To mark the 70th an­niver­sary of the Vic­tory in World War II the State Mu­seum and Ex­hi­bi­tion Cen­ter ROSPHOTO in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Mu­seum of Mil­i­tary Med­i­cine launches an im­por­tant ex­hi­bi­tion pro­ject pre­sent­ing unique pho­tographs, draw­ings and paint­ings which cover the last pe­riod of WWII, the cap­ture of Berlin and the first post­war days of the fallen cap­i­tal of the Third Reich.

Among the par­tic­i­pants of the Red Army Vis­tula–Oder Of­fen­sive, the Prague Of­fen­sive and the Bat­tle of Berlin were spe­cial units which were es­tab­lished in 1943 at the Mu­seum of Mil­i­tary Med­i­cine and whose task was to doc­u­ment the ac­tiv­i­ties of mil­i­tary medics at the front. Those units con­sisted of medics, pho­tog­ra­phers and artists. Thus, a suc­cess­ful at­tempt was made to re­vive a tra­di­tion which had ex­isted in pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rus­sia when pho­tog­ra­phers and painters had worked to­gether to cover mil­i­tary cam­paigns.

In Jan­u­ary 1945 they formed two spe­cials de­tach­ments to doc­u­ment the events of the last major op­er­a­tions of the So­viet Army. The first one con­sisted of the artists E.A. Lvov and N.G. Ko­zlov, pho­tog­ra­pher V.S. Famin­sky and S.M. Ro­gachevsky, Major, Med­ical Corps. The mem­bers of the sec­ond de­tach­ment were the pho­tog­ra­pher E.S. Mikulina, artist N.G. Yakovlev and N.D. Strunin, Colonel of the Guards, Med­ical Corps. The artists were called up for mil­i­tary ser­vice upon the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists.

The first unit was at­tached to the med­ical de­part­ment of the 5th Shock Army of the 1st Byeloruss­ian Front under the com­mand of Colonel Gen­eral Niko­lai Berzarin, the first com­man­dant of the So­viet forces in Berlin. The sec­ond de­tach­ment was a part of the med­ical de­part­ment of the 13th Army of the 1st Ukrain­ian Front under the com­mand of Colonel Gen­eral Dmitry Lelyushenko.

Fairly large num­ber of art pieces and doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the final stage of WWII (800 pho­tographs and 37 draw­ings and paint­ings) has been pre­served up to now. The cur­rent ex­hi­bi­tion fea­tures 60 pho­tographs and 17 art­works cre­ated by the mem­bers of the above­men­tioned de­tach­ments dur­ing the Bat­tle of Berlin. All the fea­tured art­works are ex­hib­ited to the pub­lic for the first time ever.

The works by the mil­i­tary pho­tog­ra­phers and artists were not meant for pub­li­ca­tion, and thus were not cen­sored: that makes these ma­te­ri­als es­pe­cially valu­able and im­por­tant for us now. As to the ma­jor­ity of mil­i­tary pho­to­jour­nal­ists, they were bound to fol­low the di­rec­tive “About the Con­tents of the Front, Army and Di­vi­sion Pe­ri­od­i­cals” is­sued by the Main De­part­ment for Po­lit­i­cal Pro­pa­ganda on June 23, 1941. That di­rec­tive im­posed sig­nif­i­cant re­stric­tions on the cov­er­age of cer­tain mil­i­tary events and ac­tiv­i­ties.

The dis­play Berlin. May gives us an op­por­tu­nity to see the lib­er­ated city through the eyes and cam­eras of the mem­bers of the Mil­i­tary Med­i­cine Mu­seum’s de­tach­ments. In the pho­tographs one can see Berlin in ruins, the af­ter­math of fierce fight­ing which raged there, as the city was se­verely dam­aged by al­lied bomb­ing and dur­ing the final as­sault.

A large part of the ex­hi­bi­tion is ded­i­cated to the self­less work of the mil­i­tary medics who did their best to pro­vide med­ical treat­ment to So­viet sol­diers, Ger­man pris­on­ers of war and res­i­dents of Berlin.

The paint­ings, draw­ings and pho­tographs were al­ways taken by the artists – mem­bers of the front de­tach­ments — from life, and often from the same lo­ca­tions. There­fore, the vis­i­tors to the dis­play will be able to com­pare the ev­i­dence pro­duced by means of two art forms — paint­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy.