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 labor-intensive work. Don’t expect that all you have to do is 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 I.I. for his great-grandson Edik." Information about a person, if preserved, is scattered across 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 chance will reward you after just a few months of searching.

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

In total, the irretrievable 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 N 023 dated February 4, 1944, irretrievable losses include “those killed in battle, missing at the front, those who died from wounds on the battlefield and in medical institutions, those who died from diseases received at the front, or those who died at the front.” from other reasons and captured by the enemy." Of this number, 5,059 thousand people were missing. In turn, of those missing in action, most ended up in German captivity (and only less than a third of them lived to see liberation), many died on the battlefield, and many of those who ended up in occupied territory were subsequently re-drafted into the army. The distribution of irretrievable losses and missing persons by year of war (let me remind you that the second number is part of the first) is shown in the table:

In total, 9,168 thousand military personnel were killed or died from wounds in the Great Patriotic War, and the total direct human losses of the Soviet Union for all years of the Great Patriotic War are estimated at 26.6 million people. (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 USSR losses in the Great Patriotic War.)

1. First steps

1.1. Searching for a home

First of all, you need to know exactly your 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 must 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 divisions can be found on the Internet. (Directory of the administrative division of the USSR in 1939-1945 on the website SOLDAT.ru.)

It is usually not difficult to find out the time of conscription and the place of residence of the conscript. Based on his place of residence, one can determine which District Military Commissariat (RMC) he was called up to.

Ranks can be determined by insignia in surviving photographs. If the rank is unknown, then affiliation with the rank and file, command and political personnel can be very approximately determined by the education and pre-war biography of the serviceman.

If a medal or order that a serviceman was awarded during the war has been preserved, then by the award number you can determine the number of the military unit and even find out a description of the feat or military merits 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 very old, much has been forgotten. But when talking with them, some minor detail may emerge: the name of the area, the presence of letters from the front, words from a long-lost “funeral”... Write everything down and for each individual fact be sure to indicate the source: “story by S.I. Smirnova 10.05 .2008". It is necessary to write down the source because contradictory information may appear (the grandmother said one thing, but the certificate states something else), and you will have to choose a more plausible source. It should be taken into account that family legends sometimes convey some events with distortions (something was forgotten, something was confused, something was “improved” by the narrator...).

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

The main task at the first stage should be to find out the date of death and the number of the military unit in which the serviceman was a member for at least some time.

1.2. If letters from the front have been preserved

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

The first thing you need to determine is the number of the Field Postal Station (PPS or “field mail”). By the teaching staff number it is often possible to determine number military unit. (“Directory of field post stations of the Red Army in 1941-1945”, “Directory of military units - field posts of the Red Army in 1943-1945” on the website SOLDIAT.ru. ) It should be borne in mind that it is not always possible to determine a specific unit (regiment, battalion, company) within a military unit. ("Recommendations" on the website SOLDAT.ru. )

Before September 5, 1942, the address of a military unit usually consisted of the PPS number 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 addressee numbers 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 conventional number of the addressee. In this case, by the number of the teaching staff, only the number of the division or army can be determined, and the number of the regiment, battalion, company will remain unknown, because Each army had its own unit coding system.

In addition to the teaching staff number, the stamp (in the center) contains the date of registration of the letter on the teaching staff (in fact, the date the letter was sent) - it will also be useful in further searches. The text of the letter may contain information about the rank of the serviceman, about his military specialty, about awards, about belonging to a private, junior command (sergeant), command (officer) or political composition, 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 “Joint Data Bank “Memorial””. The data bank was created on the basis of documents stored in TsAMO: reports of irretrievable losses, registers of those who died in hospitals, alphabetical lists of burials, German personal cards for prisoners of war, post-war lists of those who did not return from the war, etc. Currently (2008) the site operates in test mode. The site allows you to search by last name, place of conscription, year of birth and some other keywords. It is possible to view scanographs of source documents that mention the found person.

When searching, you should also check for consonant surnames and first names, especially if the surname is difficult to perceive by ear - with repeated rewriting, the surname could be distorted. An error could also have been made by the operator when entering handwritten information into the computer.

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

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

2.2.2. Regardless of the search results on the OBD Memorial website and in databases, it is necessary to search in several search engines on the Internet, using known information about the relative as the search string. Even search system will tell you something interesting based on your request, you should repeat the search for various combinations of words, check synonyms and possible abbreviations of terms, titles, names.

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

2.2.4. You should not completely trust information received from the Internet - often no one is responsible for its accuracy, so always try to check the facts obtained from other sources. If you cannot check, then make a note or simply remember which of the information was 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 biographical facts coincide with the ones you need. There is no need to throw anything away, but be sure to indicate for each new fact the source from which you received it - maybe in a year you will have new information that will force you to re-evaluate the information you collected.

2.2.5. If you have a desire to ask your question at a military-historical forum right now, don’t rush. First, read the posts on this forum over the past weeks. It may turn out that similar questions have already been asked more than once, and regular forum visitors 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 friendly response, then try not to violate the norms of behavior accepted on the forum. Typically, when writing your first message to a forum, you should introduce yourself. And don't forget to include your address Email for those who want to respond to you by letter.

2.3. Books of Memory

2.3.1. In many regions of the country, Books of Memory have been published, which contain alphabetical lists of residents of the region who died or went missing during the Great Patriotic War. Books of Memory are multi-volume publications; they can be found in the regional library and in the military registration and enlistment offices of the region, but they are difficult to find outside the region. In some regions of the country, in addition to the regional Book of Memory, Books of Memory of individual districts have been published. Some Books are available in electronic versions on the Internet. Since 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 regions indicate military personnel who were born or drafted into the army in this region. Both Books of Memory should be checked: the one published at the place of birth and the one published at the place where the serviceman was recruited. (Links to electronic versions of the Books of Memory on the Internet on the website SOLDAT.ru.)

The Books of Memory of some regions on the territory of which hostilities took place contain information about military personnel who died and were buried in the region. If you know in which region a serviceman died, you need to check the Book of Memory of the corresponding region.

