Channel: Dark5

Category: Education

Tags: top5before and afterdark docsinsanehistory channelhistorytop 5photos

Description: The Andrei Pozdeev museum in southern Russia honors native artists and is filled with art from painters from all over the former Soviet Union. Inside the facilities are two pictures showcased side by side depicting the physical toll that four years of relentless war takes on young soldiers. Evgeny Stepanovich Kobytev, born on Christmas day of 1910 in a small Soviet village, was a natural-born artist who dreamed of pursuing his passion for portrait and landscape painting. In 1936, he finally became a student at the prestigious Kyiv State Art Institute in Ukraine. Four years later, he graduated with honors from the academy and was ready to begin a long artistic career. However, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Kobytev had no choice but to delay his dreams. After enlisting for the Red Army, his regiment fought a fierce battle to protect the town of Pripyat. Kobytev was wounded and captured and taken to the infamous Khorol Pit concentration camp as a prisoner of war. The soldier remained in the dilapidated and half-rotten prison camp for two years, continually drenched in sweat and crammed in small barracks with hundreds of soldiers. With little to no food available on the grounds, the hunger and stress caused the Russian painter's young and supple face to slim down, giving him wrinkles and sinking his eyes into his skull. In 1943, comrade Kobytev escaped captivity and rejoined the Army. For the remainder of the war, he fought throughout Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, and Germany. When the conflict ended in 1945, he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for his excellent military service. However, the Russian High Command refused to give him the ultimate Victory over Germany award, as he had been a prisoner of war. After World War II, Evgeny Stepanovich Kobytev continued to be fond of art and was elected as city council, ensuring people from his city got access to cultural activities until his passing in 1973. His transformation would be forever immortalized in these photographs.