How the Soviet Union's greatest photoreporter captured the tragic war, the common soldier and the senseless destruction.
The most famous military photoreporter of the USSR, Yevgeny Khaldei (1917-1997), photographed pilots, paratroopers, infantrymen and submariners — he was there by their side throughout WWII. He visited the Northern Fleet and documented battles on the Black Sea coast. Together with Soviet troops, he entered Berlin and took one of the most iconic images in history: the hoisting of the Soviet flag over the Reichstag. We put together a retrospective of the photographer’s war period.
Warning: some images contain scenes of violence. 18+
1. Searchlight operators G.I. Troyan and I.A. Ladkin from the Northern Fleet's anti-aircraft battery prepare for the night watch, 1941
2. Infantrymen on the Kola Peninsula, 1941
3. Reconnaissance scouts on the Northern Front, 1941
4. K-21 submarine
5. Red Army soldiers operate a 45-mm anti-tank gun, 1941
6. Sea shanty. The Red Banner Baltic Fleet, 1942
7. Farewell to a fallen comrade, 1941
8. Aviation torpedo, 1941, Murmansk
9. A downed German Messerschmitt
10. A squadron commander with his crew by an Il-4 plane, 1941
11. Inside the Arctic Circle. Yasha the reindeer, 1941
12. Aircraft inspection, 1941
13. Machine-gunner. The Northern Fleet, 1941
14. Heading to Murmansk, 1941
15. Twice Hero of the USSR Alexander Shabalin of the Northern Fleet, 1941
16. German prisoners of war on the Northern front, 1942
17. 17-year-old nurse Nina Burakova bandages the wounded. She saved the lives of 150 soldiers
18. Refugees fleeing Murmansk after a German air raid, 1941
19. Vitya Cherevichkin. Shot by the Germans in occupied Rostov-on-Don for hiding pigeons ordered to be destroyed, 1941
20. Between battles. Novorossiysk, 1943
21. Female pilots at a frontline dugout, 1943
22. The cruiser Molotov on a campaign, Crimea, 1942
23. The main gun of the cruiser Molotov, 1942
24. Germans prisoners of war in Kerch, Crimea. Winter 1941-42
25. A moment of relaxation. Pilots of the 46th Women's Aviation Regiment of the Taman Division, 1943. Novorossiysk, southern Russia
26. On the frontline, 1943
27. Yak-9D aircraft in the sky, 1944
28. Volley salute in the liberated Sevastopol, Crimea, 1944
29. Diver, 1944
30. Battle in the city. The liberation of Kerch. Crimea, 1944
31. Soviet soldiers tear down the swastika from the gates of the Voikov plant in Kerch. Crimea, 1944
32. Children play at soldiers. Crimea, 1944
33. Hero of the Soviet Union navigator Sergey Dupliy, 1944
34. German prisoners of war, 1944
35. “How wars end”, 1944
36. German-abandoned equipment, 1944
37. Prisoner interrogation, 1944
38. On the Polish-Czech border, 1945
39. A German glider with provisions crashed into a building. Budapest, 1945
40. Comrades are not abandoned. Vienna, 1945
41. “Why war?” A blind man with guide in Berlin, 1945
42. The Victory Banner over the Reichstag. Berlin, 1945
43. Cigarette break outside the Reichstag. Berlin, 1945
44. Liberated Berlin, 1945
45. “We’ve come from Berlin!” Soldiers return home, 1945
46. Victory Parade, June 24, 1945. Soldiers cast down Nazi banners
47. Disarmament of the Kwantung Army in Chinese Harbin, August-September 1945
48. Flag over Port Arthur, September 1945
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