“These Are Our Legal Trophies…” The System of Parcel Freight Organization from the Red Army in the Field in 1945 on the Basis of Declassified Archive Documents

The readers are offered the newly declassified documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Military Archive, disclosing the mechanism of military parcels of the servicemen from the army in the field receipt and delivery from Germany to the rear areas of the USSR at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War. Both execution documents of People’s Defense Commissariat and State Defense Committee, decrees of Council of War of the 1st Belarus and 1st Ukrainian Frontlines, Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany and reports by frontline political authorities and military units political departments, concerning personnel sentiment in respect of command by People’s Defense Commissariat to permit parcels sending to the Motherland, emerging problems and the ways to overcome them. The introductory article highlights the features of perception of the enemy country, its way of life and the everyday life of its population by Soviet servicemen, the reasons of such phenomenon as barakholstvo and the reaction of political bodies to the “new sentiment” in the troops, having emerged after the border crossing