Final Slav Day Post — Stalin and the Art of Photo Manipulation.Being a Soviet politician or bu
Final Slav Day Post — Stalin and the Art of Photo Manipulation.Being a Soviet politician or bureaucrat during the days of Stalin was a lot like being in the mafia, you never knew when you could get wacked. One year you could be declared a “Hero of the Soviet Union”, the next year you could be making gravel in Siberia or occupying space in a mass grave. As politicians and friends of Soviet leader Josef Stalin fell out of favor and were killed, they left a record of their existance in photograph. Thus Stalin actually commissioned a special group of photographers to dig up old photo’s and edit them, removing comrades who had been killed in purges, leaving noticable gaps in historic photo’s, and making it seem as if they never existed.Stalin’s death in 1953 ushered in a period of De-Stalinization, a period in which the cult of personality for Stalin was dismantled by new Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev. Kruschev, taking a page from Stalin’s playbook, had Stalin removed from photo’s, film, statues, and even renamed Stalingrad to Volgograd. -- source link
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