These photos taken by Johannes Hähle depict the civilian population of Kharkov under occupation by Nazi Germany (all pictures are taken in October and November 1941). As a member of Construction Battalion 146, Hähle participated in the invasion of Franc…
Boris Yeltsin, who became president of Russia in 1991, was one of the most complex political leaders of his time. A longtime Communist Party leader, he was an important leader in the reform (social improvement) movements of the late 1980s and 1990s. Yel…
On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (later known as Joseph Stalin) was born. The son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman, Joseph was a frail child. A…
The 872-day Siege of Leningrad, Russia, resulted from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad on the Eastern Front of World War II. The siege lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944, and was one of the longest and most…
Beauty pageants (a mainstay in Western culture, particularly America) were banned in the Soviet Union since 1959 - no scantily clad ladies, no cheeky fashion, no celebration of beauty and poise. However, the landscape changed in 1985 with the appointmen…
World War II planes bomb a hillside while a shellshocked reindeer looks on. The stark interface between the killing machines of man and the natural grandeur and beauty of the reindeer was not “natural”. Yevgeny Khaldei, the famous Soviet photographer wh…
This is a Soviet propaganda banner on the frontline in Uhtua, Northern Karelia. It reads: "Finland is out of bread, but the war is not over yet". The long-distance photo was taken on June when the Finnish-Soviet front had stabilized for the most part into …
Viktor Bulla's photograph of hundreds of children wearing gas masks was not meant to be ghoulish, a commentary on war or lost innocence, but rather exemplified a reason for pride — the country was blessed with well-trained, well-equipped and obviously cour…
Soviet soldiers openly sexually harass a passing German woman near the West Hall section of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof central railway terminus. As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of the war, mass rapes took pla…
The Russian word used in the original title, "физкультурники", is now usually translated as "gym teachers", but at the moment of the parades meant "sportsmen/bodybuilders or athletes". This is a legacy of Stalin era propaganda parades to promote physica…
Soviet soldiers duck under passing tanks during an intensive training before the Battle of Kursk. The goal was to desensitize them to this experience and also to teach them the importance of digging trenches and holes strong enough to resist being driven o…
A picture of the fountain taken by Emmanuil Yevzerikhin on August 23, 1942, conveyed the devastation of the Battle of Stalingrad by juxtaposing a pastoral scene of children dancing around a playful crocodile and the city's bombed-out, burning buildings in …
A liquidator, clad in a gas mask and protective clothing, pushes a baby in a carriage who was found during the cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The infant had been left in an abandoned house in the village of Tatsenki. The worker found the chi…
Leonid Rogozov was a Soviet general practitioner who took part in the sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1960–1961. He was the only doctor stationed at the Novolazarevskaya Station and, while there, developed appendicitis, which meant he had to perfor…
The distance between the two of them is too close. The worker has his hands not hanging loose but slightly raised as though preparing to make a move. Meanwhile, the supervisor has that one hand at the collar of her dress like she's trying to slightly sp…
This last photo shows Vladimir Lenin in a wheelchair after suffering three stokes in the previous two years. By the end, he was paralyzed and completely mute. Beside him are his sister Anna Ilyinichna Yelizarova-Ulyanova and one of his doctors A. M. Kozhev…
Mankind's road to the stars had its unsung heroes. One of them was the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. His spaceflight on Soyuz 1 made him the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly into outer space more than once, and he became the first human to die on a sp…
For decades, rumors circulated in Russia that Joseph Stalin had a “twin” who replaced him during certain situations. Decades after Stalin's death, the decoy finally decided to talk. Felix Dadaev, a former dancer and juggler, had been ordered to work to …
Finnish defenders sometimes, though very rarely, took fallen frozen Russian soldiers and posed them upright as psychological warfare. Although rare, a few cases have been documented. Common Russian soldiers and Finnish troops had a great deal of respect…
This image might be one of the most impressive photographs of all time. While it might just look like a regular Polaroid of some industrial sludge in a rundown warehouse, you’re looking at the epicenter of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Known as “the E…