It has been operating since 2007. For more than 8 years, it has registered more than 45 million visits. These figures show that despite the fact that more than 70 years have passed since the end of the war, many families are still looking for where their relatives died and were buried. And today the WBS "Memorial" (hereinafter simply the WBS) is the most complete electronic source containing information about the nominal losses of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. However, one must understand that the HBS is not a "Memory Book", but a bank of archival documents, which allows bank users to independently study and analyze many documents, from military to modern ones, stored in various archives. And to find information, despite the numerous mistakes made in wartime reports.

Alas, there is no complete information about all those killed and missing in the war here and never will be. But there is a constant replenishment, new documents are being processed, and the likelihood of finding a mention of a person increases with each update of the HBS.
The WBS uploaded documents from various archives: the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO), its branches, the Central Naval Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsVMA), the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA), the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and several of its regional branches , The Office of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for perpetuating the memory of those killed in the defense of the Fatherland (Office for the UPPZO), a number of regional and district military registration and enlistment offices. Documents from several regional archives and museums of Latvia were also uploaded, where they were transferred from the military registration and enlistment offices of the respective regions. It is difficult to overestimate the ability to see documents from various sources on one electronic resource.

What documents are collected in the data bank?

At first, registered reports of units about irrecoverable losses ... The military units were obliged to send these reports regularly to the Personal Losses Record Department (since 1942 - to the Central Bureau of Records of Losses at the Fronts) of the Red Army's Chief Executive Office. The reports had to be drawn up in a certain form containing identifying data on the military personnel, including the names and places of residence of relatives, as well as information about the reason for their departure and the place of burial in case of death. Many of them are composed like that. And in others - the information is incomplete, somewhere the initials are indicated instead of the name and patronymic, separate columns are not filled. And where the reports were not written on forms, free form is generally possible.

The second important type of documents is books of records of the dead and books of burials that were conducted in medical institutions. Unfortunately, the archives did not contain the books of all hospitals and medical battalions, and for some of those present there - not for the entire period of operation. But from time to time new documents come up here as well.
The third type of documents is funeral notices ... There are not so many of them in the databank yet. The fact is that the main part of the notifications was handed over to relatives or remained in the military registration and enlistment offices at the place of delivery (in this case, the military registration and enlistment office issued its own notification on the basis of the document received). The archive only includes those that the military enlistment offices returned to the Office for the registration of losses, since either the notification was sent again, or it could not be delivered to the addressee, or it turned out that the soldier was alive, and the notification was written out erroneously. Now work has begun on processing the funeral notices preserved in the military registration and enlistment offices, and uploading them to the WDS.

A separate array - exclusion orders from the lists of the personnel of the Red Army. Logically, such orders should have noted all the dead and missing officers, however, judging by the content of the WDS, this is not the case.
The WDS has and documents about Soviet prisoners of war ... Here, again, one cannot speak of completeness, and there is no single storage place for them. POW documents are scattered all over the world. There are many cards and lists in TsAMO, documents are in the RGVA, GARF and its regional branches, the archives of the FSB, archives and memorial complexes in the territories of the countries in which the Nazi camps were located, the National Archives of the United States. And how many documents about prisoners of war are contained in the regional archives of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus still needs to be clarified.

