- Title: Volunteers uncover stories of missing Soviet soldiers in WW2 battlefields
- Date: 6th May 2016
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) STUDENT, MARIA IVKINA, SAYING: "My father called me and said, Masha, you need to travel to Piter (St.Petersburg). I asked why, what happened. (He said) they had found my great grandfather who was missing in action. They have found him. It was such a miracle, such happiness. I thought for a couple of seconds and decided I had to go (to the burial)." ID PAPER OF STEPAN IVKIN (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) STUDENT, MARIA IVKINA, SAYING: "I think everyone who takes part in this march do so on their own emotional impulse. No one makes us do that, no one forces us to take part. We as relatives do it ourselves."
- Embargoed: 21st May 2016 10:09
- Keywords: Russia World War Two battlefields volunteers relatives
- Location: MOSCOW REGION AND MOSCOW AND ST.PETERSBURG AND LENINGRAD REGION AND UNKNOWN LOCATION, RUSSIA
- City: MOSCOW REGION AND MOSCOW AND ST.PETERSBURG AND LENINGRAD REGION AND UNKNOWN LOCATION, RUSSIA
- Country: Russia
- Topics: Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA0044GO5B95
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS STILL PHOTOGRAPHS
As Russia was preparing lavish celebrations to mark 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in May last year, a group of volunteer archaeologists wearing rubber boots and old military fatigues was shovelling heavy mud in a field in the country's north-western Leningrad region.
A swamp near the village of Babino - now turned into a large crater by the diggers - for decades hid the burnt wreckage of a Soviet fighter plane (LaGG-3) along with the remains of its pilot.
The aircraft's wooden chassis had long decayed but rusty metal parts of the engine recovered by the archaeologists revealed a serial number. It was a crucial key to finding out who was at the controls of the war plane when it crashed and caught fire in 1942, destroying any documents the pilot may have had.
After months of research the volunteers established the pilot's identity. The name of 21 year old Boris Nikitin, born in a village near Moscow, was on a list of two million names of Red Army soldiers missing in action.
But efforts to find Nikitin's descendants failed. His father was long dead, the pilot himself did not have children of his own, and a house where he had lived was long demolished to make room for a new Moscow district.
A few lines in the pilot's biography did not reveal if he had any siblings or other kin.
"As for now we have not found any relatives, so this is not a typical story," Yelena Tsunayeva, secretary general of Russia's Volunteer Diggers Movements says.
"As a rule after finding a family name, after reading it, we can establish identity quite quickly, sometimes while an expedition is still underway," Tsunayeva explains. And after identity is established internet and social networks help to find relatives in days, she adds.
But finding a name is the hardest part. Red Army soldiers did not have metal ID tags. Hand-written paper IDs were stored in plastic, wooden or metal cylinders worn around the neck. During the first years of the war hardly anyone received even those paper versions.
Volunteers says less than 10 per cent of recovered soldiers have documents on them, and few of those are legible.
"Mostly you find (the remains of a soldier) and he has no ID with him, nothing at all. So they receive honours as unknown soldiers, unfortunately," volunteer archaeologist Pavel says. He is a part of group of volunteers - mostly teenagers - who spend their holidays digging up battlefields in the Moscow region.
Around forty thousand Russians of all ages are members of volunteer archaeologist groups, which work daily to recover and identify Red Army soldiers. Many join as teenagers looking for the romance of camping in the woods. But the majority soon become interested in military history and gain experience as war archaeologists. Some volunteers believe taking part in the archaeological missions is their patriotic duty and a way to pay tribute to those who fought in the war.
Part of their task is to inform relatives of when their ancestor, killed in World War Two, is found and identified.
"People are very sympathetic and earnest. Some are even too emotional, they take it to heart. It is hard to imagine when you have already lived all your life knowing that your granddad had left and was never found. And suddenly they (the volunteer diggers) have found him seventy years later. And you can come to the burial," volunteer digger and expedition leader Anton Kuznetsov says.
For Maria Ivkina's family from the village of Aykino in Russia's northern Komi region to the west of the Ural mountains, the news of their grandfather Stepan Ivkin's remains being found came as a great surprise.
"My father called me and said, Masha (Maria), you need to travel to Piter (St.Petersburg). I asked why, what happened. (He said) they had found my great grandfather who was missing in action. They have found him. It was such a miracle, such happiness. I thought for a couple of seconds and decided I had to go (to the burial)," his great granddaughter Maria says. Stepan Ivkin had two children. His grandchildren were tracked down just a few hours after his remains were recovered and identified.
Great granddaughter Maria along with her aunt Valentina - Stepan Ivkin's granddaughter - travelled to see the place where the soldier's body was left in the woods in December 1941.
At that time the Red Army led a counter-offensive operation against 16th Army of the German Wehrmacht in an attempt to break the Siege of Leningrad (now St.Petersburg). The operation of the regional Volkov front helped stop the German advance in northern Russia.
A photograph on Maria's computer screen shows her and her aunt looking at the spot where Ivkin was killed not far from the Volkhov river bank. The family now knows that Stepan Ivkin was most likely killed as his battalion tried unsuccessfully to cut across the town of Volkhov. It is a significant addition to the one sentence his wife received back in 1942, which said he was missing in action.
To honour the memory of her great grandfather Maria plans to join a so-called "Immortal Regiment" march in St.Petersburg, where she now lives, on May 9 this year. She will walk through the city center with a portrait of Stepan Ivkin along with thousands of other people whose relatives fought during World War Two.
The portrait of the pilot Boris Nikitin will also be carried by the volunteers during the marches both in St.Petersburg and Moscow.
"The Immortal Regiment is a last opportunity for us now (to find his relatives). But we also want this young man to march on May 9 as a victor along the streets of the cities which he defended. Both in Moscow where he was born and studied, and in St.Petersburg, the city which he defended," Yelena Tsuneva says.
Last year hundreds of thousands people, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, joined the Immortal Regiment march through Red Square in one of the largest turnouts in the country's recent history.
An estimated 27 million Soviet citizens died during World War Two. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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