2.3.2. A large database of deceased military personnel is available in the museum on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow, and museum employees provide certificates both in person and by telephone, 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, created with public money, is now private property and virtually inaccessible. In addition, with the advent of the OBD Memorial website on the Internet, both databases can be considered outdated.

2.3.3. If you yourself are unable to gain access to the necessary Books of Memory, then you can ask to check the book of the desired area on an online forum with military-historical or genealogical topics. In addition, many cities have their own websites on the Internet, and most of these websites have their own regional forums. You can ask a question or make a request on such a forum, and most likely you will be given advice or a hint, and if the locality is small, then you may find out some question at the military registration and enlistment office or museum.

It should be borne in mind that there are also errors in the Books of Memory, 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 military personnel

3.1.1. This subsection provides brief information about the personal records of military personnel killed and missing during the Great Patriotic War. Knowledge of the basic features of record keeping is necessary for further work with archival documents.

3.1.2. It should be noted that during the war, the registration of dead military personnel was organized quite clearly (as far as possible under war conditions). At intervals of 10 days (sometimes less often), each military unit of the Active Army sent to the higher headquarters a named list of irretrievable losses - “Report on irretrievable losses...”. This report for each deceased serviceman indicated: last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, rank, position, date and place of death, place of burial, military registration and enlistment office, residential address and the names of parents or wife. Reports from different units were collected in the Troop Recruiting Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army (later - in the Central Bureau of Losses of the Red Army). Similar reports were submitted by hospitals about military personnel who died from wounds and illnesses.

After the war, these reports were transferred to TsAMO, and on their basis a card file of irretrievable losses was compiled. Information from the report of the military unit was transferred to the serviceman’s personal card; the card indicated the number of the military unit and the number under which this report was recorded.

3.1.3. Notification of the death of a serviceman was sent by the headquarters of the unit in which the deceased served, as a rule, to the military registration and enlistment office. A duplicate notice was issued at the military registration and enlistment office, which was sent to relatives, and on its basis a pension was subsequently issued. The original notices remained in storage at the military registration and enlistment office. The original notice had a round seal and a corner stamp with the name of the military unit or its conventional five-digit number. Some of the notices were sent by the headquarters of military units directly to relatives, bypassing the military registration and enlistment office, which was a violation of the established procedure. Some of the post-war issuance notices were issued by district military registration and enlistment offices on the proposal of the Central Bureau of Losses. All notices issued by military registration and enlistment offices bore the seal and details of the military registration and enlistment office, and the number of the military unit, as a rule, was not given.

The notification of the death of a serviceman indicated: the name of the unit, rank, position, date and place of death of the serviceman and place of burial. (Image of the notice of death of a serviceman 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, 1254th Infantry Regiment (sometimes indicating the division number);

b) in the period 1943-45. the conventional name of the military unit was indicated - for example, “military unit 57950”, which corresponded to the same 1254 sp. Five-digit numbers were assigned to NPO units, and four-digit numbers to NKVD units.

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

Most of the military personnel listed as missing died during the retreat, or during reconnaissance in force, or while surrounded, i.e. in cases where the battlefield remained with the enemy. It was difficult to witness their deaths for various reasons. The missing persons also included:

- military personnel who were captured,

- deserters,

- business travelers who did not arrive at their destination,

- scouts who did not return from a 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 the chain of command about specific types of losses.

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

3.1.6. In cases where no information about irretrievable losses was received from a military unit to a higher headquarters (for example, in the case of the death of a unit or its headquarters while surrounded, loss of documents), notification to relatives could not be sent, because lists of the unit's military personnel were among the lost staff documents.

3.1.7. After the end of the war, district military registration and enlistment offices carried out work to collect information about military personnel who did not return 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 for a 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 file of losses was replenished with cards compiled based on the results of a survey of relatives. Such cards could contain the entry “correspondence was interrupted in December 1942,” and the number of the military unit was usually missing. If the card drawn up on the basis of a report from the military registration and enlistment office indicates the number of the military unit, then it should be treated as probable, conjectural. 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. The directive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR recommended that district military commissars set a date for missing persons 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 have been added to the date of liberation of the territory.

Door-to-door survey sheets and questionnaires are also stored in TsAMO (department 9), and they may contain information that is not on the card. When filling out the card, not all the information given in the house-to-house survey sheet was usually entered into it. or questionnaire, since there was no way to verify the information recorded from the words of relatives. Therefore, if it is known that the family of a serviceman received letters from him from the front, but these letters were subsequently lost, then some information from these letters (teaching staff number, date of the letter) may appear in the house-to-house survey reports. When responding to a request about the fate of a serviceman, archive workers do not have the opportunity to find records of a door-to-door survey. You will have to look for them yourself, 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 appearance of the Memorial OBD website on the Internet, it became possible to conduct an independent search for source documents.

3.2. Brief information about archives

Most of the documents relating to the period of the Great Patriotic War are stored in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO). Below we will mainly describe the search for military personnel of the People's Commissariat of Defense (NKO) 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 website SOLDAT.ru.)

The file of dead and missing NGO servicemen during the Great Patriotic War is stored in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO). Similar loss files are available in:

a) Central Naval Archive in Gatchina - on the personnel of the fleet, coastal service and naval aviation,

b) Russian State Military Archive 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 Pushkino, Moscow Region - for border guards.

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

Some information can be obtained on the OBD Memorial website

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

If the military rank of a serviceman is unknown or there is reason to believe that he could have been awarded an officer rank, then in the application to TsAMO you should write “Please check the personal files and loss records of the 6th, 9th, 11th departments of TsAMO” (in departments 6, 9 , 11 files are kept respectively for political, private and non-commissioned officers).

It is recommended that at the same time, in the same letter, you send an application with a request to “Clarify awards” and indicate the last name, first name, patronymic, year and place of birth of the serviceman. TsAMO has a card index of all decorated servicemen of the Red Army, and it may turn out that the serviceman you are looking for was awarded a medal or order. (Image of the “Registration Card of the Awarded Person” and the request form on the website SOLDAT.ru.)

Due to insufficient funding for the archive, a response from it may take 6-12 months to arrive by mail, so if possible, it is better to visit the archive in person. (Address of TsAMO on the website SOLDAT.ru.) You can also fill out 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 a seal.

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

3.4. A response has been received from TsAMO. Response Analysis

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

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

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

3) A report about a missing serviceman, compiled on the basis of a survey of relatives, with incomplete, unverified or unreliable information.

4) A message about the absence of information about the serviceman in the casualty file.

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

If you are VERY lucky, and in the TsAMO’s card index of awardees there was a registration card for your relative, and an extract from it was sent to you in the archive’s response, then you should familiarize yourself with the award sheet in the same TsAMO, which contains short description feat or merit of the recipient. The description of work at TsAMO is given below, and you can skip the description of the search at the military registration and enlistment office.

If it was 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 recruitment

4.1. Brief information about the organization of work in the RVC to staff the Active Army

4.1.1. In order to correctly submit a request to the district military registration and enlistment office (RMC), you should familiarize yourself with the organization of the RMC’s work on staffing the Active Army (DA).

4.1.2. The RVC carried out the conscription and mobilization of citizens, as well as their distribution to places of service.

Citizens conscripted 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 near the place of conscription,

- to a military unit formed in this area.

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

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

4.1.4. Newly formed, reformed or understaffed military units were sent to the front and participated in hostilities under their numbers.

4.1.5. Reserve regiments and brigades received unprepared military contingents, carried out initial military training and sent military personnel 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 reserve military units. The permanent composition included military personnel who ensured the functioning of the military unit: regimental headquarters, management, battalion, company and platoon commanders, medical unit employees, a separate communications company, etc. The variable composition included military personnel enrolled in the reserve unit for military training. The period of stay in spare parts of variable composition ranged from several weeks to several months.

4.1.6. At the military registration and enlistment office, a “Conscription Card” was issued for each conscript (that is, those drafted for the first time and who had not previously served in the army). It contained information about the conscript, the results of a medical examination and information about parents. On its reverse side, the penultimate item contains the number of the draft team and the date the team was sent. (Image of the draft card on the SOLDIER website.ru.)

4.1.7. A person liable for military service in the reserve is a person who has completed active military service in the Red Army and the Red Navy, and is in the 1st or 2nd category reserve. Upon arrival at the RVK at the place of residence from service (or for other circumstances), a “Registration card of the person liable for military service” was created, in which there was no information about relatives, medical data was briefly given, the dates of issuance of the mobilization order and the place of registration, the conditional number of the conscription team were indicated. , to which the person liable for military service was assigned when mobilization was announced. Also, information about the issue of a military ID, place of work, position, and home address was entered into the registration card. The second copy of the registration card was located at the headquarters of the unit to which the citizen was assigned. (Image of a military service member’s registration card on the SOLDIER website.ru.)

Under the numbers of conscription teams, pre-existing personnel formations and their units were specially encrypted, which, upon mobilization, were supposed to expand to the number of wartime personnel due to the call-up of reserve personnel assigned to them. Accordingly, the RVC may retain lists of such conscription teams, and in different RVCs for the same personnel military unit the number of the conscription team was the same, because The personnel military unit to which specific conscripts were sent was the same.

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

- Alphabet books conscripted into the Soviet Army during the Great Patriotic War...,

- Alphabet books for registering the dead...,

- Name lists of privates and sergeants registered as dead and missing...

The above-mentioned “Alphabetical books of those drafted into the Soviet Army...” were compiled on the basis of Conscription Cards and Registration Cards of those liable for military service, but have a significantly smaller set of information compared to the original documents. In many military registration and enlistment offices, conscription cards and registration cards were destroyed after the expiration of the storage period. Some military registration and enlistment offices still keep these documents.

4.1.9. When sending a conscription team, a “Name list for the conscription team” was compiled at the military registration and enlistment office. In addition to the nominal list of military personnel, it contains the number of the military unit (conditional - “military unit N 1234”, or actual - “333 s.d.”) 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. Searching for information at 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 you can write only the name of the city on the envelope (without indicating the street and house), and in the “To” column write: “District military registration and enlistment office” - the letter will arrive. The application must indicate all known information about the serviceman. (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 persons, and it is not always known whether the wanted person served in the army before the war, in an application to the RVC it ​​is recommended to ask for copies of both documents: the Conscription Card and the Military Personnel Registration Card.

4.2.2. If the response received from RVC indicates the conditional number of the military unit, then you need to determine the actual number. ("Directory of the 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 website SOLDAT.ru.)

4.2.3. It should be recalled that the archives of 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. Searching for information about the personnel and direction of marching companies and battalions is very difficult, because in the process of moving to the front line, marching units could be redirected to transit points (PPs) located along the route, or re-equipped in reserve rifle regiments and brigades of armies and fronts. Marching companies that arrived at a combat unit were sometimes, due to circumstances, immediately brought into battle without being properly enrolled in the unit's staff.

4.3. Spare parts and military units of local formation

4.3.1. If it is not possible to find out at the military registration and enlistment office where the conscript was sent, then the search should be continued in the funds reserve and training units stationed at that time near the conscription settlement. Usually, previously unserved conscripts were sent to them for training. Further searches for information should be made in the documents of these parts at TsAMO. (Directory "Deployment of spare and training units" on the website SOLDIAT.ru.)

Starting from the first days of the Great Patriotic War, when most of the male population left their homes and joined the ranks of the Soviet Army, the only link that made it possible to receive at least some news from home was the postal service. Urgent mobilization often did not even provide the opportunity to say goodbye to relatives before being sent to the front. It would be good if someone managed to send home a postal card with their train number. Then loved ones could at least come and say goodbye at the station. But sometimes there was no such opportunity, families were instantly separated for many months and even years, forced to live and fight without knowing anything about their relatives. People went to the front, into the unknown, and their families waited for news about them, waited for the opportunity to find out if their loved ones were alive.

The government was well aware that in order to maintain the emotional spirit of the soldiers at the proper level, it was necessary to ensure the uninterrupted operation of the postal service. The bulk of the soldiers were driven not only by the desire to defend their homeland and liberate it from the hated occupiers, but also by the desire to protect the most dear people who remained somewhere far in the rear or on territory already captured by the enemy. The leadership of our country realized that one of the most important tasks at the most terrible, initial stage of the war was the fight against confusion and panic that gripped millions of Soviet citizens. And significant support and confidence for fighters, in addition to ideological propaganda, can be provided by an established connection with home. The Pravda newspaper in August 1941, in one of its editorials, wrote about how important the well-functioning work of the postal service was for the front, since “every letter or parcel received gives strength to the soldiers and inspires them to new exploits.”

According to eyewitnesses, a letter delivered from home on time was much more important for the soldiers of the Soviet Army than a field kitchen and other modest benefits of front-line life. And thousands of women across the country waited for hours for postmen in the hope that they would finally bring them news from their husbands, sons and brothers.

After the introduction of martial law in the country, the fact of poor organization of the communications service was revealed, which could not properly ensure the timely delivery of even the most important messages and letters to the locations of army units. Stalin called communications the “Achilles heel” of the Soviet Union, while noting the urgent need to raise it to a whole new level. Already in the first days of the war, he called the People's Commissar of Communications of the USSR I.T. Peresypkin for a report on the urgent measures developed to transfer state communications to martial law. And for this, a radical restructuring of all available means of communication, including mail, was necessary.

Peresypkin Ivan Terentyevich was born in 1904 in the village of Protasovo, Oryol province. His father was a poor peasant, in order to survive at the age of thirteen, Ivan began working in the mine. In 1919, he volunteered to join the growing Red Army and fought on the Southern Front against Denikin. After the end of the civil war, Peresypkin worked as a policeman, and in 1924 he graduated from the Ukrainian Military-Political School and was sent as a political fighter to the First Cavalry Division of Zaporozhye. In 1937, Ivan Terentyevich graduated from the Electrical Engineering Academy of the Red Army and received the post of military commissar of the Red Army Communications Research Institute. On May 10, 1939, he was appointed People's Commissar of Communications, in July 1941 - Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, and on February 21, 1944, he became Marshal of the Signal Corps. During the war years, signalmen under the leadership of Ivan Peresypkin solved many difficult problems with honor. Suffice it to say that more than three and a half thousand communications units for various purposes were organized, and the number of this type of troops increased fourfold, reaching almost one million people. Every tenth Soviet soldier was a signalman. Communication facilities operated in fourteen strategic defensive and thirty-seven strategic offensive operations, 250 front-line offensive and defensive operations. After the end of the war until 1957, Peresypkin commanded the signal troops, engaged in their combat training, developing and improving new means of communication, introducing them into units and formations. Ivan Terentyevich died on October 12, 1978 and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

The changes were primarily due to the fact that when delivering letters to the front, there was no specific postal address familiar to the postman, indicating the street and house. It was necessary to develop completely new principles of postal operation that would make it possible to quickly and accurately deliver correspondence to military units, the location of which was constantly changing. However, due to the importance of being able to quickly and remotely resolve issues related to command and control, priority in modernizing communications was given to telephony and radio.

The head of the communications department of the Red Army, Gapich, was removed from his post by Stalin, and all his responsibilities were assigned to Peresypkin, who now combined two positions at once: chief of army communications and deputy people's commissar of defense, while remaining commissar of communications. This decision was quite natural. Being an energetic and strong-willed person, the new thirty-nine-year-old communications chief was also a skillful and competent organizer. It was he who proposed, contrary to accepted norms, to draft civilian specialists into the active army, who were instructed to urgently improve the unsatisfactory work of the military postal service.

It is unknown how successfully the new personnel would have coped with the tasks assigned to them if not for His Majesty. Incident: during one of the military operations, the regulations for the field postal service of the German troops fell into the hands of the Soviet military. And since the Wehrmacht’s postal support was always at the proper level, the translation and study of such a valuable document made it possible within a few weeks to successfully use the enemy’s technology for the needs of the Soviet army. However, the use of a well-developed German model did not eliminate purely Soviet problems. In the very first weeks of the war, postal workers were faced with the banal problem of a shortage of envelopes. It was then that triangle letters appeared, folk letters, when a sheet of paper with a letter was simply folded several times, and the recipient’s address was written on the top side. These famous symbols of hope and a strong connection between the front and the rear were often mentioned by authors of works about the Great Patriotic War. The war did not take away people's desire to continue living and loving. They wrote in their letters about dreams and hopes that everything would get better and life would return to normal again.

A triangle letter was a rectangular sheet of paper, folded first from right to left and then from left to right. The remaining strip of paper was inserted inside. A stamp was not required, the letter was not sealed, since everyone knew that it would be read by censors. The destination and return addresses were written on the outside, and a blank space was also left for postal workers’ notes. Since notebooks were worth their weight in gold, the message was written in the smallest handwriting, filling all the available space. Even small children folded similar triangle letters, constructing a message to a folder from an ordinary piece of newspaper. If the addressee had already died by the time the letter was delivered, then a note about the death was made on the triangle, the destination address was crossed out and returned back. Often such a triangle replaced the “funeral”. In rare cases, when the addressee was listed as missing or was shot for cowardice, the letter was destroyed. If a soldier was transferred to another unit, ended up in an infirmary or hospital, then a new address was put in the place for notes. Some of these forwarded letters disappeared on for a long time, finding the addressee years after the war.

At the beginning of the war, the address on the letter that needed to be delivered to the front was written as D.K.A. – Active Red Army. Then the serial number of the PPS or field postal station, the regiment number and the soldier’s place of service were indicated. Over time, the use of such an address system showed that it was possible to reveal the location of active units and units. The post office captured by the enemy near the location of Soviet military groups provided him with all the information about the location of their deployment. This, of course, was unacceptable. According to the order of the People's Commissar of Defense, it was adopted new instructions on addressing postal correspondence for the Red Army during the war period. After the abbreviation D.K.A. and the PPS numbers began to indicate a special conventional code of a military unit, which was known only to those who read the order assigning the corresponding number to a specific military unit.

