With the help of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, an electronic bank “Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945” was created. which is located at podvignaroda.mil.ru, where you can find information about the exploits and awards of your fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers by first and last name. The search takes place using military archival documents that have been digitized and entered into the site database.
How and where to look?
The “Feat of the People” website is the most complete and up-to-date database on participants in the Great Patriotic War - there is information about almost all soldiers. At the first stage of digitization from 2010 to 2015, 30 million records were made on the awarding of orders and medals “For Courage” and “For Military Merit”, as well as information on 22 million Orders of the Patriotic War I and II degrees for the 40th anniversary of the Victory, and also 200 thousand archival files with a total volume of 100 million sheets!
Such a huge amount of work was done for the main goal of the project:
The main goals of the project are to perpetuate the memory of all heroes of the Victory, regardless of rank, scale of feat, award status, military-patriotic education of youth using the example of the military exploits of their fathers, as well as creating a factual basis to counter attempts to falsify the history of the War.
There are 3 main search options:
- Search for people and their awards
- Search for decrees and awards orders
- Search data by place and time
To find a person, use the first search option, to do this, open the website http://podvignaroda.mil.ru/ and go to the “People and Awards” tab and enter the last name and first name of the person whose awards you want to find.
To search for decrees and data on the location of military operations, we recommend using another site - “Memory of the People”, which will be discussed below.
If you want to search by award number, you will not be able to do this, because... Award numbers are not indicated in the award documents.
If information about a person’s fate is not known, then the “Feat of the People” website will not suit you, because... it does not contain data on the dead or missing. Such information should be searched on the website www.obd-memorial.ru, trying different spellings of surnames and names because wartime documents may have contained errors in the name or date of birth.
Let us remind you that the initiator of this project is the Department for the Development of Information and Telecommunication Technologies of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and technical support is provided by the ELAR company. Thanks to them for this site!
The information is taken from two funds: the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (CA MO) and the Central Naval Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (CVMA).
Memory of the people
Later, a more modern website was opened https://pamyat-naroda.ru/ “Memory of the People” with documents of the Second World War, which has a more pleasant design and, most importantly, more information, maps and historical data.
With the help of the “Memory of the People” portal, it has become even easier to reconstruct the military path of your grandfather, find documents about injuries and awards.
The People's Memory project was implemented in accordance with the decision of the Russian Victory Organizing Committee of July 2013, supported by the instructions of the President and the Decree of the Russian Government in 2014. The project provides for the publication on the Internet of archival documents and documents about the losses and awards of soldiers and officers of the First World War, the development of the projects previously implemented by the Russian Ministry of Defense about the Second World War OBD Memorial and Feat of the People into one project - Memory of the People.
On the page https://pamyat-naroda.ru/ops/ you can familiarize yourself with the plans of 226 operations with detailed diagrams on the map. Each page about the operation contains the names of commanders and numbers of military units, as well as a description of the result of the operation.
Figure 1 - Modern map of combat operations during the Second World War.
On the page https://pamyat-naroda.ru/memorial/ you can find military graves in your city. Just enter the name of the city and click the “Find” button. In total, it contains information about 30,588 burials around the world, except the United States.
Figure 2 - Military graves indicating first and last names.
The page about the burial contains information about its condition (good, bad, excellent), type of burial, number of graves, number of known and unknown buried. Also available on the page is a list of those buried with names and dates of birth and death.
The People's Memory project is a large-scale electronic archive.
Where every visitor to the site can easily find all the necessary information about the role that certain relatives took in the Great Patriotic War.
Moreover, the user has the opportunity to track in which battles and engagements fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers took part, and what awards they received for valor and courage.
All events that occurred during the war, certified in writing, as well as sheets with lists of awardees, orders, and reports, are also placed in this file cabinet.
The totality of all this data allows you not only to obtain the necessary information, but also to save the necessary documents in your personal archive.
The search algorithm for the last name of a participant in the Great Patriotic War occurs in an accessible mode for any user.
The process of searching for WWII participants
In order to start searching by name, you need to go to the official website of the People's Memory project.
The main page of the portal will open in front of you, where the search bar occupies a central place.
The available data (last name, first name, patronymic, date of birth and other available data) can be entered in this line, or you can go to the “War Heroes” section and enter the data directly there.
In any case, after clicking on the “Find” button, the site system is programmed in such a way that automatically you will still be transferred to the “War Heroes” section, so
If the person you are looking for cannot be found based on the entered data, you must select the “Refine” function to the right of the search line.
And continue to enter additional data that you have to refine your search.
Of the possible data, you will be prompted to enter the following information:
- place of birth of a war participant;
- place of service;
- rank;
- date of discharge from the army;
- date of death, if the warrior is considered killed in battle;
- database entry number (ID).
It also happens that even additional information is not enough to find a fighter, and then you need to expand additional data entry lines and indicate all the facts known about the person.
You can also configure the Information Sources in which you want to search.
