Beginning in 1928, Zelma worked with the new handheld 35mm Leica camera and documented with a natural, lyrical understanding of the medium the stunning impact of the new Soviet state on traditional society. The photographs were widely published in Pravda Vostoka and then later in Izvestiia. This dynamic photograph of a military parade on the fifteenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution is an excellent example of the best of Soviet journalism in the 1930s. Zelma captures the cruel beauty and inherent violence of military order; the soldiers are anonymous—faceless components of a political machine.

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