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The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia
The Commissar Vanishes offers a chilling look at how one man - Joseph Stalin - manipulated the science of photography to advance his own political career and to erase memories off his victims. On Stalin's orders, purged rivals were airbrushed from group portraits, and crowd scenes were altered to depict even greater legions of the faithful. In one famous image, several Party members disappeared from an official photograph, to be replaced by a sylvan glade. For the past three decades, author and photohistorian David King has assembled the world's largest archive of photographs, posters, and paintings from the Soviet era. His collection has grown to more than a quarter of a million images, the best of which have been selected for The Commissar Vanishes. The efforts of the Kremlin airbrushers were often unintentionally hilarious. A 1919 photograph showing a large crowd of Bolsheviks clustered around Lenin, for example, became, with the aid of the retoucher, an intimate portrait of Lenin and Stalin sitting alone, and then, in a later version, of Stalin by himself. The Commissar Vanishes is nothing less than the history of the Soviet Union, as retold through falsified images, many of them published here for the first time outside Russia. In each case, the juxtaposition of the original and the doctored images yields a terrifying - and often tragically funny - insight into one of the darkest chapters of modern history.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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October 24, 2021
▫️THE COMMISSAR VANISHES: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia by David King / 1997 by Metropolitan/Henry Holt and Co.
India ink blots over faces and bodies. Airbrushing. Painting and scribbling over. Scalpels and tears.
Defacements of a photograph and erasure of a life.
A consciousness. A history.
"Photographs for publication were retouched and restructured with airbrush and scalpel to make famous personalities vanish. Paintings, too, were withdrawn from museums and art galleries so the compromising faces could be blocked out of portraits."
The books title refers specifically to the erasure of 'Commissar' Leon Trotsky, who alongside Vladimir Lenin lead the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. He infamously clashed with Joseph Stalin and was exiled and later assassinated in Mexico. Stalin campaigned to erase all images and mentions of Trotsky.
Of course, Trotsky wasn't the only one erased. Faces and names of many citizens were expunged from the records for any number of perceived infractions, and the actual people were sent to gulags, or executed outright. Even owning a book that had not been properly censored could land the owner in the gulag.
David King, a British historian and graphic designer, began collecting these censored photographs and artworks, and seeking out any publications that may have missed the knife or the brush. He amassed the large collection that makes up this book. He also details the 'cult of Stalin' and the use of visual propoganda in the Stalin Era.
The book is primarily a visual resource, but includes a good preface and introduction, detailed captions, and a bibliography with many historical notes.
A fascinating, devastating, and chilling reading experience.
King speaks of censor agents (usually unassuming elderly women) going to libraries and book stores to ensure that each new erasure was followed. They'd bring a bin with them, removing books, and inking or scalpeling out faces in photographs. Books were removed and destroyed directly, or locked into a Soviet archive, deemed not suitable for the public. For anyone who owned books in their own home, they were also expected to comply and blot or deface. Unfortunately, this also went for family photographs - faces and looking bodies removed from time and memory.
I learned of this book many years ago in a history class, and later was reminded in library school courses. Anthony Marra's novel, The Tsar of Love and Techno, includes a storyline of a character who retouched and repaints photographs and art in Stalin's Russia. The final nudge to go ahead and read it in entirety came after reading Tatyana Tolstaya's review of it in her outstanding Pushkin's Children: Writing on Russia and Russians collection that I read in August. Highly recommend both Marra and Tolstaya!
"Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
-George Orwell
India ink blots over faces and bodies. Airbrushing. Painting and scribbling over. Scalpels and tears.
Defacements of a photograph and erasure of a life.
A consciousness. A history.
"Photographs for publication were retouched and restructured with airbrush and scalpel to make famous personalities vanish. Paintings, too, were withdrawn from museums and art galleries so the compromising faces could be blocked out of portraits."
The books title refers specifically to the erasure of 'Commissar' Leon Trotsky, who alongside Vladimir Lenin lead the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. He infamously clashed with Joseph Stalin and was exiled and later assassinated in Mexico. Stalin campaigned to erase all images and mentions of Trotsky.