A special place is occupied by documents of the so-called backyard polls ... After the end of the war in 1946-1947. District military enlistment offices collected from residents of their territory questionnaires-requests for those who did not return from the war, whose fate was unknown, with information about the last contact. This data was sent to the General Directorate of Personnel Soviet army, where information about military service was checked, and a decision was made for each person. The decisions were sent back to the military registration and enlistment offices, and on the basis of them the military registration and enlistment offices issued notices. However, the dates of disappearance indicated in these decisions are at variance with reality. If a soldier lived not in the occupied territory, as a rule, he was recognized as missing 3 months after the last news, and if in the occupied territory - 3 months after the release of his place of residence. So it turned out that a person could have disappeared in 1941, and it was officially announced that he disappeared in 1944. In the documents of house-hold polls, there is most often no information about the real fate, in most cases even the part in which the soldier served is not indicated. It is good if there is a field mail number from letters: it is just part of it that can be identified, and this is already a serious clue for further searches.
From other documents of the war and the first post-war period, it can be noted lists of those buried in a specific place, lists of those released from captivity, those released from the encirclement (according to other documents, these people are mostly listed as missing).
But the information about the burial of a person in a specific place indicated in the loss report, medical document, funeral notice and other documents of the forties and even fifties does not mean that the person is still buried there. After the war, numerous reburials of remains took place in memorial cemeteries. Alas, names were often lost. In 1991, by order of the Ministry of Defense, both in the USSR and in the countries of the socialist camp, passports of Soviet military graves began to be drawn up. Each passport indicated the number of those buried, the number of known (lists were attached to them) and the number of unknowns. But after the collapse of the USSR, most of the former republics did not send their already prepared passports. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation received passports of burials from the Byelorussian SSR, partly from the Ukrainian SSR and one region of the Latvian SSR. Passports from Poland were not accompanied by paper burial lists. And the RSFSR did not receive passports for all burials. All these passports were kept in the Military Memorial Center of the RF Armed Forces (now the Office of the UCPZO) and were uploaded to the WDS. IN last years thanks to the representative offices of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for military memorial work, created in a number of countries, new passports of burials in these countries appeared (and appear to this day). In 2014, the re-passportization of burials on the territory of the Russian Federation was carried out, the results of which are consistently replenished with the HBS. But it should be borne in mind that in the lists of buried persons attached to passports, information about a person is minimal - name, title, year of birth (far from always), date of death. Or even initials instead of a name and patronymic. For common surnames and first names, without the presence of other documents, it is often impossible to determine who exactly is in question. You can reliably consider a person to be certain if there is a document about his death in these places or around the same date. It must be admitted that the lists of those buried are not always accurate, and some people are listed on their passports as buried in two (and sometimes in three!) Places at the same time.
A separate array is presented in the HBS documents of military transit points (Runway). These documents are not associated with losses, therefore, the search for them is carried out separately from the main array. But according to these documents, one can try to find traces of a person about whom it is not even known in what unit he served. Giving up information about where a person was sent from the runway can be the key to further search.
More than 1000 were uploaded to the OBD as an additional application printed "Books of Memory" created in the regions. These books collect information from various sources, and there are times when, except in the "Book of Memory", there is no mention of a person.

How to search for information in the HBS?

So, the main types of documents contained in the HBS are listed. Now is the time to consider the nuances associated with search. A lot of them. And the lack of information on request does not always mean that there is no data about a person in the HBS. But first, you need to figure out which version of the HBS is better to use and why you need to register on the site.
On the main page of the site in the upper right corner it says that the work is carried out in new version, and those wishing to use the old version can follow the link. The difference is primarily that the old (original) version uses flash technology, which is not supported in tablets and mobile phones. So those who want to work with these devices have no choice. But those who prefer to use desktop computers and laptops can choose. The main advantage of the old version is more convenient work with the image of the document page. The advantages of the new version are the issuance of the number of records as a result of the request (up to 10,000), the ability to indicate the primary burial place in the request in a separate field. And most importantly, all the innovations that will be introduced into the HBS software in the future will apply only to the new version. The ability to search by the place of the primary burial, indicated in a separate field, is such an innovation that has appeared quite recently. Based on this information, everyone can choose a convenient version for themselves for work.
As for the registration on the site, it is completely optional. Registration is not required to search for specific people and view the information found. Registration is required for those who want to search for cases by archival details or search for documents by their numbers and dates, as well as those who want to enter additional information for the record per person. We will talk about additional information a little later, but for now we will simply fix that until the need arose, you can not register.
Now directly about the search. The fields on the home page are for people with little computer experience. By entering their full name and year of birth, they can immediately see the result of the query. For those who are not afraid to work with a computer, it is better to immediately switch to the advanced search mode, where the user has many opportunities to carry out a targeted search.

