An interesting tidbit came up in this thread, mentioned in a web page about a supposed Soviet “Star Trek” ripoff…
…So says the webpage. Oddly enough, another Doper said he recalls that this was actually true.
And experience has taught me not to dismiss out of hand news about the Soviets doing something weird. (I dismiss weird news after doing at least some cursory research.)
A google search, surprise surprise, turned up nothing. So I turn to my comrade dopers and I ask: did the Soviet military really award medals to inanimate objects?
I find it hard to believe that an award could be made to a tank, though it was not uncommon for an entire tank crew to be awarded a medal (typically titled “most excellent tank crew” or similar). So in dispatches it may have been referred to as “Tank X got a medal” whereas they were of course talking about the crew
Cities were awarded also titles such as “hero city” during the war
The Soviet Union used to award medals to collectives of all kinds (industrial plants, newspapers, military units, etc.) as well as to individuals. I assume what the OP refers to are instances of that.
I don’t think they were awarded to individual vehicles per se; more to good pieces of engineering like the T-34 tank. It wasn’t so much a citation for individual excellence as an award for overall design or, more importantly, utility.
I am not familiar with them giving awards to objects and machines.
Yet, the Russians (long before to soviet rule) did in fact flog and exile a church bell.