many have already been able to find or help find the lost.

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 let the administrators of these sites know about it. Thus, we will do a great common thing - we will preserve the memory and history.

Archive of the Ministry of Defense: search by the names of the participants in the Great Patriotic War

Another one - the main, central, largest project - https://archive.mil.ru/. The documents preserved there are mostly single and remained intact due to the fact that they were taken to the Orenburg region.

Over the years of work, the Central Asian staff has created an excellent reference apparatus showing the content of archival accumulations and funds. Now its goal is to provide people with access to possible documents by means of electronic computers. 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.
• Enter his full name.
• The program will give you the available information: date of birth, awards, scanned documents. Everything that is in the file cabinets for this person.
• You can set the filter on the right by selecting only the sources you need. But it's better to choose all.
• On this site, it is possible to see on the map the military operations, 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 accessible sources: file cabinets, electronic memory books, documents of medical battalions and directories of command personnel. In truth, as long as such programs exist and the people who provide them, the memory of the people will be eternal.

If you did not find the right person there, do not despair, there are other sources, maybe they are not so large-scale, but their information content does not become less. Who knows in which folder the information you need could be lying around.

Participants of the Great Patriotic War: search by name, archive and awards

Where else can you look? There are more specific repositories, for example:

1. dokst.ru. As we said, the victims of this terrible war were those who were captured. Their fate can be displayed on foreign sites like this one. Here in the database there is everything about Russian prisoners of war and the burial places of Soviet citizens. You only need to know the last name, you can see the lists of captured people. The documentation research center is located in the city of Dresden, it was he who organized this site to help people from all over the world. You can not only search the site, but send a request through it.
2. Rosarkhiv archives.ru is an agency that is an executive body that keeps records of all state documents. Here you can apply with a request either via the Internet or by phone. A sample of an 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 section "archive activities". With this in mind, be sure to ask if you will need to pay for your request.
3. rgavmf.ru - a reference book of the navy about the fate and great deeds of our sailors. In the "orders and applications" section there is an e-mail 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, feats, an open portal dedicated to this www.podvignaroda.ru has been organized. Information is published here about 6 million cases of awarding, as well as 500,000 undelivered medals, orders that did not reach 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 accounting files, will complement your knowledge.

Who else can I contact for information about awards?

• On the website of the Central Asian Ministry of Defense in the section "Awards are looking for their heroes" a list of awarded fighters who did not receive them was published. Additional names can be obtained by phone.
• rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm - Encyclopedia of the Red Army. It contains some lists on the assignment of higher officer ranks, special titles. The information may not be as extensive, but the existing sources should not be neglected.
• https://www.warheroes.ru/ - a project created to popularize the exploits of the defenders of the Fatherland.

A lot of useful information, which is sometimes not available anywhere else, can be found on the forums of the above sites. Here people share precious 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, they can also only be found on the forums. Do not bypass this type of search.

WWII veterans: search by last name

1. oldgazette.ru - an interesting project created by ideological people. A person who wants to find information enters data, they can be anything: full name, name of the awards and date of receipt, a line from the document, a description of the 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. Suddenly, it is here that you are lucky, you will find at least a thread.
2. Sometimes we seek 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 search for them, use the site pobediteli.ru. Here, people who seek send letters asking for help in finding their fellow soldiers, random war counters. The capabilities of the project allow you to select a person by name and region, even if he lives abroad. Seeing it in these lists or similar, you need to contact the administration and discuss this issue. Kind, attentive employees will definitely help and do everything they can. The project does not interact with government organizations and cannot provide personal information: phone number, address. But publishing your appeal about the search is quite possible. Already more than 1000 people have been able to find each other in this way.
3. 1941-1945.at Veterans do not abandon their own. Here on the forum you can chat, 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 we experienced and suffered. About how they met victory, that one - the very first, most expensive, sad and happy at the same time.

Additional sources

Regional archives were created throughout the country. Not so large, holding, often 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 dead. As well as:

• https://www.1942.ru/ - "Seeker".
• https://iremember.ru/ - memories, letters, archives.
• https://www.biograph-soldat.ru/ - international biographical center.

Many people whose relatives were participants in the Great Patriotic War still do not know about the fate of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. To perpetuate the memory of all participants in the war and provide information about the place of their burial to relatives and friends, the Memorial website was launched in 2007.

This site was developed under the direction of the Ministry of Defense. Over the 10 years of the existence of the Memorial archive, there are about 17 million digital copies of documents on irretrievable losses, as well as about 20 million nominal records on the losses of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. The primary burial sites of more than 5 million soldiers and officers have been made public.