The main rule when making requests: if you did not find the one you were looking for, this does not mean that the information is missing in the HBS. Maybe you just need to look differently. There are several reasons why the existing record is not found when entering absolutely accurate information. Firstly, some fields may be left blank in the document. For example, the year of birth is not specified. In this case, when specifying the year of birth in the request, the record will not be found. The same will happen if the request contains an exact date of birth, which is missing from most documents. Most often, if there is, it is only a year, without a month and a date. Secondly, the information in the document can be abbreviated. Most often this applies to names and patronymics. There can be both actual abbreviations, and not only from the beginning of the word (for example, the abbreviation "Alekvich" is possible, and just figure it out, Aleksandrovich or Alekseevich was meant), as well as the indication of initials or the absence of a patronymic. Thirdly, the documents contain numerous mistakes made by scribes who were often either illiterate or wrote by ear. Finally, there might have been mistakes made when filling out the fields by operators. Although multiple automatic and manual checks of the input information were carried out during processing, errors are inevitable when processing huge volumes in a short time. In addition, it is often simply impossible to understand the scribe's handwriting or the document has defects that do not allow filling in the field correctly. All these factors must be taken into account when forming requests.
The easiest option is to type all search words in a common string. But don't be surprised if you end up with extra entries in your query results. The fact is that words from the common string are searched for in all fields of the record, so if, for example, the common string contains the word Aleksandrov or Lvov, records of both people with that surname and natives of these cities summoned from them or buried in them. It is better to enter words with multiple meanings in a query not in a general string, but in specialized fields. The set of these fields depends on the type of information in which records are searched for. And only those fields are shown for possible filling that are relevant for at least one of the types marked for search. Indeed, in the documents about prisoners of war, for example, it is never indicated where the person was called from (the Nazis were not interested in this), in the lists of buried persons attached to the passports of burials, there is no information not only about the place of recruitment, but also about the place of birth, etc. ... By default, the search is carried out among all types of documents associated with images, except "Memory Books". This is due to the fact that records from the "Memory Books" are usually shown first, and with a large number of them in the search results, it can be difficult to get to records from archival documents. Therefore, if records from the "Memory Books" need to be included in the search results, this must be indicated explicitly before making the first query with their participation. If a query contains part of the words in the general line, and some in specialized fields, all query elements are taken into account, and the words typed in the general line are searched for in all fields of the record, and the words typed in the fields are searched only in these fields of the record. The query results include records that meet all the search criteria.
When entering query words in the fields, you can select a search criterion. There are four of them: by exact meaning, by beginning of a word, by exact phrase and full-text search. Different criteria give different results. For example, by entering the word "lieutenant" in the rank field, for the exact value we will receive as a result only lieutenants, for the value from the beginning of the field - lieutenants and lieutenants of various services, and for other variants of the criterion - all records that have the word "lieutenant" in this field , i.e. and ml. lieutenants, and Art. lieutenants and lieutenant generals. The choice of the criterion from the beginning of the field is indispensable in those cases when we want to get as a result of the search records not only with full names and patronymics, but also with abbreviations or initials. The criterion "by exact phrase" differs from full-text search in that it fixes a clear order of words, while in full-text search mode, only the presence of words in the field is important, and their order is arbitrary. It should be remembered that any separator is a period, comma, etc. - is perceived as a word boundary, i.e. the exact date, for example, 03/10/1942, is perceived as 3 words, therefore, the exact phrase criterion is always specified for the date by default. Indeed, in the full-text search mode, 10/03/1942 would also be included in the result. The modes of the exact phrase and from the beginning of the field can be artificially set in the general line. To indicate the exact phrase, the phrase must be enclosed in quotation marks, and to specify the beginning of a word in the text field, you must put an asterisk. A complex option is also possible. For example, if you specify "Antip * E * G *" in quotation marks in the search string, the result will include all people whose surname begins with Antip, their first name begins with E, and their patronymic begins with G, i.e. Antipov Evgeny Grigorievich, Antipkin Efim Grigorievich, Antipova Ekaterina Gerasimovna. etc. Hyphens in the request must be replaced with spaces.

