The Commissar Vanishes: the Falsifcation of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia
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David King. The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997. 192 pp. $35.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8050-5294-7. Reviewed by Tamara Machmut-Jhashi Published on H-Russia (November, 1998) Although it would seem impossible to imag‐ Airbrushing has long been a tool of the pho‐ ine a context in which the names Pablo Picasso tographer, for smoothing out complexions or con‐ and Joseph Stalin could be linked, there is one cealing imperfections. But this device placed in fundamental concept that both men understood the hands of Soviet photographers in the 1930s and manipulated: art is a lie that helps us under‐ and 1940s soon surpassed any of the bags of tricks stand the truth. Picasso exploited this notion to used by Hollywood retouchers. The subject of revolutionize the artistic vocabulary of the twen‐ King's photographic study is made evident even tieth century, while Stalin took this idea to its before the reader opens the book; the front jacket most sinister and horrific conclusion: to create a illustrates a sequence of three photographs and a visual vocabulary in order to write his own ver‐ painting, based on a photo taken in Leningrad in sion of Russia's revolutionary history. The British 1926. At that time a snapshot was taken of Stalin photo historian David King has published an ex‐ surrounded by three others: Nikolai Antipov, traordinary collection of photographs falsified Sergei Kirov, and Nikolai Shvernik. In each subse‐ during Stalin's time that tell the story of the Soviet quent photograph a member of the foursome is Union through the lenses of the Stalin cult. As the omitted from the original until only Kirov and book jacket explains, King compiled the images in Stalin remain. The fnal work of the sequence, a the book using photographs, posters, and art from painting created by Isaak Brodsky in 1929, is his own collection that numbers more than a based on Stalin's image in the photograph. Now quarter million images. King began collecting pre- the leader is depicted alone--the sole and all-pow‐ falsified Soviet photographs in 1970 in an effort erful hero. that Stephen F. Cohen, professor of Russian Stud‐ King's photo study brings to light the exten‐ ies and History at Princeton University, describes sive use of cropping, clipping, and airbrushing in the preface as "heroic--the product of an im‐ techniques in Stalinist Russia to create a "correct‐ mense, one-man archaeology" (p. 7). ed" history of the times. As the author states in the H-Net Reviews introduction: "The physical eradication of Stalin's appearing from photographs, or are sometimes political opponents at the hands of the secret po‐ scratched out with heavy pen, especially with the lice was swiftly followed by their obliteration onset of the Great Purges in the 1930s. A photo‐ from all forms of pictorial existence" (p. 7). The graph taken in March 1919, of twenty delegates to basic aims of falsifying photographs in Stalinist the Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party, was Russia were two sides of the same coin: removing published in its entirety in the Soviet Union only any trace of Stalin's political enemies while at the seventy years later. More than two thirds of the same time creating a visual hagiography of the men perished under Stalin. This photograph also leader. Not only were photographs part of this pictured Lenin, Stalin, and Kalinin seated side by process but virtually the entire artistic production side. This trio was later cropped from the original, in Russia, including painting, sculpture, and the and later Kalinin too was removed. graphic arts beginning in the 1930s, was directed Eliminating fgures from group photos at mythologizing Stalin. Painting is touched upon through cropping and clipping was one avenue of in the book, but King wisely limits his discussion falsification. King reproduces the famous photo‐ to a few relevant examples. graph taken by G. P. Goldshtein of Lenin address‐ The author interestingly points out that only ing the troops outside the Bolshoi Theater on 5 about a dozen photographs existed of Stalin from May 1920. One of the most widely published revo‐ his birth in 1879 until he was appointed General lutionary photographs, it became an icon of the Secretary in 1922, a situation that made it difficult Russian revolution. The original photograph in‐ to create a viable visual history of the leader and cluded the fgures of Trotsky and Kamenev, but his accomplishments (minor and obscure, to be reproductions of the photo, down through the sure, in this period), no matter how skilled the Gorbachev era, were always cropped to eliminate hands of the