The private life of Soviet citizens was the subject of close state control even before the war, and wartime did not in any way affect the current state of affairs. Just the opposite. All mail was carefully checked, censorship was total, the number of censors doubled, and for each army there were at least ten political controllers. The private correspondence of relatives was no longer their personal matter. The inspectors were interested not only in the data contained in the letters about the deployment of units and their numbers, the names of commanders and the number of casualties, but also in the emotional mood of the soldiers in the active army. It is no coincidence that postal censorship during the war years was directly subordinated to SMERSH, the Main Directorate of Counterintelligence in the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. One of the “softest” types of postal censorship was the erasure of lines containing information that, in the opinion of inspectors, was unacceptable for transmission. Obscene language, criticism of army procedures, and any negative statements about the situation in the army were crossed out.

There is a well-known episode from the biography of the writer A.I. Solzhenitsyn, when in the winter of 1945, in a letter to Vitkevich, he outlined his negative attitude towards the ruling elite and allowed himself to criticize the existing order, for which he soon paid with his freedom.

The censors at the post office were mostly girls, and it often happened that photographs of attractive young fighters strangely disappeared from letters. Thus, abusing their official opportunities, the girls started postal romances with correspondents they liked. War was war, and youth took its toll. Dating by correspondence became commonplace; in newspapers one could find the addresses of those who would like to correspond with a soldier. With the exception of isolated cases, as a rule, the continuation of these virtual novels was postponed until the end of the war.

It is also interesting that during the war years letters to the front sometimes reached faster than in our days. This was explained by the fact that the People's Commissar of Communications achieved exceptional conditions for the delivery of army mail. No matter how densely the railway was congested, mail trains were allowed through first, and their stops were considered unacceptable. In addition, mail was transported using all available modes of transport, depending on the local conditions - in special mail cars, on ships, mail planes, cars and even on motorcycles. The use of postal transport for any other needs was strictly prohibited. Along with combat support for the army, military postal cargo was given priority.

In some areas, carrier pigeons were used to deliver mail, easily carrying secret messages across the front lines in places where an airplane could never fly undetected. German snipers even tried to shoot the unfortunate birds; groups of special hawks were released to destroy them, but most of the carrier pigeons still managed to successfully deliver information to their destination. To reduce the possibility of detection, Soviet scientists bred a special breed of carrier pigeons capable of flying at night.

The Soviet military sometimes managed to intercept postal cargo for the German army. A careful study of letters from enemy soldiers indicated that the bravura mood of the German army that reigned in the first year of the war after the cold winter of 1941-1942 was replaced by a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty. In their free time from hostilities, political commissars organized mass readings of German letters, which gave the Red Army soldiers additional strength and confidence in the success of their good cause.

In 1941, on the eve of a counteroffensive near Moscow, Soviet intelligence managed to shoot down and capture a German mail plane with hundreds of thousands of letters on board. After SMERSH employees processed the captured mail, the data was presented to Marshal Zhukov. The information received indicated that desperate defeatist sentiments reigned in the German army in this sector of the front. The Germans wrote home that the Russians had proven themselves to be excellent warriors, they were well armed, they were fighting with unprecedented fury, and the war would certainly be difficult and protracted. Based on this information, Zhukov issued an order for an immediate offensive.

In addition to delivering letters, the post office was entrusted with the mission of distributing propaganda leaflets, which were supposed to influence the psychological mood of German soldiers and undermine faith in the beliefs instilled in them by the command. A huge “ideological machine” was working on the content of the leaflets. An excellent example is the leaflet “The Salvation of Germany in the Immediate End of the War,” written by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council and at the same time a talented propagandist Mikhail Kalinin, who had an exceptional gift of persuasion. The Germans, for their part, also periodically dropped leaflets or filled cartridges with them and fired them in the direction of the Soviet trenches. Quite often these pieces of paper were printed on tissue paper good quality in the hope that some Russian soldier will certainly pick it up for rolling and, of course, read it.

I would like to quote some lines from the leaflet “The Salvation of Germany in the Immediate End of the War”: “...Take a sensible look and think at least a little - two million German soldiers died, not to mention the prisoners and wounded. And the victory is even further away than it was a year ago. Hitler does not feel sorry for ordinary German people, he will kill another two million, but victory will also be far away. This war has only one end - the almost complete destruction of the male population of Germany. Young women will never see young Germans, because they die in the snows of the USSR, in the sands of Africa. By voluntarily surrendering into captivity, you dissociate yourself from Hitler’s criminal gang and bring the end of the war closer. By surrendering, you save the vitally active population of Germany...” Thus, the essence of the slogan put forward by Soviet propaganda is not to go into captivity for the sake of saving life, but for the sake of saving your homeland.

The majority of postmen or forwarders, as they were then officially called, were men. This was no coincidence, since the total weight of the load that they had to carry, in addition to the usual uniform, consisted of many letters and newspapers and was almost equal to the weight of a machine gun. However, the weight of the postman's treasured bag was measured not by kilograms of letters, but by human emotions and tragedies that came with them.

The appearance of the postman in every home was simultaneously expected and feared, because the news could be not only good, but also tragic. Letters in the rear practically became messengers of fate, each of them contained the answer to the most important question - is the one they are waiting for and loving alive? This situation imposed a special responsibility on the bearer; each postman had to experience both joy and sorrow every day along with his addressees.

An interesting phenomenon that became widespread among Soviet soldiers was the “pismovniki”. Not all military personnel could competently and beautifully write a letter to their beloved girlfriend or mother. Then they turned for help to more prepared and educated comrades. In each part there were recognized and respected specialists from whom you could take a sample letter or ask them to dictate the text live.
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military post was already working like a well-oiled mechanism. Up to seventy million letters were delivered to the front every month. Postal sorting center employees worked around the clock to avoid interruptions and delays. However, they sometimes still happened if the military unit retreated or was surrounded. It also happened that letters perished along with mail trains or disappeared unknown in the bag of a postman killed during their delivery. But in most cases, every effort was made to ensure that each letter reached its addressee as quickly as possible, even if he was in a temporarily besieged territory.

Sometimes all imaginable and unimaginable methods were used to deliver mail. So letters came to Sevastopol by submarine, and to Leningrad they were first transported through Lake Ladoga, and after the blockade was broken in 1943, on a reclaimed narrow piece of land through a secret thirty-three-kilometer railway corridor that was built. Later, this route, by analogy with the Ladoga Road of Life, was called the Victory Road.