Search options vary greatly depending on how common the information in the query is. If the surname is rare, it is often enough to indicate only it and look through the found records for the searched ones. If a rare name or patronymic, you can add to the surname and theirs. But at the same time, it is necessary to take into account the likelihood of their incorrect writing in documents and use possible variants of errors in requests. Practice shows that many users find the records they need, despite mistakes in surnames, first names, and patronymics. The ability to view the document itself, from which the information was transferred to the database, to clarify on it whether this is the person who is looking for (for example, according to information about relatives) is the undoubted value of the HBS. If the information entered into the query is encountered often, then the result of the query will be a large number of records, and then it is necessary either to view them in a row, or to enter additional requirements into the query. In the latter case, the number of records will decrease as a result, but at the same time the required records may drop out of the result if they do not contain information on additional requirements.

How to remember the found entry?

First of all, you need to remember the record number. It is highlighted in the upper left corner of the record form. This number never changes, and by entering it into the search bar, you can easily find the entry. It is only necessary that the search area includes the type of document to which the document belongs - the source of the record. Therefore, for searching by record number, it is better if the checkboxes are checked for all types of documents. Remembering the record number is also useful because practice shows that users often forget the query with which they found the record. And then they write letters to the developers of the site: “I used to find a record, but now I don’t. Why did you delete it? " And then it turns out that now he is using a query that is different from the one with which he found the record.

And secondly, you can put the entry in the "Favorites". But "Favorites" are fixed for a specific computer. You cannot see it from another computer.

What are the most frequent errors and discrepancies that need to be taken into account in the request if the records are not found?

First, there can be a mistake in any unstressed vowel. For example, the name Vladimir is found in documents in four spelling variants: in addition to the correct one, there are also Vlodimir, Vlodimer, Vladimier. Also, a single consonant is often found instead of a double: Gennady, Ipolitovich, etc. And it is impossible to make an automatic replacement when entering - after all, an illiterate clerk could also meet when drawing up documents. Probably, it would be worthwhile in such cases to enter two values \u200b\u200b- both from documents and common, but firstly, they did not guess right away, and secondly, in this case, the record would not be found by the exact value, which is often used in queries. There may be differences in the spelling of patronymics - Gennadievich and Gennadievich, Kuzmich and Kuzmich, Nikitovich and Nikitievich, etc. In addition, you need to consider possible mistakesrelated to handwritten text - it is often impossible to distinguish g and h, mo and lu, n and p, e and s, even a and o are difficult to distinguish. And remember about distortion when recording "by ear".

What if an error is found in the recording?

It is very important to distinguish between the cause of the error. If a mistake was made when transferring information from a document to a database, it does not matter, due to poor legibility of the text or for some other reason, you need to write to the support service - ELAR Corporation - through feedback on the website or directly at [email protected] , specifying the record number and the mistake made. If a mistake is made in the document itself, it is useless to write to ELAR: since the OBD is a bank of archival documents, the record reproduces exactly what is indicated in the document. Also, there is no need to send additional information to ELAR - the exact date of birth and other data not reflected in the published document. However, it is possible to independently enter a refinement to the record. Here we return to the "Additional Information" block, which we talked about when discussing the need to register on the site. On the screen displaying information about a person, there is a button that says “Add additional. information ", if there is no additional information for the record, or" Add. information ”, if available. A user registered on the site can enter into this section any correcting or clarifying text, images of documents, links to Internet resources. After viewing the entered information by the moderator, it becomes publicly available. Thus, the official part of the site related to archival documents is separated from the additional one filled by users. Well, if you need to officially correct the inaccuracies made in the document, for example, to correct the surname so that the person is recorded under the correct surname, you must contact the archive in which the document is stored, attaching supporting documents, and better - through the military registration and enlistment office. Then the archive, on the basis of the submitted documents, will create a new document on the changes, the document will go to the archives and subsequently will be sent to the HBS.

I hope the information presented here will help you find information about the people who died and disappeared in the Patriotic War in the WBS. I remind you that the HBS is constantly updated, the records are updated, so I advise those who are looking to look at the site about once a quarter. And if anyone knows about the presence in the archives of documents on the topic of the site that are not in the HBS, please report this with the indication of the archive details to the site support service [email protected] or me personally [email protected].

