Large 9 ½" x 13" folder in oilcloth-wrapped hard cover. The lettering on the front cover, embossed in gold, reads "To the Supreme Commander of Air Defense of the Country, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrey Ivanovich Koldunov." The left page of the insert has the same header. The greetings were sent from the Air Defense Forces in Leningrad, and are appropriately overly verbose, politically correct, with all the expected genuflections to the Party, Government, and personally Comrade Leonid Brezhnev, and traditional official boilerplate well-wishes. The gree

Large 9 ½" x 13" folder in oilcloth-wrapped hard cover. The lettering on the front cover, embossed in gold, reads "To the Supreme Commander of Air Defense of the Country, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrey Ivanovich Koldunov." The left page of the insert has the same header. The greetings were sent from the Air Defense Forces in Leningrad, and are appropriately overly verbose, politically correct, with all the expected genuflections to the Party, Government, and personally Comrade Leonid Brezhnev, and traditional official boilerplate well-wishes. The greetings are dated 20 September 1978, Koldunov's birthday.

In very good condition. The front cover shows mild wear. The back cover must have stuck to some paper at some point in time, and traces of that paper are evident. There is also slight fraying to the oilcloth at the corners, and a couple of scuffs along the spine. The insert with the greetings is in heavy-stock coated paper, clean, and just slightly wrinkled at the bottom right corner. The text, printed in bronze-colored dye, is crisp and clear.

Supreme Marshal of Air Force Alexander Koldunov (Александр Иванович Колдунов, 1923 - 1992) was the eighth highest scoring Soviet fighter ace of WW2, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, and supreme commander of the Soviet Air Defense in the late 70s through the late 80s. Although a highly skilled and illustrious fighter pilot, Koldunov's claim to fame in the West centered around friendly fire incidents and failure to prevent Mathias Rust, a West German, from landing a Cessna airplane on Moscow's Red Square. This humiliation to the entire Soviet armed forces led to Koldunov's immediate dismissal.

Koldunov's fortunes rose during WW2 as a Yak pilot when he became a specialist in the hit-and-run diving attack, aggressively firing at close quarters and breaking away to attack again. Many of his air victories were scored against Luftwaffe fighter craft in the Southern sector. Koldunov's WW2 service included one of aviation history's most unlikely dogfights - against USAAF Lightnings of the 15th AF in a case of mistaken identity. Koldunov, who reportedly shot down 3 American aircraft in the melee, put an end to the friendly fire incident by bravely closing alongside the Lightnings to establish his flight's identity as "friendly" Soviets.

While his postwar career began with great promise, the specter of friendly fire seemed to plague Koldunov, and his career ultimately ended in a humiliation of epic proportions. In 1968 Koldunov was Deputy Commander of the Baku Air Defense District. One year later he was moved to the Ministry of Defense for a brief tour of duty, and in 1970 he succeeded Colonel-General Vasilii Okunev as CINC of the ultra-important Moscow Air Defense District.

Koldunov's career continued to rise. In 1978 he was promoted to Marshal of the Air Force in charge of PVO (Air Defense) of the entire country. It was at this post that his career began to unravel. In 1978, a missile was fired at a commercial airliner with loss of 2 people. On September 1, 1983, a commercial 747 airliner, Korean Air Flight 007, strayed off course and was shot down resulting in needless death of 269 civilians. But it wasn't until 1987 that his career came to an end at the hands of 19-year-old West German student Mathias Rust who penetrated air defenses under Koldunov's authority, to land his Cessna in Red Square.

The event hit the Soviet Union like a bombshell as it became evident that the much-touted "impenetrable" air defense system was a hollow shell created by the Communist propaganda machine, like so much else that was the Soviet Union. Koldunov was forced to retire from his post, a humiliation that perhaps contributed to his death in 1992. Although Koldunov was made a scapegoat for this failure, the truth was fast becoming clear to the Soviet population. Events like Rust's flight and the Chernobyl nuclear accident a year earlier created a very real sense that the Communist Regime was teetering on the brink of collapse.
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