Medal bar circa 1946, obverse. Note that a bit of the Sevastapol medal's rim at 5 o'clock has flaked off.
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The reverse. Most medal bar backings from this period are brass like this one, with an inferior drawn steel pin. I have also seen steel with a textured "watering can" baked enamel sort of finish. Aluminum backings date from the late 1950s on. -
The covers of his 1945 edition Medals Booklet, the equivalent of the Orders Booklet for decorations that were not "Orders."Comment
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Inner pages showing space for photograph on left (with the usual "Valid Without Photograph" stamp) and the recipient's name, personal name, and patronymic on the right hand page. Often on these "VW/OP" Booklets, the recipient neglected to sign below, but not Our Lucky Party Comrade!Comment
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The award entry/entries page on left, and first of any Regulations pages (these decreased constantly over time as "privileges" like extra pay and travel allowances were dropped after the war) on the right.
This shows that Military Merit Medal (or, in this case, what we should probably call "War Merit Medal") # 1,932,698 was bestowed with privileges beginning in February 1945, while this book was issued on 27 August 1945.
Like all wartime Awards Booklets, the serial number does not bear a letter prefix, which helps identify later awards' natures. The serial number in the book was a purely records-keeping matter.Comment
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We may never know what Ivan Ivanovich Volinkin did to get his MMM-- also awarded to civilians who assisted the war effort-- but we DO know from the following two documents that he was a Member of the Communist Party, presumably some sort of official, and that he "assisted" the armed forces by taking up one of the evacuation boat seats that somehow managed-- under attacks that made a joke of Dunkirk and may be partially imagined from the opening river crossing scene from "Enemy At The Gates," which succeeded in saving tens of thousands of Soviet citizens from capture and death in the fall of the vast Russian/Soviet naval base of Sevastapol in the Crimea.
The siege of that fortress city lasted from 5 November 1941 until 4 July 1942, when the last suicide squad of defenders detonated a huge underground munitions depot, spewing Panzers into the sky.
With approximately 50,000 awarded, the Defense of Sevastapol Medal is the second scarcest Soviet "defense" medal of WW2.
This document was iisued to "Comrade" Volinkin Ivan Ivanovich on 16 June 1944, stamped and signed by the Deputy of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic--which was at that moment being invaded by returning Soviet forces.
The CASSR Republic Presidium is NOT lsited as an issuing authority by McDaniel's citation of the bestowal decrees, so this very early award may be a first in "print"!Comment
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His Defense of the Caucasus Medal certificate is, however, a typical civilian issue, made by the Krasnodar Soviet of Workers Deputies for services on their sector of the Caucasian front. This was issued to "Com."(rade) Volinkin, having moved on somewhere westwards, 27 May 1946.
This medal was awarded about 870,000 times.Comment
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