Guide to the Soviet Soldier's Photograph Album

Preliminary arrangement and description by Edward C. Fields
Department of Special Collections
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone: (805) 893-3062
Fax: (805) 893-5749
Email: special@library.ucsb.edu
URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/special-collections/
© 2008-2012
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Guide to the Soviet Soldier's Photograph Album

Collection number: Bernath Mss 154

Department of Special Collections

Davidson Library

University of California, Santa Barbara
Processed by:
Preliminary arrangement and description by Edward C. Fields
Date Completed:
June 10, 2005
Encoded by:
Jennifer Mundy
© 2008-2012 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Descriptive Summary

Title: Soviet Soldier's Photograph Album
Dates: ca. 1984-1986
Collection number: Bernath Mss 154
Collection Size: .2 linear feet (1 oversize box)
Repository: University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Dept. of Special Collections
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Physical location: Del Norte
Languages: Russian

Access Restrictions

None.

Use Restrictions

Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.

Preferred Citation

Soviet Soldier's Photograph Album. Bernath Mss 154. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Acquisition Information

Purchase, 2005.

Scope and Content of Collection

The album entitled Памятъ О Службе (Memory of Service) is a visual record of a young Soviet soldier during his time of service in the 1980s. The soldier, one V. I. Tabushvili, an Ossetian national born in 1965, was a member of the Komsomol (a Soviet organization for young people aged 14 to 28 that was primarily a political organ for spreading Communist teachings and preparing future members of the Communist Party) and joined the Soviet Army in May of 1984.
The album contains a record of his service in the 80th Command Regiment while apparently based in the city of Berdichev in central Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), southwest of Kiev. There are portraits of individual soldiers, photographs of various locales and groups of soldiers and the daily routines of barracks life. There are also within the album 12 original cartoon drawings (colored marker on paper, many with captions in Russian) illustrating aspects of Soviet army life as well as Tabushvili's personal take on other subjects. There are several documents: a proclamation from the Ministry of Defense (March 1984) which deals with the conscription of all 18 year old males and states that it must be read to all members of the military services, a certificate of achievement (October 1984), a newspaper clipping (dated March 1986) that contains the same official proclamation from the Ministry of Defense as listed above (pasted into the album), and a Komsomol certificate of recommendation (April 1986) signed by the Secretary of the Young Communist Party.
There is no container list for this collection.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Berdychiv (Ukraine)

Related Material

Soviet Photograph Album, ca. 1940s-1950s (Bernath Mss 324). Includes images of soldiers from WWII era.