If you need to find your relatives, then use the site www.obd-memorial.ru, which contains an archive of participants in the Great Patriotic War (WWII). Using the archive of the Ministry of Defense, you can search by the names of the participants in the Great Patriotic War.

By going to the Memorial website, you can start searching for a participant in the Great Patriotic War. To do this, on the main page of the site, use the "Set fate" tab. To start a search by last name, you need to enter the following information in the empty fields: last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, title. If you cannot complete one of the fields, then you can leave the field blank.

Set fates After filling in the fields and performing a search, the computer will give you the search results.

If nothing was found according to your request, then you can use the advanced search. During an advanced search, it is possible to set the following search parameters: full name, last name in Latin, date of birth, place of birth, date and place of conscription, last place of service, military rank, camp number, date of departure, country of burial, region of burial, place of burial, place of departure, hospital where he was reburied, place of captivity, date of death. It also provides the ability to specify lists in which to search first.

Advanced Search

If you still can't find anyone, don't despair. The archive of the Ministry of Defense of the participants of the Great Patriotic War is annually updated with new entries. Therefore, it is possible that in a year or two you will be able to establish the fate of your relative, who was a participant in the Great Patriotic War.

Archive of WWII participants

The data on the array of classified documents in our archives is certainly amazing. This is generally something unimaginable. It would seem - well, 70 years have already passed! All the participants are already, read, dead, the country is different, the system is different - what is there to keep secret at all ?? In my simple opinion, secrecy and chipboard should be removed from EVERYTHING, from any archival documents related to the war. For there is absolutely no reasonable reason to hide anything here.

Ah no shit. On the contrary: many LAYERS of documents that were "foolishly" declassified in the 90s, in the "zero" have already managed to classify back. What kind of country do we have? What is all this for? Is it really so that "the people are not upset" by the actual numbers of losses and pictures of how our unfortunate strategists actually fought?

Here, I found an excellent consolidated source on lawlessness with "secrecy". Excellent historian - Ivlev! You have to remember the last name.

Picked quotes:

"To the underwater part of the "historical" iceberg, which has been actively protected all these years, researchers are cut off at the distant approaches, primarily by maintaining secrecy stamps for stored documents. Moreover, the researcher does not even have the right to get acquainted with the names of the cases in the inventories of secret storage, because does not have the opportunity to obtain the inventories themselves for study, because they are also secret. That is why, since the publication of the collection "1941" in 1998, practically no new authentic documents have been published in this plane. at some "dead" point, not yet able to overcome the barriers of secrecy on the events of 70 years ago. Apparently, the researchers have already approached the barrier, beyond which, if it is overcome, completely uncomfortable and, probably, even shameful and shameful pages of the real history of the country, including military history, and therefore the functionaries of the official Interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets again did not give the green light to the declassification of millions of authentic documents.

Until now, the following publications have the status "For official use", and, accordingly, are not intended for familiarization of "non-official" citizens of Russia:

- "Collection of orders and directives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, the NPO of the USSR, the NKVMF of the USSR, the General Staff and the chiefs of the armed forces on the transformation of associations, formations, units and ships into guards and on the formation of guards units, formations and associations" in 3 volumes (M .: MO USSR, 1970);

- "Collection of orders of the RVSR, Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, NPO, Supreme High Command, Ministry of the Armed Forces, Minister of War and Minister of Defense of the USSR on the assignment of names to units, formations and institutions of the Armed Forces of the USSR" in 3 volumes (M .: Management of Affairs of the USSR Ministry of Defense, 1967);

- "Collection of orders of the RVSR, RVS SSR, NPO and Decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on awarding orders of the USSR to units, formations and institutions of the Armed Forces of the USSR" in 2 volumes (M .: Management of Affairs of the USSR Ministry of Defense, 1967);

Until now, there is no open access to a consolidated work on the operations of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War with the application of maps. In the USSR, this publication was published by the Military Publishing House in 4 volumes in 1958, it was called "Operations of the Soviet Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945." and until May 1993 it was secret. Who knows about it now, except for specialists?

The state has not yet bothered to independently prepare the final publications. Even in the 1st volume of the collection "Documents and materials for the 70th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War" (St. Petersburg: FGBU "Presidential Library named after B.N. Yeltsin", 2011), just published in St. Petersburg, almost nothing new, previously unreleased. At the same time, tons of other key and more important documents from undiscovered funds are not published.