On February 6, 1943, all military units and their subunits were assigned new conventional numbers. Now mailing address front-line soldier consisted of only five digits: the number of the military unit and the field post office. As Soviet troops advanced westward, postal communications had to be restored in each recaptured area. Fortunately, during the war years the mechanism was worked out to perfection, and most importantly there were high-class communications specialists.

After the Red Army crossed the border of the USSR on December 1, 1944 and the war was already nearing its end, the State Defense Committee adopted a special resolution according to which all active-duty military personnel were allowed to send a parcel of a specified weight home once a month. In just four months of 1945, the post office was able to deliver ten million parcels to the rear of the country, the transportation of which required more than ten thousand two-axle mail cars. Basically, the soldiers sent home clothes, dishes and soap, and the officers could afford to send more valuable “souvenirs”. When whole mountains of unsent parcels began to accumulate at post offices, the government decided to introduce additional mail and luggage trains. Today it is difficult to imagine with what feelings the residents of the rear, exhausted by years of hardship, hurried to the post office to receive parcels with truly royal gifts, among which the most valuable were the dry rations of American soldiers, consisting of canned food, jam, powdered eggs and even instant coffee.

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Field mail has always played a key role among all other types that have ever existed on the territory of Russia. She either occupied a leading position or disappeared for quite a long time. But as soon as military conflicts broke out somewhere and active hostilities began, it immediately came to the fore again.

Field mail is usually understood as a special service that provides courier and postal communications for troops. It has this name in peacetime, but in wartime it becomes a military field.

Why doesn't such mail use the usual address writing system?

In order for postal delivery to be carried out without interruption, each has its own field mail number to which letters are sent. Until 1942, the numbering of mailboxes of military units was imperfect, and if the enemy intercepted mail near the location of troops, it could reveal not only the actual numbers of military units, but even their location. But after Order No. 0679 of the NKO SSR was signed on October 5, 1942, which set out detailed instructions upon forwarding mail to the Red Army, all the shortcomings were corrected. Since that time, if you do not know the number of the military unit, its name, and location, then searching by field mail number will not provide any accurate information. Such data is considered secret and is not subject to disclosure not only during military operations, but even in peacetime.

History of field mail

The founding date of the field post office is considered to be 1695. Its founder was the last Tsar of All Rus' and the first Russian Emperor Peter I. This happened during the famous Azov campaigns. Regular Russian field mail existed throughout the entire campaign (April 1695 - August 1696) in two directions of troop movements: along the Volga and along the Don. The post office worked quite quickly. Thus, letters sent from Moscow reached the desired addressee in the Azov region on approximately the 15th day.

The name “field mail” appeared only in May 1712, and was finally established thanks to the Military Regulations of Peter I only in 1716. At the beginning of the 18th century (during the Northern War), so-called “urgent” lines were laid to support communication between the capital and the front connections." “Mail to the regiments” was used temporarily, and it was initially served by dragoons, who were later replaced by ordinary coachmen.

The next heyday of field mail came in 1812, when it was used to ensure communication between various parts of the army. She also communicated with St. Petersburg, Moscow and the rear. When Napoleon began an active advance towards Moscow, many new postal routes were organized (almost every station had from 30 to 50 horses, which were supplied by the population). After Napoleonic troops were defeated and pushed back to the border, the field post followed and ended up almost in Paris.

The role of field mail in the Civil War

In Soviet times, field mail was given great importance, especially when the country was thundering. It was then that an order was signed (No. 233 of 02/29/1920), which stated that in no case should postal cars be detained on the railway. In order for them to be in constant motion, the commandants of absolutely all of them were obliged to attach them to any trains. At that moment, they were equal in importance to wagons with military cargo. In addition, this order indicated that mail delivery for the Red Army was not only of undeniable military importance, but also of moral and political importance.

Field mail and the Great Patriotic War

During the war, communication between military units, ships, various military educational institutions, enterprises, as well as with the population was carried out by military field mail. At this most tragic stage in the history of our country, not only soldiers, but also postal workers who delivered correspondence to active military units, risking their own lives, became heroes. They also had to take up arms and protect their valuable cargo, because if the correspondence fell into the hands of the enemy, our army could suffer huge losses.

It should be noted that the WWII field mail delivered about 70 million letters and 30 million newspapers to the Red Army per month. The largest volume of correspondence was between front-line soldiers and their loved ones who were in the rear.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Military Field Post Office was created (on the basis of the Main Communications Directorate of the Red Army). Also, special departments were created at the fronts and in all army headquarters, and postal field stations were created in units.

Features of sending mail to the front line

Letters continued to be delivered even during the siege of Leningrad and the siege of Sevastopol. The field post did not stop working, despite hunger, cold and constant shelling. Correspondence was brought on sleds, carts, and even simply carried in hands.

During the endless bombing of the capital, employees of military field postal institutions had to work in the harshest conditions. They sorted through and sorted the received correspondence not only in dugouts and huts, but even just on the ground or a clearing in the forest. Very often it was necessary to deliver letters to recipients, crawling under machine-gun fire, passing through minefields. The main goal was to deliver letters from relatives to soldiers in the trenches, and documents to commanders in dugouts. It was the news from home that gave the fighters the strength to continue defending their homeland.

Triangle letter - news from the front

Postal delivery was carried out both to the front and from the front line to the rear. When the postmen reached the desired military unit under the Katyusha volleys, they took letters in the shape of a triangle from there. These were news to relatives from the front, which said that their sons and husbands were still alive.

In the Soviet Union, letters from the front were sent completely free of charge. They were folded in the shape of a triangle on purpose (with this method there was absolutely no need to use envelopes, which were quite difficult to get at the front line).

Such letters were formed quite simply: they took a rectangular sheet (most often torn out of an ordinary notebook), folded it first from right to left, and then vice versa - from left to right. In this case, a small strip of paper remained, which was inserted into the resulting triangle. Of course, no one sealed the letters (every letter from the front went through a censorship procedure so that the enemy would not find out the plans of the Red Army), stamps were not used, and the address was simply written on top of the sheet.