Of course, Trotsky wasn't the only one erased. Faces and names of many citizens were expunged from the records for any number of perceived infractions, and the actual people were sent to gulags, or executed outright. Even owning a book that had not been properly censored could land the owner in the gulag.
David King, a British historian and graphic designer, began collecting these censored photographs and artworks, and seeking out any publications that may have missed the knife or the brush. He amassed the large collection that makes up this book. He also details the 'cult of Stalin' and the use of visual propoganda in the Stalin Era.
The book is primarily a visual resource, but includes a good preface and introduction, detailed captions, and a bibliography with many historical notes.
A fascinating, devastating, and chilling reading experience.
King speaks of censor agents (usually unassuming elderly women) going to libraries and book stores to ensure that each new erasure was followed. They'd bring a bin with them, removing books, and inking or scalpeling out faces in photographs. Books were removed and destroyed directly, or locked into a Soviet archive, deemed not suitable for the public. For anyone who owned books in their own home, they were also expected to comply and blot or deface. Unfortunately, this also went for family photographs - faces and looking bodies removed from time and memory.
I learned of this book many years ago in a history class, and later was reminded in library school courses. Anthony Marra's novel, The Tsar of Love and Techno, includes a storyline of a character who retouched and repaints photographs and art in Stalin's Russia. The final nudge to go ahead and read it in entirety came after reading Tatyana Tolstaya's review of it in her outstanding Pushkin's Children: Writing on Russia and Russians collection that I read in August. Highly recommend both Marra and Tolstaya!
"Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
-George Orwell
October 31, 2025
Watch as the great 'magician' Stalin makes commissars disappear. Say the wrong thing at the wrong time - and then you are 'erased' from pictures. Orwellian and deeply disturbing, truly one of the most chilling books I have read recently. Perhaps this is another form of the abyss Nietzsche has warned us about.
August 26, 2018
--The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia
Acknowledgements
Index
Acknowledgements
Index
November 30, 2025
'He who controls the past controls the present. He who controls the present controls the future."---George Orwell
Don't be fooled into thinking that this amazing volume is one more trip into the madness of Stalinist Russia. In America the invention, re-invention and imagination of the past is at the very center of the "culture wars" and may well decide who gets to be the next president. Comrade Stalin simply took the falsification of the past to a higher level than previous rulers because he had the technology to do so. We've all seen evidence of how Trotsky was airbrushed out of all photographs depicting him during the Revolution and Civil War. The same thing happened to Bukharin, Radek, Kamenev, Zinoniev, along with sundry doctors, engineers, artists et al. What dictator would not first physically then aesthetically wipe out his enemies? But the cult of Stalin demanded more. A photo of Stalin crossing the street in Moscow was airbrushed in order to excise a man extending his arm to the chief. Stalin didn't need any help crossing the street! King details an even more bizarre form of politics as aesthetics. Stalin, during his reign, had himself depicted on film participating in the Bolshevik Revolution when, in fact, he was not even in Petrograd in October, 1917. When Khrushchev came to power he had these films put away in archives. After Brezhnev seized the helm of state he had the films brought back out for public viewing but with Stalin cut out. These expurgated films are truer to history than the original productions! Lest you think this repugnant practice is unique to Russia consider that in post-Mao China Deng had the Gang of Four, including Mao's wife, eliminated from all state photographs, in Cuba Fidel Castro's one-time editor of the Fidelista newspaper REVOLUCION, Carlos Franqui, went missing after he defected to Spain, and in the U.S.A. Oliver North was cropped out of photos showing him in the White House talking to Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contragate scandal. Today, since the internet makes it next to impossible to vanish a photo forever we have the obverse before us, viz. cropped heads and whole bodies inserted into historical and even sexual scenes that never happened. Caveat vidente!