"Accounting for the number of those called up and mobilized at that time of war is now based on the data of the saved draft books. But they are secondary, and the primary ones were the draft cards of recruits, registration cards of the military reserve and the Code of Criminal Procedure of the rank and file of the Red Army. Almost all of them were destroyed on a special basis, until now secret and not yet identified by researchers, the post-war Directive of the General Staff with their replacement with a surrogate - a call book. The document of the General Staff prescribing these actions has not yet been discovered, but there are scant indirect references to it in the surviving documents of many RVC. Which guiding pest became its initiator ?... And the reason for the destruction of documents is allegedly objective - the expiration of the storage period.But then why are the books of appeal, essentially secondary sources, assigned a storage period of 75 years, while the primary ones did not even have a dozen years?
http://www.soldat.ru/news/865.html

“... not a single historical source, even a priori respected, still gives a detailed decoding of the situation on June 22, 1941 with the resources of personnel, at least in such a primitive form:
a) this is our regular army at the beginning of the war - 5427.3 thousand people;
b) this is our resource for military reserve of all categories of accounting on June 22, 1941 - X;
c) this is the size of the spring (1941) draft of boys born in 1922. (1st half year) – Y;
d) and this is our recruiting resource for boys 1922 (2nd half of the year) - 1927. births for the entire period of the war - Z.
What these x's, y's and z's equal to is still an archival mystery that requires its own researcher.
In historical sources, there are either general words and no specifics, or, at best, general figures without detail. The above information on January 1, 1941 on the total resources of those liable for military service was published in the book "Strategic Sketch of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", published in the Military Publishing House in 1961 and which until May 29, 1964 had the heading "Sov. secret" , then until May 27, 1993 stamp "Secret". The circulation of the respected book is limited, each copy is numbered. And there are no other published sources yet. The summary information on this issue has just been classified again in the TsAMO of the Russian Federation.”
http://www.soldat.ru/news/865.html

“70 years have passed since the beginning of the war, but not a single official work of the military department has published, at least as briefly as above, information about the four waves of mobilization for the first summer of 1941. But there were two more waves in the fall of 1941. There were two more in early 1942. The account in each of them went to millions of people. Where are the specifics, because we still will not see anything but general phrases in the published. Until now, information has not been declassified about the availability by the beginning of the war of resources for military service of all the ages of 1890-1918 recruited since June 23, 1941, conscripts and recruits born 1919-1927, as well as information about the number of those booked in production and unbooking during the war years. These are the cornerstones of the entire historical analysis of the period of the war years, inaccessible to researchers. For all 70 years, we have been treated to stories without revealing real numbers. However, a drop wears away a stone!
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“A significant layer of information that has fallen out of the consideration of the military authorities is data on those who left to fight, but did not return, residents of a particular area. We are talking about consolidated lists of soldiers taken into account by the former village councils ... This information is preserved by fellow countrymen both in the available documentation of the former village councils and in the most detailed household books drawn up as of 1940 and located in the regional archives, by the way, for the most part - on secret storage!
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“There is another nuance in the practice of planned pre-war conscriptions and mobilization calls after the start of the war, which had a lot of negative consequences in terms of establishing the fate of soldiers. It can even be called not a nuance, but an abyss, where information about millions of soldiers has disappeared ... ... What was issued to a conscripted reserve called up for covert (before the start of the war) and open (after it started) mobilization, instead of a passport and a military ID upon arrival to a military unit? NOTHING, except for the ebonite capsule of the service medallion and the double blank for it, if they were at the disposal of the commissary.
Filling out the form with information about the fighter was to be carried out by platoon commanders, however, most often these duties were performed by the soldiers themselves with their inept, hard-to-read handwriting, to whom it was necessary and with what it was necessary - whether it was chemical, whether it was with an ordinary pencil or an ink pen. A good commander, in the absence of ebonite capsules and forms, forced his subordinates to fill in biographical data on any clean piece of paper at hand and use a cartridge case instead of a capsule. The shells from the pistol of the Nagant system, the Mosin rifle with a bullet inserted on the contrary, and even German shells were used in order to differ from the standard soldier’s cartridges and could be easily found by the funeral directors. For many commanders, all this was "on the drum" ...

