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 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