Don't be fooled into thinking that this amazing volume is one more trip into the madness of Stalinist Russia. In America the invention, re-invention and imagination of the past is at the very center of the "culture wars" and may well decide who gets to be the next president. Comrade Stalin simply took the falsification of the past to a higher level than previous rulers because he had the technology to do so. We've all seen evidence of how Trotsky was airbrushed out of all photographs depicting him during the Revolution and Civil War. The same thing happened to Bukharin, Radek, Kamenev, Zinoniev, along with sundry doctors, engineers, artists et al. What dictator would not first physically then aesthetically wipe out his enemies? But the cult of Stalin demanded more. A photo of Stalin crossing the street in Moscow was airbrushed in order to excise a man extending his arm to the chief. Stalin didn't need any help crossing the street! King details an even more bizarre form of politics as aesthetics. Stalin, during his reign, had himself depicted on film participating in the Bolshevik Revolution when, in fact, he was not even in Petrograd in October, 1917. When Khrushchev came to power he had these films put away in archives. After Brezhnev seized the helm of state he had the films brought back out for public viewing but with Stalin cut out. These expurgated films are truer to history than the original productions! Lest you think this repugnant practice is unique to Russia consider that in post-Mao China Deng had the Gang of Four, including Mao's wife, eliminated from all state photographs, in Cuba Fidel Castro's one-time editor of the Fidelista newspaper REVOLUCION, Carlos Franqui, went missing after he defected to Spain, and in the U.S.A. Oliver North was cropped out of photos showing him in the White House talking to Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contragate scandal. Today, since the internet makes it next to impossible to vanish a photo forever we have the obverse before us, viz. cropped heads and whole bodies inserted into historical and even sexual scenes that never happened. Caveat vidente!
November 6, 2021
Recently, I've seen a lot of people on social media whining about history being erased. They freak out when a statue or the Confederate flag is removed from a place of prominence. They're upset when teachers try to bring up the history of marginalized peoples that wasn't in the textbooks from which they learned history as a child, as if those books were engraved in stone or as sacred as the Bible.
Sorry, but I don't see erasure. I see an engagement with history when a society grapples with what they value and how their story has been told. If social media snowflakes want to see what erasure really means, they need to leaf through this book and watch a dictator literally having his foes -- real and imagined -- removed from the historical record with black ink and airbrushes. They need to see people so scared of their government, they pull their own books off the shelves in their own homes and start scratching out, blotting out, and cutting out words and images that might cause them to get arrested and summarily shot.
The book itself is fascinating in the best coffee table book manner, as you flip pages and watch a photograph of four men get cropped down to three men, then airbrushed to two men, and finally end up as a solitary portrait of Stalin. It's numbing to read again and again how the disappearing men were arrested and shot, arrested and shot, arrested and shot.
So there is a lot of repetition and the dry text is cursory and assumes knowledge about the Russian Revolution and the reign of Stalin and his Great Purge of the 1930s. But the pictures pretty much tell the story.
Sorry, but I don't see erasure. I see an engagement with history when a society grapples with what they value and how their story has been told. If social media snowflakes want to see what erasure really means, they need to leaf through this book and watch a dictator literally having his foes -- real and imagined -- removed from the historical record with black ink and airbrushes. They need to see people so scared of their government, they pull their own books off the shelves in their own homes and start scratching out, blotting out, and cutting out words and images that might cause them to get arrested and summarily shot.
The book itself is fascinating in the best coffee table book manner, as you flip pages and watch a photograph of four men get cropped down to three men, then airbrushed to two men, and finally end up as a solitary portrait of Stalin. It's numbing to read again and again how the disappearing men were arrested and shot, arrested and shot, arrested and shot.
So there is a lot of repetition and the dry text is cursory and assumes knowledge about the Russian Revolution and the reign of Stalin and his Great Purge of the 1930s. But the pictures pretty much tell the story.
January 1, 2018
I know I'm not the only one reading this book who is old enough to remember a time when the photos we saw in publication were not Photoshopped, when conventional wisdom was that people lied, but photos did not.
How naive we were.
This book is proof that manipulating people through manipulated photos is nothing new, and neither is the kind of personal branding we see in the age of social media. Stalin and Lenin were masters of creating their own brand and writing their own story, and they were doing it nearly a century before anyone had heard of Facebook. Unfortunately, they weren't just retouching photos to remove a few wrinkles, smallpox scars, or extra pounds - they were using it to wipe people who fell out of favor out of history. Absolutely chilling.
