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Putin To Bring Back Soviet-Era 'Hero Of Labor' Medals

April 30, 2013

by Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW -- First it was the Soviet national anthem. Then it was the Soviet military parades. Now it is the Soviet lapel pins glorifying heroic work for the motherland.

On May 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin will once again try to tap into Soviet nostalgia, this time by awarding Soviet era “Hero of Labor” stars to Russians in return for laudable deeds. It will be the first time the medals are bestowed since they were discontinued in 1991.

The Kremlin has not publically confirmed who the recipients will be, but local reports indicate that the favorites for honors are a decorated 80-year old pediatrician and an orphanage director in Tula who is the mother of 37 -- mainly adopted -- children.

The medals -- set up under Josef Stalin in 1927 -- will be handed out at a ceremony in Putin’s hometown Saint Petersburg to mark May 1, the Russian national holiday celebrating “Spring and Labor Day,” the successor to the Soviet “International Workers’ Day.”

Putin reinstated the award in March with a presidential decree, ostensibly aiming to “raise the public worth and prestige of selfless and honest work.”

The "Izvestia" daily was able to obtain the design of the lapel pins. Where the pin’s five-pointed star once displayed the hammer and sickle, the new version is adorned with a double-headed eagle and is embossed with “Hero of Labor of the Russian Federation” on the reverse side.

The medal is worn on the left lapel, above all other state awards, according to the Kremlin website. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told "Izvestia" that the medals would be awarded on May 1.

Putin ostensibly took the decision to return the Stalin-era order at the behest of Igor Kholmanskikh, the tank factory foreman who famously offered to help Putin stamp out opposition protests in late 2011 -- and was later appointed presidential envoy to the Urals on Putin's return to the Kremlin last year.

Blue collar workers like Kholmanskikh are a mainstay of Putin’s support.

But it is not the first time Putin has sought to fill the post-Soviet ideological vacuum by resurrecting Soviet-era symbols. In 2000, he reinstated the Soviet anthem score. Others have complained of the creeping rehabilitation of Stalin. In recent months, there has been a movement to permanently rename Volgograd by its old name Stalingrad.

The “Hero of Labor” order was renamed the “Hero of Socialist Labor” in 1938. The medals were distributed increasingly commonly as a way to encourage hard work. Twenty-thousand reportedly were awarded the medal in its latter incarnation.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-putin-soviet-era-medals/24972923.html

Copyright (c) 2013. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.