The medallion, in fact, until the spring - summer of 1942, was the only item that made it possible to somehow identify a soldier both during his lifetime and after his death.
Thus, a soldier, while at the front, instead of a passport and a military ID (strict reporting forms with a photograph of the owner) did not receive any similar official document that could confirm his identity during military service. The medallion, filled in by the owner's hand, had neither a photo nor details of the military unit where he served, nor the seal of the headquarters of this unit and the name of the chief of staff, and, therefore, was not an official document. The authenticity of the data in the medallion has not been confirmed by anything. And if the fighter lost the medallion, then it was impossible to correctly establish the identity of both the living and the dead. Millions of our compatriots started the war and died without documents officially confirming their identity, in contrast to the enemy troops, where each soldier had personal metal tokens and soldier's books.

“Almost in every personnel and newly created fighting rifle division that was not marked above in the list and continued to exist, by 09/01/41, the original personnel were almost completely knocked out, and all formations were kept only due to the receipt of marching reinforcements and the “cleanup” of local resources on battle areas. Some of the fighting formations lost two full-time compositions.
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To illustrate the state of affairs in this area, we need to highlight the issue of the secrecy of documentary materials in the military archives of the Russian Federation and the nature of their use at the present time. Let's consider it on the example of the information of the Main Directorate for the formation and staffing of the troops of the NCO of the USSR (Glavupraform) and the Operational Directorate of the General Staff.
The key information in the analysis of the combat and numerical strength of troops is information on replenishment. Who knows, maybe that's why the reporting about it is scattered in thousands of disparate documents and has not been systematized so far? Or not given to open access to researchers. For example, in the Glavupraform fund No. 56, in the inventory No. 12236 open to all, among others, there are only 3 cases No. 43, 44, 100 for 1941 with reports from the fronts and armies about the arrived marching reinforcements, indicating the formations where battalions and companies are distributed . The information in them does not cover the whole of 1941. In addition to the declassified ones, this inventory contains cases left in secret storage, access to which is closed to researchers without permission to work with secret documents. It is possible that only those documents that have survived to date for 1941 are mentioned in this inventory.
But, perhaps, only those that the state has deigned to partially open to researchers by now. And that there are others - closed volumes of documents of the same fund No. 56, not mentioned in the inventory No. 12236. And this is a direct violation of the Order of the RF Ministry of Defense No. 181 of May 8, 2007 on the declassification of documents from the period of the Great Patriotic War. The following reference is made in its preamble: “In accordance with the Law of the Russian Federation of July 21, 1993 N 5485-1 “On State Secrets”…”. Those. in this case, not only the Order of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation was violated, but also Article 13 of the Law of the Russian Federation No. 5485-1 on the statute of limitations for secret storage of 30 years. For the Glavupraform Foundation has two more large arrays of documents that are still inaccessible to researchers:
a) according to inventory No. 21464 - secret documents of fund No. 56;
b) according to inventory No. 19056 - top secret documents of fund No. 56, which are in special storage (the so-called "OK").
And all of them have information about marching replenishment to the front, supplementing open information or even being exhaustive. The number of cases on these two inventories is still unknown, because the inventories themselves are not issued for research, being secret.
In this example, there are good reasons to believe that the funds of all the Main and Central Departments of NPOs and the GShKA have the same feature in the nature of document storage:
- conditionally unclassified (with the presence of secret) documents according to the inventories available to all;
- secret documents according to an inaccessible inventory;
- and top secret in special storage, also according to an inaccessible inventory.
An indirect confirmation can also be the fact that the volume of cases according to the unclassified inventory No. 11627 of fund No. 28 of the Operational Directorate of the General Staff for 1941-45 (2919 cases in total) is 2.2 times less than the number of cases according to the unclassified inventory No. 1221 of Fund No. 217 of the Operational Directorate of the Leningrad Front for the same period (6362 cases in total). Structures by the nature and volume of work are several orders of magnitude different! This means that documents of the Operational Directorate of the GShKA that are not mentioned in the open inventory No. 11627 must be available.
Leafing through this inventory, you catch yourself thinking about what is in it for 1941-45. only scattered cases are included, which cannot give a consolidated picture of the war. Fragmentary and secondary importance of documents - such is the impression from the analysis of the inventory. Even if you get acquainted with all its 2919 cases, you won’t get a detailed picture of the battles of the Red Army. There is no operational development of new operations on the scale of fronts and theaters of military operations with tens of thousands of sheets of text, graphs, maps. There are almost no operational directives to the fronts and armies. There are no analyzes of military operations based on the results of operations, especially unsuccessful operations. There are almost no reports and plans of subordinate troops. There is no consolidated information from the armies and fronts on the number and losses of personnel, there are no applications for replenishment of personnel and weapons. There is no data on the resources of personnel in reserve in the military districts, on the admission of those who have recovered from hospitals, on weapons and property, and much more is missing. For reference, this information must be in the documents of the departments of the Operational Directorate of the General Staff, without which it is impossible to plan high-quality operations. If the volume of cases of the Operational Directorate of the General Staff was limited only to these 2919 cases, then any researcher could draw an unambiguous conclusion - the Operational Directorate of the General Staff was only engaged in collecting and ascertaining some facts and was not at all engaged in systematization, data analysis and planning of military operations in all its diversity.