Victor Tumarkin

MOSCOW, May 10 - RIA Novosti, Nikolay Protopopov. Track the combat path, find out the numbers of military units and the exact place of burial - there are several search engines on the Web tied to data banks about the dead or missing in the Great Patriotic War. The largest - "Memorial", created at the initiative of the Russian Ministry of Defense in 2007, contains 17 million digital copies of documents on irrecoverable losses and 20 million personal records of losses of the Red Army. The burial places of five million soldiers and officers are also indicated there.

Millions of soldiers

"Memorial", "Heroic deed of the people" and "Memory of the people" work according to a similar scheme, differing only in search algorithms. If the first is more focused on data on the dead and missing, and the second - on decrees on awards, then the third combines both.

The site "Memory of the People" contains thousands of awards. Everyone can find out the combat path of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, as well as the burial places of the dead. More than 18 million numbered awards are posted on the portal. In addition, the circumstances of the battles for which the soldiers and officers received awards are given.

In total, more than 425 thousand archival documents of the fronts, armies and other formations of the Red Army have been declassified and made publicly available. In addition, more than 100 thousand military maps were scanned and systematized, from which the positions of all military units marked on them were subsequently entered into the database.

In order to obtain information about a veteran, it is enough to enter his last name, first name and patronymic in the corresponding lines on the main page of the site. The user will be presented with all namesakes in the base and having military awards. If the date of birth is known, this information will simplify the search. From the resulting list, you can select the person you want.

Work on bugs

However, it happens that the names or surnames on the lists of soldiers and officers do not coincide with the real ones. In the military confusion, a soldier could be mistakenly recorded under a different name, or several people under the same name. The notes were often made with ordinary pencil, and the information was subsequently distorted or lost, many archives were completely destroyed.

Candidate of Historical Sciences, Reserve Colonel Miroslav Morozov personally encountered such a problem when he tried to find his relative in the database. “According to the documents, he was Ananiy Mikhailovich, and in the lists of the military unit where he served at the time of his death, he was everywhere listed as Anatoly Mikhailovich,” Morozov told RIA Novosti. “In Memorial, we found only one document of a secondary plan by searching. so many manual documents are very difficult. "

© Photo: Ministry of Defense of the Russian FederationDocuments of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the battles for Crimea in the Great Patriotic War

Documents of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the battles for Crimea in the Great Patriotic War

The expert noted that mismatches in names and surnames in databases are quite common. "All the documentation at that time was handwritten, mistakes could be made when the data was loaded into the databases," says Morozov. "There were a lot of people, there were a lot of names, surnames, many tricky. In such cases, people can be helped, for example, by search forums. movements ".

If a relative is spelled with an error in the surname or first name, you should use the advanced search, where it is indicated additional Information... For example, the place and date of birth, the recruiting office that called for military service, the point of reorganization. To make corrections or additions to the archive data, you must contact the Russian Defense Ministry's department for perpetuating the memory of those killed in the defense of the Fatherland.

Combat path

Using the portal, you can also track which operations participated military unit, in which a relative served. This information is available in the "Combat Log" tab located on the main page. All that is required is to indicate the name of the operation in the search window (or select the one you need from the available list), the number of the military unit or the date of the battles.

OBD "Memorial" is a generalized electronic bank of information that contains information about Soviet soldiers who died, died and disappeared during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period. OBD "Memorial" was created by the Ministry of Defense Russian Federation, the technical part was implemented by the Electronic Archive Corporation.

To date, the data archive contains about 37 million records from documents (of which - 16.6 million digital copies of documents on irrecoverable losses during the Great Patriotic War from 47.8 thousand archival files of TsAMO RF, TsVMA, RGVA, State Archives of the Russian Federation, regional archives of Rosarkhiv, regional military registration and enlistment offices and 45.3 thousand passports of military graves) and more than 11 million records from the Book of Memory.

