In the Moscow there was a presentation of the book «Russian Air Force» by Valery Milovanovitch Tomic. The guests were shown a model of the book and a supplement to it, a biographical essay reflecting the life and creative heritage of Valery Tomich.
The work of the engineer, historian of Russian aviation, collector of materials on the military history of Russia consists of eight chapters of more than 1000 pages and more than 3,500 unique photographs. The publication, prepared by the Solzhenitsyn House of the Russian Abroad with the assistance of the State Corporation for Development of the Russian Federation, includes rare, mostly unreleased materials that allow tracing the emergence, formation and development of national aviation up to and including the First World War.
The significance of this publication is defined first of all by the fact that it is chronologically the first study of its kind that remained unpublished due to objective circumstances — a collection of the history of aeronautics and aviation of Imperial Russia is published for the first time. It is the only collection of materials previously unknown to the general public or even to most specialists.
Since mid-1930s V. Tomich corresponded with most Russian aviators and military pilots in exile, as well as with certain specialists and collectors who lived in USSR and sent him documents, photos and memories. All archives available to the author were also used, including Soviet archives (based on correspondence in the 60s-80s). But the author did not manage to publish this huge work during his lifetime, which became a real drama for him.
Valery Tomich was born in Vladivostok in 1914. In Mukden, where the family settled, he received his secondary education, graduated from «Russian Polytechnic School of Correspondence Teaching». From an early age he was vividly interested in everything related to the «air element». Valery made his first flight as a passenger at the age of twelve, on the training plane «Avro-504». In the 1930s he also attended flight school in Mukden, where he passed his exams and became a «real pilot».
From 1951 he lived in San Francisco. In 1956, together with the military aviator G. L. Sheremetevsky, he founded the California Chapter of the Society of Former Russian Aviators in the USA, and in the 1970s he became the President of the Society, which by that time was active only in San Francisco. Although V. Tomich never participated in wars or combat operations, he was nevertheless awarded the title of «Military Pilot of Russian Aviation». He received it from «the oldest pioneers of Russian aviation» abroad, General V.G. Baranov (London) and Colonel I.N. Tunoshensky (Detroit) for «invaluable services to Russian aviation.
Valery Tomich assembled an archive, the main value of which is the collection «Russian Air Force» and a work of the same name, as well as materials on the history of the Russian Navy. At the end of 2011, Valeri Tomich donated the collection to the A. Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Abroad. A. Solzhenitsyn. He passed away in October 2013, just short of his centenary.