On May 8, five postage stamps dedicated to war correspondents was put into postal circulation in the On the 85th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 series

Alexander Fadeev (1901–1956) was a Soviet writer, a public figure, a journalist, and a war correspondent. He was a holder of the Stalin Prize (First Class) a member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKP(b)), a Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKP(b)). He was a holder of the Lenin Komsomol Prize. From 1946 to 1954, he was the General Secretary and the Chairman of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

Alexander Fadeev was born in the village of Kimry (presently a city in the Tver Region). In 1918, he joined the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks and became a party agitator. In 1919, he joined a Special Communist Detachment of Red Partisans. From 1919 to 1921, he participated in combat operations in the Far East and was wounded. He held the positions of a commissar of the 13th Amur Regiment and a commissar of the 8th Amur Rifle Brigade. From 1921 to 1922, he studied at the Moscow Mining Academy. He wrote his first major work, the novella The Flood, in 1922–1923. In 1925–1926, while working on the novel The Rout, which brought him fame and recognition, he decided to become a professional writer. He is also known for his novel The Last of the Udege, dedicated to the Civil War. He wrote a number of essays and articles on the development of literature under conditions of socialist realism. No less well-known is his novel The Young Guard, about a Krasnodon underground organization that operated in the territory occupied by Nazi Germany, many of whose members were killed by the Nazis. For many years, A. Fadeev headed writers’ organizations of various levels. From 1926 to 1932, he was one of the organizers and ideologues of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. In later years, Fadeev held various positions in the Union of Writers of the USSR. From 1950, he was the Vice-President of the World Peace Council. From 1942 to 1944, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Literaturnaya Gazeta, founded the Oktyabr magazine and was a member of its editorial board. During the Great Patriotic War, he was a war correspondent for the Pravda newspaper and the Soviet Information Bureau. In January of 1942, the writer attended the Kalinin Front, its most dangerous sector, to gather material for a report. On January 14, 1942, he published an article entitled Monsters of Destruction and People of Creation in the Pravda newspaper, in which he described his impressions of what he had witnessed during the war.

A. Fadeev was awarded two Orders of Lenin and other honors.

The postage stamp provides a portrait of Alexander Fadeev; in the background, there are the The Young Guard book, the Pravda newspaper, and a manuscript.


Pyotr Lidov (1906–1944) was a Soviet journalist, a war correspondent for the Pravda newspaper, and the author of the first essay Tanya about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (1942) who undertook a journalistic investigation into the events in Petrishchevo. He is a holder of the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class. Pyotr Lidov was born in Kharkov. He made his debut in print at the age of 14, in 1920, with an article about the first airplane he had ever seen, which had flown to Kharkov. In 1925, at the First Provincial Congress of Workers’ and Peasants’ Correspondents, P. Lidov was nominated to work in the Kharkov Proletarian newspaper. He worked in the Party department. In 1928, he joined the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1932, he moved to Moscow with his family. He worked at Defense Plant No. 24 as a lathe operator, a foreman, and a correspondent for a popular newspaper, and later as the Editor of the Martynovka newspaper of the Hammer and Sickle plant. In 1937, he was assigned to work at the Pravda newspaper. He traveled a lot on business trips about the USSR. In the spring of 1941, he was appointed Pravda’s staff correspondent for the Byelorussian SSR.

From the very first days of the Great Patriotic War, P. Lidov became a war correspondent; his first war report was submitted to the editorial office of Pravda on June 22 of 1941, and published in the issue of the June 24. During the Battle of Moscow, Pravda regularly published essays, articles, and reports by P. Lidov on the course of military events. He attended dangerous sections of the frontline, flew with a bomber crew into German rear areas, worked under bombardment, and made forays into German-occupied territories. He wrote about military operations near Smolensk, the partisans of Belarus and the situation in occupied Minsk; he reported from Stalingrad, the Kursk Bulge, the banks of the Seversky Donets and the Dnieper, and from Ludvik Svoboda’s Czechoslovak Corps. He kept war diaries. In June of 1944, he was sent to Poltava with the task to write about the Flying Fortresses base of the American allies. He was killed in action with the rank of major on June 22, 1944, by the blast wave from a Junkers aircraft, which he and his comrades had shot down.