The main goal of the project is to enable millions of citizens to establish the fate or find information about their dead or missing relatives and friends, to determine the place of their burial. In the course of the creation of the Memorial WBS, funds 58 and 33 were processed ("Reports of combat units on irrecoverable losses" and a card index of Soviet prisoners of war) stored in the Central AMO of Russia, as well as documents from the "Passports of burials" fund stored in the VIC of the Russian Armed Forces.

The main array of processed documents is:

• reports of combat units about irrecoverable losses,
• other archival documents clarifying losses (funerals, documents of hospitals and medical sanitary battalions (medical battalions), trophy cards of Soviet prisoners of war, etc.),
• burial passports soviet soldiers and commanders (officers).

Each entry in the Memorial HBS contains the last name, first name, patronymic, date of birth, date of retirement and place of birth of a serviceman. Moreover, the resource contains scanned copies of all original documents containing information about persons. They often contain additional information, including the names and addresses of the relatives to whom the funeral was sent.

Since January 28, 2010, access to some information about personalities has been limited due to the entry into force of Federal Laws of June 27, 2006 No. 152-FZ "On Personal Data" (as amended, Articles 9 and 19), and also dated October 22, 2004 No. 125-FZ "On archival affairs in the Russian Federation" (as amended by article 25). As reported on the WDS website, information that may serve as a reason for belittling the dignity of the individual, honor and reputation of the soldiers (about people who went over to the side of the German troops, about those convicted by a military tribunal, etc.). replaced by general wording (“sent to the front line” and another reason for leaving, death), and access to viewing electronic copies of documents was limited, on which, in addition to the specifically wanted warrior, one can see information on other people with the above reasons for leaving.

In the database of the MO "Memorial" you can find information about the rank of the deceased in the Second World War, the unit in which he served, the date and cause of death (killed, died of wounds, missing) and the place of burial.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has created a Generalized computer databank containing information about the defenders of the Fatherland who died and went missing during the Great Patriotic War, as well as in the post-war period (WDS Memorial).

The main goal of the project is to enable millions of citizens to establish the fate or find information about their dead or missing relatives and friends, to determine the place of their burial.

The Military Memorial Center of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out work that was unique in scale, technology and deadlines, as a result of which an information and reference system of global importance was created.

The implementation of the technical part of the project - the creation and filling of the website of the WBS Memorial (www.obd-memorial.ru) was entrusted to a specialized organization - the Electronic Archives corporation.

The data for filling the Generalized Data Bank were taken from official archival documents stored in the Central Archives of the RF Ministry of Defense and in the Military Memorial Center of the RF Armed Forces. The main body of documents is reports of combat units about irrecoverable losses, other archival documents clarifying losses (funerals, documents of hospitals and medical battalions, trophy cards of Soviet prisoners of war, etc.), as well as passports of burials of Soviet soldiers and officers.

On the site you can find information about the rank of the deceased, the unit in which he served, the date and cause of death (killed, died of wounds, missing) and the place of burial. Moreover, the site contains scanned copies of all processed primary documents containing information about personalities. These documents make it possible to identify the fallen with great accuracy, since they often contain additional information, in particular the names and addresses of the relatives to whom the funeral was sent.

Within the framework of the project, scanned and made available on the Internet about 10 million sheets of archival documents and over 30 thousand passports of military graves ... For the first time, you will be able to familiarize yourself with real documents, independently conduct a search and research.

Today, no other country in the world has such a data bank. The implementation of such a project requires building a multi-stage chain for collecting, checking, digitizing paper arrays, amounting to millions of sheets, loading data into a powerful search engine, and providing global multi-user access to documents. At the same time, all people participating in its creation feel a special responsibility for the fact that every mistake made in the work can radically change the fate of this or that warrior. All this makes even more valuable the fact that it was in modern Russia that the combined actions of the state, public organizations and scientific and technical firms led to the creation of the Memorial WBO.

The WDS Memorial will be a monument to all the soldiers who died and disappeared while defending our Motherland and its interests, in practice realizing the slogan "Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten."

The work to replenish the data bank continues.