How naive we were.
This book is proof that manipulating people through manipulated photos is nothing new, and neither is the kind of personal branding we see in the age of social media. Stalin and Lenin were masters of creating their own brand and writing their own story, and they were doing it nearly a century before anyone had heard of Facebook. Unfortunately, they weren't just retouching photos to remove a few wrinkles, smallpox scars, or extra pounds - they were using it to wipe people who fell out of favor out of history. Absolutely chilling.
December 30, 2015
There quite simply is no other book like this.
November 25, 2009
This is more like a coffee table book so I feel that I can claim having read it without having specifically passed my eyes over each and every word.
Great pictures and interesting history.
Great pictures and interesting history.
October 26, 2016
David King (who died last week) was a relentless documentarian of the Stalin School of Historical Falsification. With his bold designs and his passion to tell the truth about the Russian Revolution and Leon Trotsky, he did the world a great service in the battle against the continuing lies and propaganda of the capitalist press about Russian history and socialism in general. Along with his books, Ordinary Citizens (a book of photographs of innocent people about to be killed during Stalin's purges) and his monumental "Red Star over Russia" (a pictorial history and commentary on the USSR from the Revolution to the death of Stalin), he presents the results of decades of research in archives and private libraries all over the world, particularly for material about Trotsky (who was effectively erased from Soviet history by the Stalinists). There is an entire room at the Tate Modern museum in London dedicated to just a fraction of the material collected by David King over the years. This book and the others is a treasure trove. I cannot recommend it too highly. A masterwork.
March 10, 2021
The Commissar Vanishes is not a traditional read.
The book is composed of images from Stalin’s rise to power in the Soviet Union. These images are of interest to the documenter, David King, since they are part of an elaborate fiction which was forced as history onto the people of the Soviet Union for decades.
The images fall into several categories. There are the images referenced in the title, where people have been removed or faces have been scratched out due to a disagreement that arose between Stalin and the photographed parties. These are especially haunting when the blotting has been done by a scared member of the general populace in a book from one’s personal library. Related to this category, there are also many images that have been altered through airbrushing to either omit people, introduce people, or shift people around. And, lastly, there are myth-making images meant to build the lore of Stalin and of the Soviet army. This last category was my favorite, since it laid bare Stalin’s sensitive ego.
The photos are presented chronologically and start from around the early 1920s, when Stalin was still emerging on the socialist scene, making a name for himself, and vying for Lenin's attention opposite Trotsky. I imagine many of these pictures would probably hold more meaning to people more familiar with Stalin’s rise to power in the Soviet Union. As one not intimately familiar with the plot, I could follow along well enough via the provided captions.
After the first few photos, I would say that the motif becomes a bit redundant such that by the time you see another face blotted out with India ink, you’re no longer astonished by the phenomenon.
Throughout most of the book, I kept thinking about the way in which history is written and rewritten -- and often by the victors. The book presents the absolute terminus of where this takes society, where dissenters are hurriedly killed along with their families in some dark room and the population is forced to erase their faces and their existence from all forms of record. It's a terrifying thing to reflect on.
The book is composed of images from Stalin’s rise to power in the Soviet Union. These images are of interest to the documenter, David King, since they are part of an elaborate fiction which was forced as history onto the people of the Soviet Union for decades.
The images fall into several categories. There are the images referenced in the title, where people have been removed or faces have been scratched out due to a disagreement that arose between Stalin and the photographed parties. These are especially haunting when the blotting has been done by a scared member of the general populace in a book from one’s personal library. Related to this category, there are also many images that have been altered through airbrushing to either omit people, introduce people, or shift people around. And, lastly, there are myth-making images meant to build the lore of Stalin and of the Soviet army. This last category was my favorite, since it laid bare Stalin’s sensitive ego.
