[Guarding the interests of justice]

The article is devoted to the history of creation and formation of forensic medical examination in the Red Army. The difficulty in formation and topical of activity of army, front and district forensic medical laboratories are emphasized. The orderly structure of expert institutions created during the years of the Great Patriotic War allowed to lay the scientific and methodical foundation of activity of the forensic medical examination in the Armed Forces. Special contribution into creation and organization of military expert service was made by Mickail Ivanovitch Avdeyev--the chief expert of the Red Army. The peculiarities of expert activity and its significance both during the years of the Great Patriotic War and today in difficult conditions of the Russian Federation Armed Forces reformation are discussed in terms of the history.