Reddit reviews The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia

I remembered a similar photograph from my copy of the book The Commissar Vanishes (by the way this is a fantastic book). So I paged over and found yet a different version in the book, as well as a two statues and a gravure.

I can't be sure if these two ever hung out together in Gorki, but the author suggest the opposite. The author, David King, talks about Stalin's people creating thousands of sculptures, paintings, and photographs of these two together to exaggerate their relationship.

According to David King:
>In fact, Lenin had become increasingly alarmed that Stalin was growing too powerful and, in spite of his ill health, tried to break off all relations with him. Lenin had suffered his first stroke in May 1922. The Politburo needed someone to take overall responsibility for him; they chose the recently appointed General Secretary Stalin. More strokes follow, however, leaving Lenin partially paralyzed, and he spent most of the final months of his life resting in Gorki.

King goes on to say that in 1923 artist Yuri Annenkov went to draw Lenin and was disappointed by his state: "wrapped in a blanket and looking past us with the helpless, twisted, babyish smile of a man in his second infancy, Lenin could serve only as an illustration of his illness, and not as a model for a portrait." If his health was this bad in 1923, it isn't believable that he sat for this portrait in 1924. Also the other faked photographs of them sitting in front of that railing are dated 1922.

I can tell you that from my own observation (I am a photographer), the image looks faked. The film grain on Stalin's portion of the photograph has a completely different quality to Lenin's. The lighting doesn't look quote right either -- look at how much deeper the shadow the camera left side of his face is in comparison to the much more open shadow on Lenin's. Also focus seems to fall off immediately between Stalin's arm and Lenin, there is no progressive loss of sharpness like you would see if they had been photographed at the same time and on the same piece of film.

This really is very likely a fake photograph. Stalin's regime was really good at making them.

EDIT: Also Lenin died January 21, 1924. Makes the date of the photograph even more suspect.

https://www.amazon.com/Commissar-Vanishes-Falsification-Photographs-Stalins/dp/0805052941

Yeah, no need for the diatribe here my friend, because while point #1 is definitely true, your #2 and #3 are the real blatant kickers here!

I mean, it is not like the Soviets would ever "photoshop" images for propaganda reasons, right? If you ever wanna read a great book about it, check out The Commissar Vanishes, that goes into extensive detail about Soviet photo manipulation efforts.

If you're interested in examples of this, check out The Commissar Vanishes [amazon]

And here's the titular vanishing of Commissar Yezhov.

It's a fine companion to Nineteen Eighty-four, as this was Winston Smith's job.

The Soviet Union was very committed to image manipulation. Flip through "The Commissar Vanishes" (or on Amazon) some time if you'd like to see what they were able to do back in Stalin's time. (far before electronic techniques, of course)