71. Day, February 15, 2022


Bag is ready painted...:







Cheers

72. Day, February 17, 2022


Today the self-made reporting bag will be assembled!

Since these bags were usually carried very low - for example where a western hero at Hollywood had his six-shooter hanging...










... for me that means first of all: lengthen the belts!

The straps themselves are the remains of a slaughtered blister pack (they have the right thickness!), the buckles come from the junk box and the brass ring is made from solder...:








Cheers

BTW: Kev, look at his shoulder belt: I've added some shadows...

73. Day, February 19, 2022


The added straps of the bag are now also painted!








Cheers

Backpack with newspapers...


Cheers

74. Day, February 20, 2022



Our friend will be carrying an early war Red Army backpack on his back - one like this:



Copies of newspapers will be sticking out of this backpack at the top, as Konstantin Simonov repeatedly describes in his war diary that he and his colleagues always took the latest hot-off-the-press newspapers from the editorial offices with them on trips from Moscow to the front.

These newspapers were of course handed out to simple "frontoviks", but delivered to the political deputies ("commissars") of the troops visited; in the Red Army it was common for these newspapers to be read (out) together during breaks in combat and at the same time to be used for ideological training.



So first the question: Which newspaper should I choose?

The best known was of course the party newspaper "Prawda" - and the most famous issue of "Prawda" was the following - everyone who lived through the summer of 1941 in the Soviet Union knows it!



Here is the story of this issue...:

When the Hitler Wehrmacht attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 without a declaration of war, Stalin had sent his intimate, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, ahead.

Molotov spoke briefly on the radio...



... addressed the "comrades" in the old-fashioned way and called on them to "crowd even more closely around the banner of the party of the working class".







The following quote from Stalin himself has been handed down from that day:

After Defense Minister Semyon Tymoshenko and Chief of Staff Georgy Zhukov explained the situation to him, he said, more muttering than exclaiming: "Lenin created our state and we shit on it."

The host himself was not heard from in public for days and spent the time at his dacha in Kunzewo near Moscow...:







Rumors soon circulated among the population that Stalin was sick, dead, arrested and more.

Then the bang:

On July 3, 1941, Stalin spoke on the radio!



And he struck a tone that people had not heard from him before:

"Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Fighters of our army and fleet! I turn to you, my friends!”

Stalin no longer speaks of the party, but consciously refers to the history of Russia by now speaking of the "Great Patriotic War", taking up a formula that Tsar Aleksandr I had coined in 1812 as Napoleon's Grande Armee invaded Russia.

Stalin went on to say: "This is a war of the entire Soviet people, a decision about freedom or slavery". The remedy is a mass enlistment of soldiers and a scorched earth war:

"Not a single locomotive, not a single wagon, not a kilogram of grain, not a liter of fuel must be surrendered to the enemy."

At the same time Stalin also admits that in the first border battles there were heavy losses, defeats and retreats of his own troops.

At the same time, the master of the house also issued a warning to his own population: anyone who obstructs the defense faces a court martial, including “whiners or cowards” as well as “panic mongers and deserters”.

Historians, regardless of ideological boundaries, agree that it was above all the tone and the facts of the speech that were not glossed over, which suddenly unleashed an enormous will to resist in the population.

The speech was simultaneously printed in full in Pravda...:



That, in short, is the story of the "Prawda" issue I chose.

It's also important to me that the newspaper had a different format back then - it was clearly smaller than it was in the 1970s, for example...:



So today I set about making a stack of mini editions of this July 3, 1941 issue of "Prawda" - and I printed them out on "environmental paper" because paper "whiteners" weren't invented until after the war...:




So much for today.


Cheers

Beautiful work, Martin, looks really good!

75. Day, February 21, 2022


It goes on - I'll start with the backpack...:



Here's a pair of these things - they were first issued in 1930 and actually contained the assault pack...:











Our friend will transport freshly printed newspapers in it.

I rolled my Minis "Prawdas" together into three rolls and glued them together with "Uhu", the whole thing deliberately uneven, as if they had been packed together in a great hurry.

Around these three rolls, I roughly model the basic body of the backpack from "Fimo" and bake the whole thing in the oven.

As I said, everything is still pretty rough, but here you can already see where the journey is going...:



Tomorrow I will model the actual backpack around this - now fixed - base body with "Milliput"...

I have already built the "rope" to close it, it consists of three "strands" of 0.5 mm solder, which I clamped into the "Proxxon" and twisted at low speed and with careful pulling...:




Cheers

76. Day, February 20, 2022


And further on...





Tomorrow the straps...


Cheers

77. Day, February 24, 2022


While everything around me is falling apart and my world is collapsing, I try to distract myself with my character.

Unfortunately, it only succeeds imperfectly!

Nevertheless:

First, I used the "Proxxon" to chamfer the side of the backpack that touches the shoulder blade a little and then attached it with two-component glue.





After drying, the straps were attached - they are made of doubled gold paper.

The transition from the modeled to the added strap on the shoulder was equalized with "Milliput".







This part at the other shoulder...



... which I have neglected so far, I will do when the backpack is finished painting...

Sad, angry and desperately helpless greetings!

Impressive progress Martin......watch you like a hawk from far way........

Wayne

But please don't sh** on my head...

------------------------------------------------------------

78. Tag, 27. Februar 2022


Today there was only time to prime the sack...:








Cheers

79. Day, February 28, 2022


Most important things first: Shortly after seven o'clock this morning, after 19 hours of waiting at sub-zero temperatures, Tanja and her companions finally crossed the Moldovan-Romanian border. They are now in a small Romanian inn, resting.

They're frozen and exhausted - but together, safe and sound - and in the EU!

Tanya's neighborhood in Odessa has been bombed. She doesn't know if her house is still there.

Tomorrow they go to Bucuresti and see how it goes. And maybe I'll fly down to Bucuresti if I can help them better there. There are several direct flights there from Bremen.

They no longer have to worry about travel expenses to Germany! Since February 25, all Ukrainian refugees have been able to use all European long-distance trains free of charge to get to their respective destinations - a Ukrainian passport is enough as a ticket!

Meanwhile, I've started painting our hero's backpack.

The colors are dictated by the belt he wears around his torso. And I'll do my best to make the thing look as dingy and "used" as possible.

The basic painting is on it - tomorrow comes the "fine touches"...:






Cheers