Very often, the personal data of WWII participants can be identical, and then the “Search Filter by Category” comes to the rescue, which will help narrow the search and remove inappropriate options.
Attention! Before you start searching for a participant in the Great Patriotic War, you need to find out all possible information about him, ask relatives or look up home archives and photo albums.
This will help when entering additional information and will speed up the result.
The above methods of setting up information search will help you not only find a person, but also the awards received by the fighter, a list of battles and battles in which he managed to take part or distinguish himself.
Ability to view and save documents
After completing the search, the “Memory of the People” portal allows its users not only to view the necessary information, but also to download it from the site for storage and transmission.
Thanks to this feature, you can save valuable information and manage it as you wish.
To download the document you need, to the right of the desired object you need to select one of the available actions:
1. View the original document.
3. Adding this information to your personal archive, which you can create directly on the “Memory of the People” website
Need to know! Due to the fact that access to the personal archive and all information stored on it may be limited during times of mass visits to the site (overload).
Additional information is available on the “Memory of the People” portal
After the desired WWII participant has been found on the “Memory of the People” resource, the user has the opportunity to find out all the available information about him.
To perform this action, you need to click on the link with the name of the fighter, after which we go to pages with additional information about him.
Reward Information
The list where the list of awarded awards was selected will reveal to us all possible information about medals and other incentives received by the fighter as a result of participation in the war: for what the award was received and when, the place where the feat was performed, the name of the one who awarded.
At the very end of the list you will see a scan of the document about the list of awards.
1. "Feat"— in the journals reflecting the course of military operations, all the information is revealed about how, where and when the feat was accomplished, after which the desired object was presented for a reward.
2. “Title page of the order”- information about which platoon the soldier served in, about the situation at the front during this period. Who made the award and for what exactly.
3. “Breastplate”- a certificate confirming that the search object was awarded for combat distinction, indicating the personal details of the fighter and a brief summary of the events.
In addition to the ability to view the original of such a document, the user can download the file to his device, with the ability to change the image parameters.
The Hero's Battle Path
In addition to viewing all the awards assigned to a fighter, the user of the People's Memory portal has a unique opportunity to trace the movement of the fighter along with his unit from front to front.
To do this, you need to go to the “Hero/Part Combat Path” menu.
This section opens a list of all combat units in which the desired object served and fought.
If you switch from one part to another, the user will see a map with visual indications of the fighter’s geographic movement and all the military actions in which his participation took place.
Each coordinate on the map is the designation of a specific battle, which is detailed in the table to the left of the map, indicating all dates and operations.
The scale of the map allows you to study in detail the terrain through which the combat unit was moving. The beginning of the journey will be considered a call for service in the local military registration and enlistment office, and its final point will be the end of the Great Patriotic War.
Patriotic War. Based on the symbols below the map, you can study the course of the war in detail.
Right down to the moments when the soldier was wounded and under what circumstances, what hospital he was in, where and when he was nominated for an award, and many other details of military operations.
If you are interested in a specific event or unit in which a soldier served, you can click on the coordinate you are interested in.
A pop-up window will appear in the upper right corner with all the information:
- name of the warhead;
- date of the event of interest;
- a list of documents testifying to the battle that took place.
After the portal has found all the documents related to the event, you can click on their number and go to the list.
The user has the opportunity to view all evidence in conditional order, or narrow the search using the filter settings.
Important! Each of the documents presented (be it a diagram or an order) was drawn up by participants in the hostilities and has survived to this day.
Each document belongs to a specific archive, information about which is also available on the website. All documents can be downloaded to your device or saved in a personal archive directly on the portal.
The “Memory of the People” project is not just an opportunity to find a participant in the Second World War, but also to trace all his movements during the war, participation in significant battles, and delve into the details of the events being studied.
Attention! All information on this site is presented for informational purposes only. The site does not collect or process personal data. Federal Law No. 152-FZ of July 27, 2006 “On Personal Data” is not violated.
| Name: | Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 |
| Web address: | podvignaroda.ru, podvig-naroda.ru, podvignaroda.mil.ru |
| Site type: | database |
| Date of foundation: | 04/09/2010 |
“Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”- an electronic bank of documents relating to the period of the Great Patriotic War.
The contents of the data bank consist of documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO), namely award files and documents on the operational management of combat operations. It is planned to enter data on 30 million awards from the period of military operations of the Great Patriotic War into the database; in total, access will be open to more than 200,000 archival files with a total volume of about 100 million sheets.
Story
The initiator of the project is the Department for the Development of Information and Telecommunication Technologies of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, telecommunications support is provided by OJSC Rostelecom. The creation of the database is being carried out by JSC NPO "Experience", the total cost of work on the project is 22 million rubles. The technical implementation of the project is carried out by the Electronic Archive Corporation.
On the official website of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the project is called unprecedented and has no analogues in the world.
