In 1905, the Russian army surrounded a group of 67 dead Russian soldiers from the Battle of Mukden near a mass grave. Russian soldiers dug a mass grave with shovels around the group of bodies.

　 In 1905, the Russian army surrounded a group of 67 dead Russian soldiers from the Battle of Mukden near a mass grave. Russian soldiers dug a mass grave with shovels around the group of bodies. The Battle of Mukden was one of the largest land battles of the Russo-Japanese War and the last decisive land battle. It broke out on February 20th 1905 when the Japanese attacked the left wing of the Russian army. On February 27th, the Japanese 4th Army attacked the right wing, and other Japanese forces attacked the Russian front line. On the same day, the Japanese army began a wide-ranging movement to the northwest of Mukden. The Battle of Mukden (present-day Shenyang) in Manchuria was fought between the Japanese and Russian armies from February 20 to March 10, 1905. Around 610,000 people took part in the battle, and around 164,000 were killed or wounded. It was also the largest battle in world history at the time. By March 7, General Kuropatkin had begun to completely withdraw from the Battle of Mukden in order to retreat from the Japanese army to the west of Mukden.

　　In Imperial Russia, Viktor Bulla became a war photographer for the Siberian Reserve Brigade as a 19-year-old second lieutenant during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. During the Russo-Japanese War, he photographed the battles of the Daling Pass and Mukden, the actions at Eldagou, Zuniou, Sandep, Lanafan and Petrov's Hill, the attack on General Mikhenko, and other important incidents of the war. Viktor's frontline reports were widely published in the most popular illustrated magazines “Niva” (The Battlefield) and “Iskri” (The Spark), as well as in major Russian newspapers, and were reprinted around the world.

　　After returning to Russia, he joined the Carl family photography agency, which had the exclusive right to produce official photographs of the Russian imperial court, government and military activities. Viktor created large-scale photo galleries of World War I, the Russian Revolution and the Civil War, and effectively became the official photographer of the early Soviet government. As a precaution, by 1935, around 200,000 of his photographs had been confiscated by the government archives. On June 23rd 1938, he was arrested on false charges, tortured into confessing to espionage against the Soviet Union, and shot in October 1938. Viktor's name was erased from all official documents until Gorbachev's perestroika in the late 1980s.