STALIN I.V. (1878-1953) CHURCHILL W. (1874-1965) 3 photographs of participants in the Fourth Moscow Conference. Moscow, October 1944

Photographer M. Kalashnikova. 14.9 x 24 cm; 17 x 24.5 cm; 16.5 x 23.7 cm. Photographer’s credit inscribed on the reverse of each photograph. The photographs show the Chairman of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars I.V. Stalin, British Prime Minister W. Churchill, Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.M. Molotov, British Foreign Secretary A. Eden, Chief of the Imperial General Staff A. Brooke and US Ambassador to the USSR A. Harriman. The Fourth Moscow Conference, known in English-language historiography as the Tolstoy Conference (after its code name ‘Tolstoy’) and also as Churchill’s second visit to Moscow, took place from 9 to 19 October 1944 between the principal Allies of the Second World War. The issues discussed included the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan, the post-war division of the Balkans in the form of the so-called ‘Percentages Agreement’ and the future of Poland. The British also agreed to return to the Soviet Union all former Soviet citizens, without exception, who had been liberated from German captivity. Maria Ivanovna Kalashnikova (1906-1949) was a photographer and photojournalist for the newspaper ‘Pravda’ during the Great Patriotic War and the first post-war years. After her husband was killed at the front in the spring of 1944, she continued his work at ‘Pravda’. Among other things, she photographed the 1945 Victory Parade on Red Square and worked at the Potsdam Conference.