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“TASS is authorised to declare that…” These words heralded may a pivotal moment in the history of the 20th century. TASS – the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, as the abbreviation goes – also played a key information role in the years of the Great Patriotic War.

On April 8, 2025 the presentation ceremony of the TASS photo exhibition “Their Feat Is Immortal”, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and prepared using the agency’s photo archive, was held in the atrium of the first building of the Russian Foreign Ministry. As TASS General Director Andrey Kondrashov said, “this exhibition should be shown to the West”, a statement with which we fully agree, and will do so on the pages of the Beehive.

We start with a re-blog of the official opening statement by the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, followed by a translation of the exposition’s presentation by TASS, and finally presenting five of the information stands, courtesy to the journal “The international Affairs”.

Russian TV channel NTV has a short video reportage from the opening of the exhibition at their site.

The title of the exhibition is “Their Feat Is Immortal”, and can also be translated as “Their Immortal Heroism”.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement at the opening ceremony of a TASS photo exhibition, “Their Immortal Heroism,” Moscow, April 8, 2025

– The video of Lavrov’s speech (in Russian) can be watched at The International Affairs

Mr Kondrashov, Your Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, Friends,

We are delighted to open a photo exhibition, Their Immortal Heroism, at the Foreign Ministry today. It includes archival photographs, official statements and reports by TASS correspondents made in the past few months of the Great Patriotic War.

I would like to begin by expressing gratitude to the TASS management and staff for their contribution to preparing this unique exposition. It opens a series of events dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and organised for the diplomatic corps accredited in our country.

When speaking about the Great Victory, we recall the combat heroism of Soviet soldiers, who have saved the world from the Nazi plague. The “information army” greatly contributed to the common efforts to defeat the enemy. The courageous TASS correspondents risked their lives every day to create a chronicle of the 1,418 days of that war. To this day, their photographs and reports remain a vital source of reliable information about those events.

TASS played a special role in exposing Nazi propaganda. The Agency’s materials revealed the criminal nature of Nazism and its deadly threat to humanity. Thanks to the journalists’ work, the world learned about the courageous defenders of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad and about the atrocities the invaders committed in the occupied Soviet territories. TASS photographs were included in the verdict of the Nuremberg Trials.

The “TASS Windows” war-time posters made an invaluable contribution to Victory. They showed that art and satire can be a lethal weapon in capable hands. These posters have become widely popular not only in our country but also beyond it, where they could be acquired by subscription and included in the exhibitions held in Washington, Johannesburg, London, Beijing, Istanbul, Stockholm and Tehran.

This TASS legacy is especially important today when more and more attempts are being made in the West to rewrite history and overhaul the political, international legal and moral results of the Great Victory in the Second World War. Our country’s role in defeating the enemy is being deliberately played down. The monstrous crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices and collaborators are being justified. The very principle of outlawing the man-hating Nazi ideology is being undermined. I would like to remind you that it is one of the fundamentals principles of the post-war world order, known as the Yalta-Potsdam world order, alongside the primacy of international law and the central role of the UN, and primarily its Security Council, in balancing the interests of states.

In this situation, TASS remains a reliable keeper of historical truth. The archival materials collected during the war are an effective weapon in the battle against the falsification of history.

A relevant example is a letter, which you can see at the exhibition, from the head of Poland’s Provisional Government to the Soviet leadership, dated February 16, 1945, with assurances of eternal friendship between Polish, Russian and all other Soviet peoples. Equally eloquent are the photographs made in the liberated European cities, showing people welcome Soviet soldiers with joy and present them with flowers. The EU prefers to forget about these documents and is trying to eradicate this memory, but facts cannot be erased from history.

Keeping the truth about the war is our common responsibility to those who have given their lives for peace and freedom. I believe that this exhibition can be shown not only in Russia but also beyond it, also based on the possibilities of the embassies and Russia Houses, wherever they exist.

In conclusion, I would like to note that we also regard this exposition as our tribute to the 17 TASS journalists who perished in the war, as well as to our colleagues from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs who died in battle and while delivering diplomatic bags or accompanying foreign journalists to the front line.

Kondrashov: the TASS exhibition “Their feat is immortal” should be shown to the West

TASS Director General called on everyone “who is rewriting history in the West” to pay attention to the exhibition

The materials presented at the TASS photo exhibition “Their Feat Is Immortal” dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory should be shown to those in the West, who are rewriting history and trying to negate the contribution of the peoples of the Soviet Union to the victory over fascism. This was stated by TASS Director General Andrey Kondrashov at the opening of the agency’s exposition at the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“Everything that is presented today, both TASS photos and texts, should, of course, be shown to those in the West who are rewriting history, throwing in false information, and seeking to negate the contribution of the peoples of the USSR to Victory,” Kondrashov stressed.

The TASS General Director called the exhibition unique. He noted that for the first time TASS exhibits copies of authentic texts from those very times. “These are texts from the ‘Bulletin of Frontline Information’ and the ‘Bulletin of Allied Information'”, he added.

According to him, reading these documents, the parallels with today are clearly visible, and one can see how much of what happened 80 years ago is relevant.

“I will read to you the phrase that Stalin said in his Address to the people about the Victory and the signing of the Act of Surrender: ‘Knowing the wolfish habit of the German bosses, who consider treaties and agreements to be an empty piece of paper, we have no reason to take their word for it. However, this morning, German troops, in fulfilment of the act of surrender, began to lay down their weapons en masse and surrender to our troops. This is no longer an empty piece of paper. This is a real capitulation of the German armed forces‘”, Kondrashov said. (BATS note: Read the full text of the speech at “The radio address of Iosif Stalin on the 9th of May 1945” )

He stressed that during the Great Patriotic War, TASS became the main source of operational information for both the government and the public, and sometimes for the army.

“TASS war correspondents went through the entire war side by side with units of the Red Army,” he noted and recalled that 17 TASS employees died then. The General Director of TASS drew attention to the contribution of the agency’s foreign network to the Victory. “They provided the country’s leadership with crucial information, and their messages became the basis for exposing Goebbels’ propaganda”, he added.

About the exhibition

The presentation of the exhibition took place at the Russian Foreign Ministry with the participation of Sergey Lavrov, head of Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and Mikhail Gusman, First Deputy Director General of TASS. The event was also attended by representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Moscow.

The photo exhibition consists of more than 20 thematically decorated stands, which feature the agency’s archival reports from the daily bulletins of the “Bulletin of Frontline Information” and the “Bulletin of Allied Information”, photographs of the agency’s military photojournalists and posters of the “TASS Windows”.

A special feature of the exhibition is that each TASS report is visually confirmed by photographs taken during the same historical period. For example, the appeal of the Supreme Commander I.V.Stalin to the Red Army and the Allied forces is illustrated by a photograph of cavalrymen of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps of the Red Army with soldiers of the 1st US Army on the Elbe on April 25, 1945. The message about the historic victory over Germany is accompanied by the legendary TASS shot “The Banner of Victory over the Reichstag”.

In addition, the exhibition features the original texts of iconic TASS messages, including the appeal of Supreme Commander I.V.Stalin to the Red Army and Allied forces after their meeting on the Elbe, the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declaring May 9 Victory Day, the appeal of I.V.Stalin to the people in connection with the Great Victory, the letter of the head of The Provisional Government of Poland addressed the leadership of the RSFSR with the assurance of the eternal friendship of the Polish and Russian peoples.