The site was launched in April 2010. Completion of work on filling the data bank is planned for December 2012. It is publicly available on the Internet at: http://www.podvignaroda.mil.ru/. To use the site, you must install Adobe Flash. The mobile version of the site is also supported at: http://195.68.154.73/podvig.
Access restriction problem
After June 2010, the OBD was not replenished for six months. A new update took place on December 8, 2010: data on 71,053 awards was added to the “War Heroes” section, and it was also possible to subscribe to notifications about updates in the document bank by e-mail.
At the same time, a notice appeared on the main page of the site: “Restricted access information provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation, as part of the OBD “Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” not published." The OBD denied access to information on award sheets about the military registration and enlistment offices of soldiers, as well as the addresses of their relatives: this information on the award sheets was retouched and made inaccessible when viewed, as well as in the search form.
At the beginning of 2010, restrictions on access to previously posted information were already introduced on another resource of the Russian Ministry of Defense, OBD "Memorial", but then the public managed to get all the data back. In this case, the restriction on access to personal information (which, in the case of search teams, could significantly facilitate the identification of the remains of soldiers) also caused a negative reaction from the public. On December 12, 2010, participants in the Soldat.ru website forum sent a letter to the President of Russia, the Prime Minister of the Russian Government, and the Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia with a request to restore access to classified information. Two days later, information appeared that the President had read the letter and instructed the Russian Minister of Defense to look into the situation. At the beginning of January 2011, a representative of the Electronic Archive company reported that the Russian Ministry of Defense ordered that information about military registration and enlistment offices (but not addresses) and searches on them be returned to the site.
What is your family history? Surely you had a grandfather or even a great-grandfather who took an active part in the fighting to liberate and defend the territory of our country from the brutal invaders. Most returned from the battlefields with awards. Each order or medal has its own history, it is a small part of a huge Victory.
Until recently, most families lived in ignorance of the fate of their relatives at the front. But now, thanks to the generalized database Feat of the People, you will be able to find and complete that part of the family history that remained behind the screen of the war.
Section "People and Awards"The database is very popular and has already helped many people find the necessary information. All data from military archives is gradually transferred for digitization and entry into the system. All citizens have access to the Internet from any device. You just need to go to the portal and find the information you need.
On the resource Feat of the People, searching by surname is very popular among many users. After all, thanks to the publication of data, you can find information about your relatives and find out what awards they were awarded during their participation in the Great Patriotic War.
The “People and Awards” section of the site will help you find the awards of your grandfathers and great-grandfathers. As soon as you open this tab, a document bank search engine will appear on the screen. In the last name search bar, you can enter the participant’s personal information, including year of birth.
Search options It should be noted that data on awards of medals and orders “For Courage” and “For Military Merit” have been uploaded to the data bank Feat of the People. But the work of updating and replenishing information is carried out every year; this is a huge work that requires a lot of effort. Soon it will be possible to find participants who were awarded other medals.
You can also use the “Advanced Search” function to search. In this case, it is necessary to provide more reliable information. In addition to the hero’s personal data, you can enter his rank, place of conscription or service, and rank. The more data you can provide, the narrower the search circle will be, and the system will be able to quickly provide you with the most accurate result for your request.
However, it should be taken into account that in military documents mistakes were often made when indicating the last name, first name or patronymic. In many archival files, the year of birth of the recipient is not indicated. Also complicating the search is the fact that a huge number of defenders of our Motherland have similar surnames or are even complete bastards.
General search result by last name After you press the “Search” button, the system in a matter of seconds will provide you with all the information from the Feat of the People data bank that matches the specified data. You should look through all the available results and choose the one that suits you best.
The search result on the general page is displayed in the form of a list and contains information about the surname, name and patronymic of the recipient, and the year of birth is also indicated, if one was included in the file. This is followed by information about the military rank and the name of the award. Also, the source of the data is indicated in the form of icons: from award documents, from anniversary or regular military cards.
Information about the awardee To view information about any participant in full, you should click on the line with his data. A new page will open on the screen, which contains a complete description of all available information about the recipient, as well as a digitized award document and an award order.
On the left side of the page you will find all the information about the recipient’s service: rank, place of service. In the center are archival documents about the award. You should pay attention to the lines highlighted in blue. These are active links to military documents, by clicking on which you can open to view the Order or Decree on the award or the award sheet itself.
Award details Depending on the completeness of the information stored in the archives, the registration card of the wanted person may also be available to you.
A separate block presents a document in which the feat of the recipient is indicated. Thanks to modern technology, you can study the real military document of your ancestor. Be sure to introduce your children or grandchildren to heroic relatives. The feat of the people should not be forgotten. This is an important and socially significant page in the history not only of our country, but also in the life of every citizen.
After viewing the documents and award orders, you can print them directly from the portal page. To do this, click the button in the form of a printer.
Printing the award sheet Thanks to the ability to search by last name on the Feat of the People website, many have found their relatives. The example of these heroes should be the basis for educating a new generation. We cannot easily forget this terrible time. Considering that many are now trying to portray the course of the war in a completely different light.
