Onokhin, Daniil Fedorovich

Born on September 25, 1914 in the village of Kutanga, Onega District, Arkhangelsk Region, in a peasant family. In the 1930s. following the elder brothers Mikhail, Ivan and Nikolai and sister Anna ^[2] arrived at the Kirov Polar Experiment Station of the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry (Kola Peninsula), where he worked as an agricultural engineer under the leadership of Academician IG Eichfeld ^[3] for six years. From the hands of I. G. Eichfeld he received the first photography lessons for fixing the results of selection work. From there he was sent to Leningrad, where he mastered color and micrographs in the photo laboratory of the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry. Before the war, he graduated in absentia from two-year courses of photojournalists at Soyuzfoto in Moscow ^[4] . After moving to the city of Kirov (Kirov region), he worked as a press photographer for the newspaper Komsomolskoye Tribe. During the Great Patriotic War, he was a photographer of the political department of the 311st rifle Dvinskaya Red Banner Order of the Suvorov Division , military commissar of the division newspaper Za Rodiny. After the war he was a correspondent for the newspaper Kirovskaya Pravda ^[5] , his own TASS correspondent in the Kirov region. Being a retired he worked at the Kirov Agricultural Institute . He died on January 23, 2003 in Kirov .

The mission of the chronicler of the war, D. F. Onokhin, was formulated in his book From Vyatka to Elba:

“I had the fate of witnessing great events, participating in great battles. I am a photographer, but behind me is a sniper rifle, a faithful companion over my shoulder is the FED camera. I try to see everything, capture everything on film ... ”

- ^[6]

The main task of the divisional photographer was to make photographs for the party tickets of the members of the CPSU (b) and to create a photo chronicle of the 311st division. But besides this, D. F. Onokhin was entrusted with photographing the enemy’s advanced positions in the reconnaissance team and creating photographs for the commission to investigate the atrocities of the fascists.

The photographs were made by Daniel Onokhin in the most difficult field conditions, often at low temperatures, in the woods near the fire, which required a photographer who shot a film camera with great skill and ingenuity. The development of photographic film was done on halts under a pile of soldiers' overcoats or in a cart at the time of movement under the cloak ^[7] , and the printing of photographs was done in an original portable photo lab made according to the drawings of DF Onokhin. Exposure of the image to photographic paper was due to the absence of electricity using normal daylight ^[8] . During long bombardments of advanced positions, photographic materials and finished photographs had to be saved at the risk of their lives ^[9] .

As the Kirovskaya Pravda newspaper wrote about the front-line photographs of Daniel Onokhin, “when you look at the photos, at first you don’t think about the technical side of their performance, they amaze with their content and expressiveness. And only then, having imagined what efforts it took for the photographer to take these photos in front-line conditions, you realize that DF Onokhin made a great civil feat ” ^[10] .

The photo chronicle of the 311st division includes 320 images, starting with a snapshot of the solemn support of the Red Banner before the division's formation on the day of its departure to the front, and ending with a photograph of the group of soldiers of the division against the defeated Reichstag. Beyond the photo chronicle of the combat path of the division, there are more than 20 thousand photographs of soldiers and officers printed on the membership cards of members of the CPSU (b), as well as historical monuments and views of Berlin and Leipzig, in particular, the image of Adolf Hitler's apartment ^[11]

In 1975, DF Onokhin published the book From Vyatka to Elba: Notes by the War Correspondent, written on the basis of his military diaries and illustrated with his own original photographs. The book was highly appreciated by contemporaries who survived the war. In particular, the Kirov writer B. A. Porfiryev called it, unlike the memoirs of military leaders, “perhaps the only book that paints the heroic path of the division from the standpoint of an ordinary soldier, and not from the standpoint of a commander or military historian”, but the Kirov regional organization of the Writers' Union The USSR gave positive recommendations for the publication of a book in the Volga-Vyatka book publishing house ^[12] .

The author has prepared a manuscript of the second edition of the book From Vyatka to Elba, but it did not see the light. After the death of D. F. Onokhina, the typewritten text of the second edition was transmitted to the State Archives of the Kirov Region ^[13] .

Exhibitions of front-line photographs of Daniel Onokhin were exhibited in the cities of Kirov, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kirishi, Arkhangelsk, Daugavpils ^[12] .

In 2007, N. N. N. Nikulin , a book by the State Hermitage Museum, published a book entitled Memoirs on the War, illustrated by military photographs of Onokhin D. F. and German photographer Hendrik Viers.

In 2010, the memoirs of the former commander of the 311th rifle division, Lieutenant-General B. A. Vladimirov, “Comdiv. From Sinyavino Heights to Elba ”with front-line photographs of D. F. Onokhin.

For the 65th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the Administration for Archives of the Kirov region prepared an electronic textbook and a book of documentary essays on the participation of the Kirov people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. under the title "You can not Forget", where photos of D. F. Onokhin were used ^[14] .

Expositions of original front-line photographs of D. F. Onokhin are available in museum collections:

1. Kirov Regional Museum of Regional Studies (Kirov) ^[15] .
2. Kirishsky Historical Museum of Local Lore - a branch of the State Budgetary Educational Establishment LO "Museum Agency" (Kirishi, Leningrad region) ^[16]
3. House of Russian foreign them. A. Solzhenitsyn (Moscow) ^[17]

1. Onokhin DF From Vyatka to Elba: notes from a war correspondent. Gorky, 1975.
2. Nikulin N.N. Memories of war. SPb, 2007.
3. Onokhin D. Excursion to Berlin and Leipzig. - Vyatka region, number 82-83 dated May 1, 1994.
4. Galkina N. With a camera in life. - Kirovskaya Pravda, No. 220, dated September 25, 1984.
5. Onokhin D. F. After baptism of fire (manuscript of unpublished chapter of the book). - Almanac of the regional library "Herzenka: Vyatsky notes" No. 17.
6. Onokhin D. With a "watering can" and a pad. - Winners: Sat. - SPb., 2005. - p. 21-22. Memories of the photographer about the battles in August 1941 near Kirishi.
7. Eichfeld, IG Onohinsky breed. - Pulse Khibiny. - L., 1984.
8. Do you remember, comrade ...: "Kirov truth" - 80: a collection of essays, articles, notes. Kirov, 1997.
9. Onokhin D.F. From Vyatka to Elba. We are on the Oder. - Encyclopedia of the land Vyatka. Kirov, 1999. Volume 3.
10. A. A. Pechenkin. From Vyatka to Elba: the combat path of the 311st rifle division - the City that forged the victory (Book II). Kirov, 2012. P.250-264.
11. Chetverikov O. Our dead will not leave us in trouble. On the 100th anniversary of DF Onokhin. - Vyatka region, number 157 of September 23, 2014.

• D. F. Onokhin on the website of the State Archive of the Kirov region .
• DF Onokhin on the website "War Album" .
• D. F. Onokhin on the website of the Government of the Arkhangelsk region .