He was awarded the Medal For the Defense of Stalingrad and the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class (posthumously).

The postage stamp features a portrait of P. Lidov; in the background, there is an issue of the Pravda newspaper and the article Tanya dedicated to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.


Roman Karmen (autonym: Kornman; 1906–1978) was a Soviet film director, a cameraman, a documentary filmmaker, a war cameraman, a journalist, a scriptwriter, an educator, and an essay writer. He is the author of a number of books, memoirs, and articles for newspapers and magazines. He was a Hero of Socialist Labor, a People’s Artist of the USSR, and a holder of the Lenin Prize, three Stalin Prizes, and the State Prize of the USSR. He was born in Odessa. He went in for photography since childhood. His first major assignment was filming the funeral of V. Lenin in the Column Hall of the House of Unions. From 1923 to 1930, he worked as a photojournalist for magazines Ogonyok, Prozhektor, and Sovetskoe Foto. Among the most significant photo reports, he highlighted the launch of the first Soviet hydroelectric power plant in the city of Volkhov, the grand opening of the Shatura Power Plant, the start of construction on the Dnieper Hydroelectric Complex, the construction of the city of Kukisvumchorr, M. Gorky’s return to the USSR, the military parade on Red Square, etc.

In 1932, R. Karmen graduated from the cinematography department of the State Technical School of Cinematography. He worked at the Soyuzkinochronika film studio (renamed the Central Studio of Documentary Films in 1944). In July of 1934, he filmed a report on H. G. Wells’ arrival to Moscow. He filmed in Spain during the Civil War (1936–1939). In 1938, he worked in the Arctic, and then in China, where he filmed combat operations. On June 25 of 1941, he was drafted into military service, working as a cameraman and the head of the film team for the Northwestern Front; he filmed on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War near Moscow and Leningrad. In addition to his main work - filming and reporting for the Izvestia newspaper, he also worked as a war correspondent for the United Press American news agency since foreign correspondents were kept away from the frontline. He participated in the conquest of Königsberg, the forced crossing of the rivers of Neman, Vistula, and Oder, and the liberation of Warsaw; he was one of the first cinematographers to film the Majdanek concentration camp. In February of 1943, he filmed the surrender of Field Marshal F. Paulus near Stalingrad. On May 8 of 1945, in Berlin, he filmed the signing of the Act of Germany’s unconditional surrender. In October of 1948, he documented the aftermath of the Ashgabat earthquake. Until the mid-1970s, he filmed in Albania, Burma, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, China, and South America. He became the first Soviet citizen to visit the jungles of Vietnam to meet Ho Chi Minh there.

Among R. Karmen’s best-known works there are such films as Spain (1939); The Defeat of German Troops near Moscow (1942); Leningrad in the Struggle (1942), and others. From 1960, he lectured at VGIK. He was a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR from 1940. From 1965, he was a Secretary of the Board of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR. In 1977, he became the artistic director and the director of the Soviet-American The Great Patriotic War documentary series.

He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Red Banner, and other decorations.

The postage stamp features a portrait of R. Karmen; in the background, there are stills from the film Leningrad in the Struggle.


