WW2: Painted faces of soviet veterans

These are paintings of faces of Soviet war veterans from World War II who helped to defeat Adolf Hitler's German Empire 75 years ago. Five men and one woman, aged with dignity, through the long years of the Soviet dictatorship, which she venerated as a hero, but at the same time used to give herself the right to oppress and murder people as cruelly as Hitler.

Millions died in the war, the worst ever raging. Millions died afterwards when Stalin had returning soldiers of his own army locked up in camps and prisoners of war sent to Siberia, where they was supposed to be destroyed by work.

The WW2 cost more than 20 million citizens of the Soviet Union their lifes, and Stalin had 20 million more humans killed during his 26 years at the top of the largest country in the world. During the Second World War the Soviet Union nevertheless resisted the attack by the German Wehrmacht and four years later the Red Army conquered Berlin, Hitlers capital. But the more time passes and the deeper the gap between East and West becomes again, the more people are convinced that it was the Western Allies who defeated Hitler.

The painted faces of the veterans belied this claim.