The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is commemorating the 75^th anniversary of World War ll’s Allied victory by creating a new database called Memory Road which contains photos of WWll Soviet Army veterans. Currently, there are over 302,000 veterans documented with their personal photos.  Each page on veterans has a link to the Memory of the People database which includes the millions of awards given to Soviet Army service people.

Memory Road can be searched by first name, patronymic name (honoring the father usually the middle name such as Ivanovich) or last name.  Go to https://foto.pamyat-naroda.ru/

Yes, it is in Russian, but if you use Chrome as your browser it will translate it. You can also use Google Translate https://translate.google.com/ or another translation service such as DeepL https://www.deepl.com/translator or go to Steve Morse’s website for translating Russian to English https://stevemorse.org/russian/eng2rus.html

According to an article in Lost Russian Family blog:  https://lostrussianfamily.wordpress.com/2019/10/19/new-wwii-soviet-army-database-gives-faces-to-veterans/ the best way to use the database is:

Copy the name in the box on the top right that says  найти героя

Open each result link in a new window. If you don’t, the website requires you to restart the search.

Copy and paste all text into one of the translation services mentioned above.

There is also the opportunity to upload and add a photo. Directions are included at: https://foto.pamyat-naroda.ru/about

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee