A Collector's Passion

For over a decade, Pennsylvanian James Sinclair has been collecting Soviet military uniforms and preserving them to museum presentation status. But not just any Soviet military uniforms: only wartime uniforms of Soviet marshals, generals and admirals.

Some of the pieces in Sinclair’s collection are truly amazing: one of the Joseph Stalin’s plain tunics; dress uniforms of Marshal Budyonny, in one of which Sinclair said he found, of all things, a mustache hair; a parade uniform of Andrei Vyshinsky, Stalin’s feared show-trial prosecutor, UN Ambassador and Foreign Minister.

A book containing superb photos and descriptions of about half of Sinclair’s collection has been published by Schiffer; a second volume containing the rest of his collection is in preparation.