retoucher. For that reason, paintings the two. The legacy of this photograph extended and sculptures could compensate for the lack of into the realm of painting: it was the basis for a documentary material and embellish the real na‐ large scale canvas executed by Isaak Brodsky in ture of Stalin's position. "The bronze Stalin, the 1933 that became one of the most recognized ex‐ marble Stalin, were invulnerable to the bullets of amples of socialist realist painting; reproductions the 'Zinovievite bandits.' The fesh and blood Stal‐ of his canvas numbered in the millions and in could safely stay out of the public gaze. Sculp‐ earned Brodsky an exalted position in the pan‐ ture became the real Stalin-heavy, ponderous, im‐ theon of accepted socialist realist artists. mortal" (p. 13). The entire socialist realist endeav‐ Another famous photograph, of Lenin and or in painting and sculpture was geared toward Stalin seated together outdoors in Gorki during facilitating the cult of hero worship in the 1930s. Lenin's illness, is unquestionably a fake. Taken The Commissar Vanishes is a handsomely de‐ from different sources, the two images are crude‐ signed book, in coffee-table format, and is lav‐ ly joined in an effort to bolster Stalin's position in ished with hundreds of photographs. With so the critical period during Lenin's illness in 1922. many reproductions, the book is surprisingly af‐ King includes the subsequent works that exploit‐ fordable. Altered versions of photographs are ed the image of the two in the photograph. In an shown side by side or on adjacent pages with the aptly titled section, "The Stalin School of Petrifica‐ originals so that the reader is spared the annoy‐ tion," King reproduces two large scale sculptures ance of constantly fipping pages. King presents based on the falsified photo. One, completed in his material chronologically, beginning with the 1938, depicts the two men seated on a bench en‐ 1917 revolution. Party members come and go, dis‐ gaged in conversation. Lenin seems to offer wise 2 H-Net Reviews counsel to the future leader, who sits in rapt at‐ charged with spying for Japan and shot; the moth‐ tention. The other piece, displayed in 1949 at a er was killed as the wife of an enemy of the peo‐ large exhibition entitled "Joseph Vissarionovich ple. Stalin in the Visual Arts," now depicts Stalin One of the most compelling sequences of im‐ standing, towering over the seated Lenin, clearly ages in King's book is the reproduction of several in a commanding position. No subtlety in the mes‐ pages of a photo album titled "Ten Years in Uzbek‐ sage here, neither is there evidence of the pock‐ istan" created in 1934 by the celebrated avant- marked skin, shriveled arm, or Stalin's actual fve- garde artist of the 1910s and 1920s, Alexander foot, four-inch frame. Rodchenko. King found a copy of the album Many of the photographs in King's book are among Rodchenko's own collection of books and published for the frst time, including a dramatic magazines, still in the bookshelves of the artist's group portrait of the prosecutor-general of the apartment-studio in Moscow, which is today occu‐ Supreme Soviet, Andrei Vyshinsky, surrounded by pied by members of the artist's family. King de‐ his staff of 228 men and women. Taken in 1934, scribes the discovery of the album: "Looking in‐ "these are the faces of the bureaucrats who pro‐ side Rodchenko's copy of 'Ten Years of Uzbekistan' cessed the lies, in the guise of socialist justice, that was like opening the door onto the scene of a ter‐ sent millions of people to be destroyed in the Gu‐ rible crime. A major purge of the Uzbek leader‐ lag" (p. 121). It is a remarkable photograph, horri‐ ship by Stalin in 1937, three years after the book's fying in its own way, for it literally injects a real publication, meant that many of the official por‐ element on all the "faceless bureaucrats" who traits of Party functionaries in the album had to were the necessary cogs in carrying out Stalin's be destroyed...The names of those who had been paranoid directives. Needless to say, part of the arrested or had 'disappeared' could no longer be horror of this group photo lies in the fact that mentioned, nor could their pictures be kept with‐ many of those photographed were themselves out the greatest risk of arrest. Petty informants purged by the end of the decade. were everywhere. The walls really did have ears" King's book also includes the tragic story of (p. 10). the little girl who was photographed with Stalin in Over the span of eight pages, King reproduces 1936 at a Kremlin reception. There the six-year the defacement of the album by the artist himself. old Gelya Markizova presented Stalin with a bou‐ Faces and names are blocked out ominously in quet of fowers, whereupon Stalin embraced the heavy pen and brush marks.