The photos are presented chronologically and start from around the early 1920s, when Stalin was still emerging on the socialist scene, making a name for himself, and vying for Lenin's attention opposite Trotsky. I imagine many of these pictures would probably hold more meaning to people more familiar with Stalin’s rise to power in the Soviet Union. As one not intimately familiar with the plot, I could follow along well enough via the provided captions.
After the first few photos, I would say that the motif becomes a bit redundant such that by the time you see another face blotted out with India ink, you’re no longer astonished by the phenomenon.
Throughout most of the book, I kept thinking about the way in which history is written and rewritten -- and often by the victors. The book presents the absolute terminus of where this takes society, where dissenters are hurriedly killed along with their families in some dark room and the population is forced to erase their faces and their existence from all forms of record. It's a terrifying thing to reflect on.
December 4, 2015
This book was filled with images, some just showing the defacing that happened during Stalin's reign to blot out individual that now had become enemies of the people. Other images showed the original unaltered state and the authorized officially published versions with people removed and even times when people have been moved to accommodate the need. Some alterations are crude, a simple ink blot over a person, others you have to hand it to the artist hired to airbrush and alter history, the photos showed little signs of being doctored.
The works are accompanied by descriptions of the people shown, their fate, which in most cases was an untimely death, and/or a description of the political significance behind the image. It was a crime to possess a picture of a person that had fallen out of favor, you were required to destroy the offensive work (book), remove the page(s) or ink blot out the person, including their name. Unfortunately, during this period a number of rare manuscripts ceased being in existence. It wasn't until the late 1980's when travel restrictions eased and a flood of things made their way west, even though it was still illegal to export items outside of Russia without permission.
You won't necessarily get a history lesson out of the text in this book to fill in your knowledge of Stalin and his use of Lenin, but you will still glean some knowledge and the pictures are certainly worth looking at and observing the painstaking time that went into eradicating someone from history, to murder them wasn't simply enough, all references had to be removed from the official books/records as well. 1984 anyone?
The works are accompanied by descriptions of the people shown, their fate, which in most cases was an untimely death, and/or a description of the political significance behind the image. It was a crime to possess a picture of a person that had fallen out of favor, you were required to destroy the offensive work (book), remove the page(s) or ink blot out the person, including their name. Unfortunately, during this period a number of rare manuscripts ceased being in existence. It wasn't until the late 1980's when travel restrictions eased and a flood of things made their way west, even though it was still illegal to export items outside of Russia without permission.
You won't necessarily get a history lesson out of the text in this book to fill in your knowledge of Stalin and his use of Lenin, but you will still glean some knowledge and the pictures are certainly worth looking at and observing the painstaking time that went into eradicating someone from history, to murder them wasn't simply enough, all references had to be removed from the official books/records as well. 1984 anyone?
July 8, 2016
King's fascinating partial collection of doctored propaganda photos testifies to Stalin's, and his accomplices', terror. The author's effort took years and years. I'm grateful to him for his wherewithal and determination. When the time is right, I hope he bequeaths his entire collection to a museum or library I can get to someday.
I got to see monuments to communism in freshly liberated Europe in the early 1990s. The artifice, fear, lies and pomposity required to keep themselves in power was just too much. Such a waste.
It really is a pity I.V. Dzhugashvili didn't become a priest.
I got to see monuments to communism in freshly liberated Europe in the early 1990s. The artifice, fear, lies and pomposity required to keep themselves in power was just too much. Such a waste.
It really is a pity I.V. Dzhugashvili didn't become a priest.
September 13, 2010
You wanna read a scary book? Read this one, it's scary as hell and 100% true.
On the surface it seems quite mild - a pictorial essay about changing photographs. But you have to read with your heart, imagining yourself in Stalinist Russia. There is no alternative medium by which to receive the truth - this is the truth. When people are airbrushed out of a photo, it means they have also been "airbrushed" out of existence into a gulag, or simply shot. Waves of people who befriended Stalin and lifted him up vanished into nothingness at his whim.
The truth seemed to vanish before my eyes as I turned the pages.