Yevgeny Khaldei (1917–1997) was a Soviet photographer and a war photoreporter. He was born in Yuzovka (presently Donetsk). He took his first photograph at the age of 13 using a homemade camera. From the age of 16, he began working as a photojournalist. From 1939, he was a correspondent for the TASS Photochronicles. He filmed Dneprostroi, made reports on A. Stakhanov. He represented the TASS editorial office in the Navy during the Great Patriotic War. Yevgeny Khaldei photographed the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers, the defeat of the Japanese in the Far East, the Conference of the Allied leaders in Potsdam, the raising of the flag over the Reichstag, and the signing the Act of Germany’s surrender. At the Nuremberg Trials, his photographs were among the material evidence. He took part in the assaults on Novorossiysk and Kerch, the liberation of Sevastopol, and Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Hungary. He was a participant in the photo coverage of the Potsdam Conference, the Paris Conference, and the Nuremberg Trials. After the war, he created a gallery of images depicting front-line soldiers engaged in peaceful labor. In 1959, he became a photo correspondent for the Pravda newspaper. In 1995, at the International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan (France), E. Khaldei was awarded the most honorary award in the world of art: the title of the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Yevgeny Khaldei was awarded the medals For the Defense of Sevastopol, For the Defense of the Caucasus, and For the Defense of the Soviet Arctic, as well as the Order of the Red Star.

The postage stamp features a portrait of E. Khaldei; in the background, there are his photographs and a photographic film.


Aleksandr Stanovov (1921–2005) was a Soviet photographer and war photojournalist. He was born in Moscow. On being carried away by photography, when a pupil of the 7th grade, he made his own camera and took his first photographs. In 1938, his photographs were published in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

In October of 1939, A. Stanovov was drafted into the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. After organizing a small photography exhibition at the club in his spare time, he caught the attention of the division’s political department and was assigned to the staff of official photojournalists: in the prewar years, of the Voroshilovets newspaper of the Moscow Proletarian Division, and during the Great Patriotic War, he was a correspondent for frontline newspapers We Will Defeat the Enemy and Defender of the Fatherland. In an effort to get a good shot and convey the atmosphere of the battle, he charged forward with the soldiers and advanced toward the enemy trenches on the first front line. In July of 1944, while in the ranks of the troops near Vilnius, he was wounded but did not leave the battlefield. He was the first among other front-line correspondents to capture the soldiers who were the first to reach the border line: Major General N. Kalinin, the commander of the 159th Rifle Division, and soldiers N. Makridov, G. Galutva, T. Gornov, A. Popov, I. Samokhin, M. Korobov, M. Khairoutdinov, and M. Surin.

He also took several famous photographs of sniper R. Shanina, a holder of two Orders of Glory, and Major L. Delfino, the commander of the Normandie-Niemen squadron. A photograph of partisan N. Ridlevsky with his daughters Olga and Zinaida, taken on the day of the liberation of the village of Cherei in the Chashniki District in 1944, became a symbol of the people’s struggle. In August of 1945, A. Stanovov accompanied the soldiers of the 5th Army of the 1st Far Eastern Front from the border to Mudanjiang, capturing scenes of fierce fighting and moments of life on the front lines.

After the War, A. Stanovov worked for over 35 years as a correspondent for the Rabotnitsa and Soviet Woman magazines; he traveled a lot about the country. The subjects of his photographs ranged from ordinary people to prominent figures in science, culture, and the arts: architect A. Shchusev, a professor at the Moscow State Conservatory, opera singer A. Nezhdanova, and the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. In 1952, A. Stanovov took a photo of those who had put the final point in the Great Patriotic War: Heroes of the Soviet Union Mikhail Yegorov and Meliton Kantaria, who planted the Victory Banner over the Reichstag in Berlin.

He was awarded the medals For the Defense of Moscow, For Bravery, and For Military Merit, as well as two Orders of the Red Star.

The postage stamp features a portrait of A. Stanovov; in the background, there are his photographs and a photographic film.


In addition to the issue of the postage stamps, JSC Marka produced First Day Covers and special cancels for Moscow and Tver.


Design Artist: M. Podobed.
Face value: 85 rubles each stamp.
Stamp size: 35×35 mm, sheet size: 129×96 mm.
Emission form: a sheet with formatted margins with (3×2) 5 stamps and a coupon.
Quantity: 18 thousand sheets.

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