The error in the encyclopedia
Almost every source, including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, where the data was checked and rechecked more than once, gave Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin's birth date as 17/29 April 1897. The date moved from edition to edition, from reference book to reference book.
Yet the designer himself gave a different date in his documents all his life: 21 April 1897 (3 May new style). A four-day gap seemed trivial, and no one really asked which date was right.
The find in the State Archive of Vladimir Region
The answer came from a parish register. Family Relic's genealogist Olga Romanova, working in the State Archive of Vladimir Region (GAVO), found Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin's birth record. In the register of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God for 1897, entry number 16 of 21 April records the birth and baptism:
'Of the same village (Klyushnikovo), the reservist peasant Simeon Venediktov Shpagin and his lawful wife Akilina Ioannova, both of the Orthodox faith. Priest Dimitry Pokrovsky. The peasant children of the same village: Ioann and Valentina Fyodorov.' Reference: GAVO, fond 590, inventory 17, file 148, sheets 485 verso to 486.
What the record says
By the register, the boy was named Yegor (Georgy). He was born in the village of Klyushnikovo. The father was a reservist peasant, Simeon Shpagin. The church where he was baptised stood in Myodushi, today an urochishche with the status of a bishop's metochion of the Vladimir-Suzdal diocese.
The date in the document is 21 April. The very date Shpagin gave all his life. He was not born four days earlier, on 17 April. An official archive document settled the matter.
Why the confusion arose
Most likely the 17 April date came from mixing up the date of birth and the date of baptism: in many churches these happened on the same day, in others a few days apart. Someone, at some point, took a date from another document or confused the sources. Before digital archives, such errors stuck very easily.
The Kovrov museum, which also found the designer's birth record, took a firm decision: it now marks his memorial day on 3 May (21 April old style), by the archive document rather than the encyclopedia.
What this story teaches
The Shpagin case shows plainly why genealogists work with primary documents rather than secondary sources. Encyclopedias, biographical reference books, even official Soviet editions reproduced the error for decades. A parish register, written in 1897 by the priest of a small village church, turned out to be more accurate.
This is why at Family Relic every fact about an ancestor is confirmed by primary archive documents. Family tradition, memories, even biographical notes are a starting point, not proof. Proof is a record with a signature and a seal.
Shpagin's life
A peasant's son from the village of Klyushnikovo, in May 1916 he was conscripted into the tsarist army and posted to the armoury of the 14th Georgian Grenadier Regiment, where he qualified as a gunsmith-fitter. His first teacher, Ya. V. Dedilov, told the future designer: 'Even your surname is an armourer's, Shpagin, shpaga (a sword), you should understand that.'
On 21 December 1940 a Defence Committee resolution adopted Shpagin's 1941-model submachine gun, the PPSh-41, for the Red Army. That autumn the designer came to Vyatskiye Polyany, and by the end of November the first examples of the legendary weapon were on their way to the front.
Want to find an ancestor's exact birth date, or correct an error in your family papers? The genealogists at Family Relic will find the primary source. Request a search at myrodoslovie.ru