On the surface it seems quite mild - a pictorial essay about changing photographs. But you have to read with your heart, imagining yourself in Stalinist Russia. There is no alternative medium by which to receive the truth - this is the truth. When people are airbrushed out of a photo, it means they have also been "airbrushed" out of existence into a gulag, or simply shot. Waves of people who befriended Stalin and lifted him up vanished into nothingness at his whim.
The truth seemed to vanish before my eyes as I turned the pages.
March 7, 2019
A remarkable and deeply disturbing book documenting the systematic removal of Stalin's perceived enemies. Not just by being executed, but their removal from history. The removal from photographs and documents and portraits in an effort to erase them entirely. Perhaps most disturbing and poignant is not so much where people have been airbrushed out, often laughably badly, but those physically scrubbed from books for fear of being caught with an illegal image.
This level of paranoia in a leader of simultaneously astonishing and terrifying,and can also be seen in certain contemporary leaders.
This level of paranoia in a leader of simultaneously astonishing and terrifying,and can also be seen in certain contemporary leaders.
March 28, 2018
This book was a really fascinating look into how people were erased, obliterated, or defaced in the artistic and photographic records of the Soviet Union during the times of Stalin. In many ways, this book brought the reality and scale of the purges and political violence more than any thing else. I have not read much about this period, so that is partially a reason why. Either way, it really embodied the apocryphal Stalin quote of "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
The author did extensive research finding both the edited works where people are expunged and the originals to see who was erased. He occasionally makes rather snarky asides about some of the art work, which I found a bit odd. Our tastes in art do not align too much, but this was not too unwelcome. I have a fascination with some of the prints and the socialist realism style in general, such as Revolution on Paper: Mexican Prints 1910-1960, that may only be possible from the distant perspective of time, place, and not truly understanding the horrors that the art work attempted to gloss over.
Reading this, I could not help but think of 1984 and how people became unpersons, and it seems obvious how familiar George Orwell was with the Soviet modus operandi.
I believe this book came to my attention after reading The Tsar of Love and Techno which starts with a beautiful story, "The Leopard," about an artist who erases people out of history. Either The Commissar Vanishes was mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book, or it got me curious to see what the library had, but that is how I encountered this title, and I am glad I did. I finally tackled The Commissar Vanishes since it also works so well with the movie The Death of Stalin.
The author did extensive research finding both the edited works where people are expunged and the originals to see who was erased. He occasionally makes rather snarky asides about some of the art work, which I found a bit odd. Our tastes in art do not align too much, but this was not too unwelcome. I have a fascination with some of the prints and the socialist realism style in general, such as Revolution on Paper: Mexican Prints 1910-1960, that may only be possible from the distant perspective of time, place, and not truly understanding the horrors that the art work attempted to gloss over.
Reading this, I could not help but think of 1984 and how people became unpersons, and it seems obvious how familiar George Orwell was with the Soviet modus operandi.
I believe this book came to my attention after reading The Tsar of Love and Techno which starts with a beautiful story, "The Leopard," about an artist who erases people out of history. Either The Commissar Vanishes was mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book, or it got me curious to see what the library had, but that is how I encountered this title, and I am glad I did. I finally tackled The Commissar Vanishes since it also works so well with the movie The Death of Stalin.
October 26, 2020
Excellent book.
After Stalin muscled his way to the to of the Soviet hierarchy, he of course then started muscling Trotsky and his allies aside. Later, he threw away people he had once used, of course.
As part of this, Soviet PR flunkies began "disappearing" people from official photographs. People like commissars of people's affairs, etc.
Hence, the title of the book.
On the flip side, a subtitle could be "Stalin appears."
For various reasons, he was not at a lot of early Revolutionary events in 1917-18. So, same flunkies started cutting him in.
King has "before" and "after" documentary evidence in both cases.
In some cases, this pre-Photoshop photoshopping was easy. In some semi-hard cases, it was done crudely. In others, it was done quite skillfully. As a newspaper editor and nature photographer, while decrying the playing with history, I have to salute the skill.
After Stalin muscled his way to the to of the Soviet hierarchy, he of course then started muscling Trotsky and his allies aside. Later, he threw away people he had once used, of course.
