Leningrad, Soviet Union
(Viktor Bulla / Getty)
A year after this picture was taken, the photographer, Viktor Bulla, was either in exile or dead. A photographer like his father Karl, Viktor studied his craft in Germany before joining his father’s business. He worked as a photojournalist for the Siberian Reserve Brigade during the Russo–Japanese War and went on to produce documentary films with his brother.
Viktor chronicled the 1917 Revolution in both stills and footage, and was an official portrait photographer to the Soviet Communist Party, photographing Lenin, Stalin and other leaders. But in the late 1930s, he was denounced by an employee of the family firm as an ‘Enemy of the People’. A forced confession to charges of spying saw him placed in exile, in solitary confinement, though it is possible that he was simply shot.
This image shows a large group of children – a unit of ‘Young Pioneers’ – demonstrating their readiness for war in the case of a gas attack. The ‘Young Pioneers’, or ‘Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization’, was a Soviet youth organization for children between the ages of ten and fifteen.
‘High rise our campfires into the blue night, We are pioneers – the children of the workers, Near is the time of our best years And the pioneers’ motto is, “Always be ready!”’
‘High Rise Our Campfires’, Soviet Young Pioneers song