The field mail of the former USSR used a special numbering system for various military units and locations. Where a regular address should be written, letters and numbers were indicated. The first were the letters of the military unit, which meant the military unit, then followed a five-digit number series - the code of a certain unit, at the end they wrote a letter (it denoted the internal unit). It should be noted that in the Soviet Union, delivery of postcards and letters to conscripts (both to them and back) was free of charge.

Current state of field mail in the Russian Federation

In our time, field mail has not lost its importance. It, as before, is key in ensuring communication between various military formations. Now each military unit has its own designation, which consists of five (four) numbers and a letter (for example, No. 54321-U or military unit No. 01736-S).

In order for the post office (field) of the Russian Federation to continue its work, the country's leadership constantly made the necessary decisions to support and improve it. Thus, in one of the orders of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Communications and Information (No. 104 of December 25, 1997) it was stated that ordinary letters and postcards (weighing up to 20 g), which are sent from military units and sent across the territory of the Russian Federation, must stand stamp triangular shape. This stamp confirms that the letter does not require postage. Well, if it weighs more, then shipping is carried out on a general basis (according to the tariff).

By the way, triangle letters have not yet become obsolete, because in places of military operations envelopes are still very difficult to get, so this method is still actively used.

Center employees search work MIPOD "Immortal Regiment" is often asked the question: "How to find information about a soldier by field mail number?"

It is this topic that we decided to dedicate today’s issue of “Search Tricks”.

So, first we should answer the question of what, exactly, field mail is.

In accordance with the definition contained in the Great Philatelic Dictionary, field mail is a special type of mail for servicing military personnel where there are no stationary postal institutions of the state post office, or in the active army in wartime (military field mail).

Each military unit during the Great Patriotic War had its own field mail number. Already at the very beginning of the war, the Military Field Post Office was created on the basis of the Main Communications Directorate of the Red Army. Special departments were created at the fronts and at all army headquarters, and postal field stations were created in units. The numbering system for mailboxes of military units was put into effect on June 22, 1941 and was in effect until the entry into force of the Order of the NPO of the USSR of September 5, 1942 No. 0679 “On the implementation of the “Instructions for addressing postal correspondence in the Red Army in wartime”, which corrected a number of existing shortcomings. Thus, under the previous numbering system, the enemy, when intercepting postal items, could calculate not only the actual numbers of military units, but also their locations.

From February 6, 1943, the existing 4-digit numbers of field postal stations began to be replaced by 5-digit conditional numbers.

It should be noted that during the war, field mail delivered about 70 million letters and 30 million newspapers to the Red Army per month. The largest volume of correspondence was between front-line soldiers and their loved ones who were in the rear.

Mail delivery was carried out in both directions: both from the rear to the front, and from the front line to the rear, while postage was carried out free of charge.

Since it was almost impossible to get envelopes on the front line, the soldiers folded pieces of paper in a special way - in the shape of a triangle. In many families, such front-line triangles are still carefully preserved.

Postal stamps on front triangles are a valuable source of information for search engines.

Thus, when searching for Karaev Amanberdy, who went missing on the territory of Ukraine, thanks to the field mail number, it was possible to confirm the presence of the fighter in the Lviv region, which contributed to the search for his grave.

If letters from the front have not been preserved in the family, electronic databases come to the rescue - OBD-Memorial and People's Memory: when searching for missing soldiers, relatives often entered into the questionnaire the data known to them about the field mail number.

In April 2017, the regiment received the following letter:

"Hello! Maybe you can help me find some information about my grandfather. I have this information - Alexander Nikolaevich Dolotov, born in 1912, Minskoye village, Kostroma region. Drafted by the Kostroma military registration and enlistment office in June 1941. He fought on the Leningrad Front with the rank of sergeant, specialty - signalman. He went missing in September 1941 somewhere near the city of Luga. Unfortunately, nothing more is known."

Based on the above initial data, the search was started.

You can obtain information about the ownership of field posts by military units in the directory posted on the website soldat.ru.

However, a situation often occurs when information about the field mail number is not available in this directory.

In this case, you can obtain the necessary data in the following ways:

Through an Internet search, including through, which contains a lot of valuable information;

TRAFFIC NEWS

Slide 1

Song "Field Mail".

Music: Yu. Levitin.

Words: N. Labkovsky.

Slide 2

Military field mail is a postal service established in the active army in the context of military operations.

Slide 3

Letters from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War are documents of enormous power. In the lines that smell of gunpowder - the breath of war, the roughness of harsh everyday life in the trenches, the tenderness of a soldier’s heart, faith in Victory...

This is a kind of artistic chronicle of the hard times of war, an appeal to the heroic past of our ancestors, a call for a merciless fight against the invaders.

White flocks of letters

They flew to Rus'.

They were read with excitement,

They knew them by heart.

These letters are still

They don’t lose, they don’t burn,

Like a big shrine

They take care of their sons.

Slide 4

At the very beginning of the war, the Military Field Post Office was formed in the Main Communications Directorate of the Red Army, and military field mail departments were created at the headquarters of the armies and fronts. Postal field stations were created directly in the units, which canceled correspondence with postmarks with the text “USSR Field Post No...”.

Slide 5

Letters and postcards addressed to the army and thrown into Mailbox rear city, they were first sent to the civilian liaison office, and from there to the rear military sorting center. Then, in a mail car, they went to a front-line military postal point, from there to an army military postal base, from there to a division, regiment, battalion, and finally reached the addressee.

Slide 6

In addition to triangle letters, secret cards, envelopes and postcards were also issued during the war. Most of them had the text “Death to the German occupiers”, “Military”, sometimes “Letter from the front”. The drawings on them were usually on the themes of military operations and heroic work in the rear.

The post office helped bring Victory closer.

The field post office wished life to everyone.

A small leaf folded into a triangle

We received news with terse lines.

The field mail kept in touch with the rear,

During the war, the post office helped soldiers.

From the front the triangle was patiently waiting,

Hands hastily opened letters,

And my eyes searched for the word “alive” line by line,

And they wanted a quick victory in the war.

There was so much joy, we found the word,

We waited again for news and lived with hope.