As part of this, Soviet PR flunkies began "disappearing" people from official photographs. People like commissars of people's affairs, etc.
Hence, the title of the book.
On the flip side, a subtitle could be "Stalin appears."
For various reasons, he was not at a lot of early Revolutionary events in 1917-18. So, same flunkies started cutting him in.
King has "before" and "after" documentary evidence in both cases.
In some cases, this pre-Photoshop photoshopping was easy. In some semi-hard cases, it was done crudely. In others, it was done quite skillfully. As a newspaper editor and nature photographer, while decrying the playing with history, I have to salute the skill.
March 22, 2023
Pretty good and seemingly comprehensive work. Had some very interesting trivia facts that I haven't heard elsewhere. I appreciated that it was arranged chronologically so the reader could see how it started and how it ended. However, the arrangement of the information on the page could have been improved.
June 29, 2024
Fascinating and terrible!
July 13, 2015
- Thirty years in the making, David King's book is the product of an immense, one-man, archaeology. Joseph Stalin's censorship of photography was nothing less than the attempted falsification of history itself. Spanning the three defining chapters of his ruthless leadership of Russia (1929 to 1953): 1) his merciless "collectivisation" war against the peasantry (millions died); 2) his murderous police terror against Communist officials (and ordinary citizens) and; 3) his catastrophic political/military maleficence before and after the German invasion of 1941 - nothing of significance could be published that failed to glorify every aspect of Stalin's leadership. Stalin's political opponents were obliterated from all forms of political existence as photographs were "retouched and restructured with airbrush and scalpel to make famous personalities vanish. This book contains some of the most interesting altered images (before/after) from King's immense collection (of over 250,000 images!), complete with background explanations of who was removed and why.
- very interesting
- I really enjoyed it
- very interesting
- I really enjoyed it
March 15, 2008
This is a creepily visceral historical record. King has obtained many photographs and artworks from Stalinist Russia, and uses them to demonstrate how the historical record was changed -- often systematically -- to support the increasingly oppressive Communist regime. In many cases, he has managed to locate original photographs and their altered counterparts, to demonstrate how those who fell out of political favor were edited out of photographs and out of history. Perhaps most spooky are the pictures from books and photo albums that belonged to individuals, where people's faces are crudely blacked or cut out; often, to even own an undefaced photograph of an "enemy of the state" was enough to be considered an enemy as well. The artwork is also fascinating, as King calls a lot of attention to the propagandizing and the use of art to insert figures like Stalin into historical events that they were not actually present for. I did find myself wishing for more context at times, but this is mainly due to my own ignorance about much of the history of the Soviet Union.
April 2, 2014
A haunting collection of photographs and paintings, most from between 1905-1953, that detail the literal obliteration of Stalin's political opponents and perceived enemies of the Communist Party.
Stalin, wishing to take on the mantle (and halo) of his predecessor, Lenin, mounted a two-pronged media campaign: he had photographs and paintings doctored to make it look as though he was closer to Lenin than he actually was (Lenin grew increasingly worried about Stalin's aggressive power grabs, but was felled by a stroke before he could do more than urge his colleagues to reign Stalin in); and he decreed it a crime against the State to possess any images of people -- officials and otherwise -- who had been "eliminated." Hence we see curious posed photographs, from author David King's extensive personal collection, published years or even months apart, heavily doctored to eliminate one or many subjects. Chillingly, as time progresses, these photos become less populated -- as though the subjects never existed.
One by one, the commissars...vanish.
Stalin, wishing to take on the mantle (and halo) of his predecessor, Lenin, mounted a two-pronged media campaign: he had photographs and paintings doctored to make it look as though he was closer to Lenin than he actually was (Lenin grew increasingly worried about Stalin's aggressive power grabs, but was felled by a stroke before he could do more than urge his colleagues to reign Stalin in); and he decreed it a crime against the State to possess any images of people -- officials and otherwise -- who had been "eliminated." Hence we see curious posed photographs, from author David King's extensive personal collection, published years or even months apart, heavily doctored to eliminate one or many subjects. Chillingly, as time progresses, these photos become less populated -- as though the subjects never existed.
