Prompted by von Poop's query on another thread: Anyone know if Russian pilots always wear their medals in that rakish manner, or is there simply no dress code for Soviet awards? The Soviet State had a very extensive Order and Medal list, which followed a very well set down precedence. I am not going to repeat the the order of precedence but you can see it here. You will see the awards well illustrated in the links at bottom of the same page. Please bear in mind that quite a few of the gongs mentioned are postwar. The Soviet regime had several types of orders: political, military, other merit, and sometimes it is hard to distinguish when the award is simply military or whether it had a political motive as well. The Order of Lenin for instance could be awarded for political and/or military achievement. More: the HSU entailed the automatic award of the O.Lenin! Also high orders were awarded in what appears to be irrational and/or whimsical motives, the extreme case being the 5 Hero of sthe SU and Order of Victory L. Brezhnev awarded himself, this being completely wiped out by Pres. Yeltsin. As for actual pinning order, right now as usual I have my books packed away so I can't have access to proper sources. However looking at a number of photos I think I can put up some semblance of an order. Let's get the Right Breast done first. This one will normally carry from top to down the great military orders awarded to field officers, such as the O. Bagration, Suvorov, Alex. Nevsky and their marine equivalents. Also to be seen below these will be the O. Red Star, O. Great Patriotic War, and below the Guards emblem and other specialist badges. On the Left Breast we'll have from top to bottom 1 - Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union 2 - Order of Glory (in 3 classes) 3 - O. Lenin + O. Red Banner + O. Valour + Campaign medals 4 - Long service + Other Merits 5 - Foreign awards Below this a field for the foreign 'saucers'. Exception here will be that the large O. Victory will appear before the foreign stars, but in any case there were only 11 Soviets receiving this (Zhukov and Vasilevsky twice). This will remain open to discussion as I can't find any online source on this obscure subject and my books are out of reach, but that's the general drift. Using Sol's photo on the other thread: Right breast 2 x Ord. Suvorov 1st Class (rt. breast) 1 x Ord Bagration 1st Class (poss.2) (rt. breast) Left breast 3 x HSU + 3 x Ord. Lenin 2 x Ord. Red Banner 1 x long service medal 5 x campaign medals (def. here, lib.there) + 2 x Orders of Victory + stars of foreign orders.
This photo is a bad example as the tunic is the officer's parade jacket, where there is enough space for medals to be spread across the chest, even if the right/left order is respected. On conventional jackets awards may follow the same order but conforming to the lapel line, or the display may be more conventional. I haven't reached a conclusion yet
