FINIKOV NIKOLAI FEDOROVICH

His photos actually chronicle the entire war: the bitter retreat of 1941, the terrible battle for Stalingrad, the tank battle on the Kursk Bulge, the capture of Königsberg and Berlin, liberated and jubilant Prague and the Far East. He was constantly present in military units of tankers, artillerymen, infantrymen; and very often in the midst of battle, under the hail of bullets and shells changed the assault rifle for a camera and shot truly unique shots of military history.

In 1944 Nikolai Finikov was invited to join ‘Pravda’ (eng. - Truth), the major newspaper of the USSR. The night of May 8-9, 1945, Guards Captain Nikolai Fedorovich Finikov was in Berlin.

And the events of the victorious May night in Berlin and the meeting in Prague are described in a story by the famous writer Boris Polevoy called “The Last War Report”.

Nikolai Finikov worked in “Pravda” until 1946, then returned to Kuibyshev with nine war orders and medals. A new milestone in the man's life had come when he became a photo journalist in the Kuibyshev region.

Unique photos from the military archive of Nikolai Fedorovich Finikov were handed over to the Samara Regional Universal Scientific Library by his son Lev Nikolayevich Finikov within the framework of the regional project “Library expedition ’Victorious May’ of the Samara Regional Universal Scientific Library.