One by one, the commissars...vanish.
February 24, 2009
Just plain fabulous--an invigorating fusion of the comic and terrifying, and, best of all, *real*. Perhaps because I'm not a graphic designer, I'm astounded that such camera tricks were possible in the days before digital manipulation. Particular favorite: Shots of Stalin before and after his "touch-up" In the "before" photo, he looks like regular old evil Stalin; in the "after," more like Marlene Dietrich. Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!
Incidentally, if you were fascinated by this book, have a look at the recent PIGGY FOXY AND THE SWORD OF REVOLUTION, a book of truly bizarre doodles made in the margins of official documents by Stalin's henchmen during Politburo meetings. Yes, it was all fun and games until the "artists" were liquidated, one by one.
Incidentally, if you were fascinated by this book, have a look at the recent PIGGY FOXY AND THE SWORD OF REVOLUTION, a book of truly bizarre doodles made in the margins of official documents by Stalin's henchmen during Politburo meetings. Yes, it was all fun and games until the "artists" were liquidated, one by one.
August 21, 2012
Fascinating and chilling book detailing the manipulation of photographs during Stalin's rule in the U.S.S.R. This work details how Stalin's enemies were literally "air-brushed" from history as they were either exiled to Siberia or executed. Sheds light on both the political and technical aspects related to images of those who fell from Stalin's grace. Those expunged from Soviet public memory were also removed from private images. Families often self-censored family photos of the fallen to protect themselves. This book is in large format which allows for close examination of the photographic materials. Highly recommended for those interested in history and mass media.
May 30, 2008
This book examines a very specific piece of the Stalinist Soviet Union. This is kind of a coffee table book so it is mostly unadulterated and adulterated photos side by side with two to three paragraph captions next to them. Very depressing and haunting stuff.
It does assume a pretty general knowledge of the history of the time. There were points when I just had to go with the flow a little bit as there are a lot of names that are all thrown at you with relatively little detail given to distinguish one from another.
It does assume a pretty general knowledge of the history of the time. There were points when I just had to go with the flow a little bit as there are a lot of names that are all thrown at you with relatively little detail given to distinguish one from another.
August 22, 2017
This book is worth it alone for the many painstakingly sourced before and after shots of each censored picture. However the accompanying text is also informative and disturbing. Particularly when it explains how this censorship was carried out not just by party officials, but even by individual citizens who rushed to comprehensively obliterate cherished close family members from privately held photo albums and publications, as soon as those family members fell out of favour with the leadership of the state.
Want to read
September 19, 2008A friend recently reminded me that I spent a couple late hours pouring through her copy of this fascinating book last March, long after everyone else had fallen asleep. It's eerie, quietly terrifying, and absolutely stunning. Now I just have to run down a copy somewhere...
July 21, 2010
Scandalous! Propaganda!
This is great. Actually horrific.
I had no idea that Latvians were considered "disciplined and non-squeamish" and therefore filled the Cheka (the acronym stands for "Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counterrevolution and Sabotage). What'll they think of next?
This is great. Actually horrific.
I had no idea that Latvians were considered "disciplined and non-squeamish" and therefore filled the Cheka (the acronym stands for "Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counterrevolution and Sabotage). What'll they think of next?
April 25, 2011
Incredible.
These photographs and their morphings will astound you. Many of them sent shivers up my spine. Perhaps the scariest moment is when you realize that Khrushchev continued on with the habit. Must read for anyone remotely interested in the Stalin era and/or totalitarianism.
These photographs and their morphings will astound you. Many of them sent shivers up my spine. Perhaps the scariest moment is when you realize that Khrushchev continued on with the habit. Must read for anyone remotely interested in the Stalin era and/or totalitarianism.
September 12, 2007
This is an incredible collection of photographs doctored during Stalin's reign. If you were killed, you were quite literally rubbed right out of history. It's a haunting collection.
December 7, 2007
A chilling document about one tyrant's ability to decide what is a reality and what is not. A morbidly fascinating book.
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