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 child …
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 perform a…
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 sprea…
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…
Photo was taken during a routine military expedition in Chukchi Peninsula, Soviet Union. It isn’t sure if the Chukchi Peninsula has more people or white bears. The climate is very severe and sometimes weather can be so fierce in winter that the temperat…
Female snipers of the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front. The 'Shock' armies were created with the specific structure to engage and destroy significant enemy forces and were reinforced with more armored and artillery assets than other combined arms armi…
Yakov Dzhugashvili, Stalin's elder son, served in the Red Army during the Second World War, and was captured, or surrendered, in the initial stages of the German invasion of the USSR. There are still many contradictory legends in circulation about the deat…
The socialist fraternal kiss became famous via Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, who were photographed exercising the ritual. During the festivities of the 30th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic of East Germany in 1979, photographer Regis …
Vasily Blokhin is recorded as having executed tens of thousands of prisoners by his own hand, including his killing of about 7,000 Polish prisoners of war during the Katyn massacre in spring 1940, making him the most prolific official executioner in record…
Roza Shanina was a Soviet sniper during World War II who was credited with fifty-nine confirmed kills, including twelve soldiers during the Battle of Vilnius. Shanina volunteered for the military after the death of her brother in 1941 and chose to be a …
A Soviet spy laughs at his executioner in a picture taken in Rukajärvi, in East Karelia, in November 1942. It has been thought within the Finnish Defence Forces that the decision to withhold pictures of the fate of Russian POWs and spies may also have been…
Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation (operation "Bagration") resulted in complete destruction of the German Army Group Center. In 2 months the 1,100 km front-line moved 600 km west. During this operation, the Soviet armies in Belarus completely des…
This Soviet partisan is remarkably well equipped for the average partisan, he’s armed to the teeth: a PPSH-41 submachine gun, 1 RGD-33 grenade, 1 RPG-40 anti-tank grenade, 3 F1 grenades, a German Stielhandgranate 24, a belt of 7.62 ammunition, and 2 M1895 …
The Soviets had to bring troops from far away to the Finnish front. Some of the soldiers were from the south and hadn’t ever experienced winter conditions like this before, combine that with Finnish patrols destroying the support lines and the hardest wint…
The relationship between Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev began when Cuba became a communist country and Cuba started to establish close relations with the Soviet Union. Both Fidel and Nikita shared the same beliefs, such as communism being the best t…