And such an impression can only be formed due to the fact that researchers may be content with less than 1/3 of the volume of key information from the Main and Central Directorates of NPOs and the General Staff, available at TsAMO RF and subject to declassification in accordance with Order of the RF Ministry of Defense No. 181 of 2007 and the RF Law "On State Secrets". And even this 1/3 of the volume is provided in incomplete access. This is how the Law of the Russian Federation is violated by its own civil servants.
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"Specialists of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU created the" History of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 ", the concept of which became dominant for decades and remains so until now. I emphasize that the concept was not created by military historians, but by party historians. There are no deviations from it Even today, General of the Army M. Gareev publicly proposed to introduce criminal liability on television on February 17, 2011 only for expressing doubts about its interpretations.The author of these lines personally saw this report.
The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU tightly controlled the creation of "History". It would be normal if only the truth was subject to publication, uncomfortable, difficult, but true. The people, who suffered such great losses, had the right to expect it.
It is no secret that until 1960, before the publication and distribution of the first volume of "History", memoirs of military leaders were not published in our country, even if by that time they had already been written by someone. And only after the beginning of the distribution of the six-volume edition, those memoirs of servicemen of all ranks - from the marshal to the soldier, which corresponded to the concept of the authors of the "History", i.e. official point of view of the then leadership of the country. The first evidence appeared in 1960.
What was told in thousands of post-war publications barely covered up the realities of the events and only supplemented the just laid out speculative "skeleton" of the concept of "History" with memoir "meat". The roll in the descriptions of the events of the first two years of the war was directed to the heroism of individual fighters and commanders, the description of the work of the party-political system, the power of the German military machine and the sophistication of its command. Analysis of internal causes, incl. inadequate actions of military leaders of all ranks, in the failures of armies and fronts were not allowed.
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“Some obstinate generals and even Marshals of the Soviet Union, who did not agree with the requirements of party historians to cover past events, went into conflict, and as a result did not receive any opportunity to print their memoirs. No deviations from the concept were allowed, memoirists were rigidly "led" by crowds of military consultants from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU and Glavlit censors (there was such a vigilantly controlling department of publishing houses in the USSR since 1922 - author's note), as well as specialists 6 1st Department of the Military Scientific Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. This department was called the "department of control over military memoirs." With justified objections, even eminent military leaders for many years could not publish anything from their pen until they agreed to make changes to fit the framework of the concept.
Many stubborn people never saw anything during their lifetime. Examples? Marshal of the Soviet Union S. Timoshenko, Colonel General M. Khozin, former People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. Molotov, former People's Commissar of Railways L. Kaganovich.
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“In addition, some facts in the published memoir material are deliberately clouded to prevent a general objective review. For example, upon careful analysis, it turns out that the events that took place at the very top of the military and political leadership of the USSR for almost a six-month period before June 22, 1941, in fact, are described in the memoirs of only four persons - N. Khrushchev, A. Mikoyan, G. Zhukov and N. Kuznetsova. All four persons are interested. There is no faith in them today, there are a lot of inconsistencies in what is written. It is no coincidence that the memoirs of G. Zhukov have been popularly called "Tales of Marshal Zhukov" for a long time and are no longer taken seriously. What is worth just one passage about the number of German tanks and aircraft at the beginning of the war (3712 and 4960, respectively) and the following phrase of the former Chief of the General Staff: "The quantitative superiority of the enemy troops was great - 5 - 6 or more times, especially in tanks, artillery, Aviation "(" Memoirs and Reflections ". M., APN, 1969, pp. 263, 411). How to treat these words, since we know now and the author knew then that we had 23,106 tanks by the beginning of the war? How to But this “truth”, despite removing the unreliable number of German tanks and aircraft from the text, continues to be published allegedly in the author's edition already in the 14th version! Maybe it's time to stop?
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Good examples that you can poke your nose at "state patriots" who like to say that "all archives are open."