Slide 7

In 1941, up to 70 million letters and more than 30 million newspapers were delivered to the active army every month. Noting the enormous importance of mail for maintaining the spirit of soldiers at the front and workers in the rear, the main newspaper of the country at that time, Pravda, wrote on August 18, 1941:" It is important that a soldier’s letter to his family, letters and parcels to fighters coming from all over the country are not delayed due to the fault of signalmen. Each such letter, each such parcel in the name of fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, in the name of the entire Soviet people, pours new strength into the fighter, inspires him to new exploits"

Mail from the front was sent free of charge. Letters were folded in a simple triangle, which did not require envelopes, which were always in short supply at the front. A triangle envelope is usually a notebook sheet of paper, first folded from right to left, then from left to right. The remaining strip of paper (since the notebook is not square, but rectangular) was inserted, like a flap, inside the triangle. The letter, ready to be sent, was not sealed - it still had to be read by the censor; A postage stamp was not needed; the address was written on the outside of the sheet.

Soldier's letter

It seemed as if heat was breathing into my face,
When sitting deep in thought until late,
I stroked the lines that smelled of ash,
A letter pierced by fragments.

It was written with a wounded hand
On a friendly back.
I saw behind every line
The eyes of soldiers who died in the war.

We are instead of them. We have no right
Forget their faces or names...
Honor and glory to all who fell for the Fatherland!
May war be thrice damned!

A. Sidelnikov

Post office employees worked around the clock to avoid interruptions and delays. However, it also happened that letters perished along with mail trains or disappeared in the bag of a postman killed during their delivery.

Sometimes all imaginable and unimaginable methods were used to deliver mail. So letters came to Sevastopol by submarine, and to Leningrad they were transported through Lake Ladoga, and after the blockade was broken through a secret thirty-three-kilometer railway corridor that had been built. The field post did not stop working, despite hunger, cold and constant shelling. Correspondence was brought on sleds, carts, and even simply carried in hands. During the endless bombing of the capital, employees of military field postal institutions had to work in the harshest conditions. They sorted through and sorted the received correspondence not only in dugouts and huts, but even just on the ground or a clearing in the forest. Very often it was necessary to deliver letters to recipients, crawling under machine-gun fire, passing through minefields.

Children are invited to make their own triangle letter from a piece of paper in their school notebook.

Slide 8

In the very first weeks of the war, postal workers were faced with the banal problem of a shortage of envelopes. It was then that triangle letters appeared, folk letters, when a sheet of paper with a letter was simply folded several times, and the recipient’s address was written on the top side. These famous symbols of hope and a strong connection between the front and the rear were often mentioned by authors of works about the Great Patriotic War. The war did not take away people's desire to continue living and loving. They wrote in their letters about dreams and hopes that everything would get better and life would return to normal again.

“I wrote what I needed,

And when I see you, I’ll tell you.

And now the soldier's letter

I'll fold it into a triangle.

The first angle is the most important.

I'll bend this corner

So that with victory and glory

We ended the war.

I'll fold the edges of the second one.

Here comes the corner

To return me healthy

On the father's threshold.

Well, the third, well, the third

I’ll fold it in your honor as soon as possible,

To meet you as before

And call you mine.

So fly with warm greetings

To the treasured porch,

Triangular, without brand

Front letter."

B. Likharev.

Slide 9

The majority of postmen or forwarders, as they were then officially called, were men. This was no coincidence, since the total weight of the load that they had to carry, in addition to the usual uniform, consisted of many letters and newspapers and was almost equal to the weight of a machine gun. However, the weight of the postman's treasured bag was measured not by kilograms of letters, but by human emotions and tragedies that came with them.

Slide 10

The appearance of the postman in every home was simultaneously expected and feared, because the news could be not only good, but also tragic. Letters in the rear practically became messengers of fate, each of them contained the answer to the most important question - is the one they are waiting for and loving alive? This situation imposed a special responsibility on the bearer of news; each postman had to experience both joy and sorrow every day along with his addressees.

“I met Aunt Nastya in the field.

She walked with a mail bag,

And the cheerful wind carried:

"The war is over, the war."

The women threw the plow on the arable land,

Forgetting about bread and horse,

And it became yesterday

Doubly more free and joyful.

Aunt Nastya distributed here

Field mail envelopes,

And the women cried with happiness,

Converging on a meadow path.

And the kids, having greased their heels,

We rushed to the remaining corners,

And there, among relatives, soldiers

They shared the joy in half.

And Aunt Nastya

Long stitch

I didn’t go to the empty house,

And a funeral for my son

That day her heart burned.

The grass whispered at her feet,

Silence trembled in the field,

And the oak groves echoed loudly:

"The war is over, the war."

A. Mishin

Slide 11

By the end of 1941, the Soviet military post was already working like a well-oiled mechanism.

Slide 12

The field mail of the former USSR used a special numbering system for various military units and locations. Where a regular address should be written, letters and numbers were indicated. The first were the letters of the military unit, which meant the military unit, then followed a five-digit number series - the code of a certain unit, at the end they wrote a letter (it denoted the internal unit). For example: military unit No. 01736-S.

Slide 13

Photo documents.

Slide 14

Letter from the front: “Hello, dear dad and mom” (mp3)

Slide 15

But there were other letters. Photo document “Notice”

Slide 16

After the Red Army crossed the border of the USSR on December 1, 1944 and the war was already nearing its end, the State Defense Committee adopted a special resolution according to which all active-duty military personnel were allowed to send a parcel of a specified weight home once a month. In just four months of 1945, the post office was able to deliver ten million parcels to the rear of the country.

Slide 17

Slide 18

Video “Meeting of the Red Army” (09 28)

Slide 19

Minute of silence (metronome.mp3 )

Slide 20

Victory Day is a spring holiday,

The day of defeat of a cruel war,

The day of defeat of violence and evil,

Day of the resurrection of love and goodness.

Let's remember those who

I set a goal so that from now on this day

It became a symbol of all the efforts of people

Raising children in peace and happiness.

Musical background 15 8 (folder “WWII”)

Slide 21

greeting card. Musical background 15 8 (folder “WWII”)