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Summary: Filling in the blanks
Review: "We can always find another widow for Lenin." So threatened Stalin to Lenin's real widow Krupskaya, whom he hated. So absolute was the Communist Party's hold on all aspects of public life in Russia in Stalin's reign, that famous people, who had been praised to the skies just the week before, could be utterly effaced from the public's mind through sheer terror. Once someone fell from favor with the dictator, his name and picture were erased from the public record--even books critical of the person could be proscribed--and to even mention his name might mean prison or worse. This book is the author's attempt to trace the trail of falsification through Stalin-era photos and artworks. It is a testament to the censor's thoroughness that the trail is quite incomplete. In many cases, the author hasn't been able to find even the name of the extirpated individual in the before-and-after photos. Some of the examples given here were taken from the folio albums of the Soviet photographer Rodchenko. After the bureaucrats he had photographed were arrested and shot, he went to work inking and scissoring out his own work, the images of the new non-persons. The heroic photomontages, with the jut-jawed Bolsheviks vanguarding the masses, are appalling when you think of how many would later be arrested, tortured into accusing themselves of the most heinous, yet baseless, crimes, and then shot. The damned were airbrushed out of the picture, replaced with a stripped-in comrade, or a painted-in pillar or staircase, sometimes leaving a shoe or elbow that the retoucher missed. The Western mind shudders at the slavish worship that Stalin had at his command, to cause such colossal lies to be perpetuated. Read this big, lavishly illustrated book, and get the real picture.
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Summary: Fabulous
Review: A terrific historical document. Graphically captures the paranoia and retroactive history making that was Stalinism.
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Summary: Fabulous
Review: A terrific historical document. Graphically captures the paranoia and retroactive history making that was Stalinism.
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Summary: A rare gem
Review: A true gem of a book, dealing with a subject that is much overlooked. As the inspiration for Orwell's 1984 revising history, it is a chilling look at early Soviet attempts to rewrite history by erasing people from photos. Watching a photo of 5 men dwindle down to a picture of one as the others are disgraced, imprisoned, killed and then erased is just mindblowing! Whether you are a fan of Soviet history (i'm not) or not, the cold war touched us all and this book documents it in the entirety
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Summary: Utterly engrossing
Review: I was very lucky to see the collaboration between composer Michael Nyman (of 'The Piano') and David King this year in a sort of son et lumière of Nyman's music and King's images. King only used a mere handful (10 at most) of pictures from "The Commissar Vanishes" for the concert, and on the strength of those, I bought the book. For the show, King used only photographs which had been defaced - those faces eerily blacked out with india ink, faces cut from group portraits leaving unsettling holes. I had little idea that the book would include so much more fascinating evidence of the way in which Stalin changed history by retouching and manipulating images to suit his own highly manipulated image. Particularly haunting are those pictures in which one person after another is removed, the image subjected to so much cutting and airbrushing that what is left is a painting rather than a photograph. Or the gradual morphing of an image of Stalin and Lenin together to produce rather odd paintings and statues where Stalin goes from being Lenin's bosom buddy to some sort of powerful giant, towering over the weak and submissive Lenin. None of which ever happened - even the original image of the two leaders sitting together was clearly fabricated. There are lots of chances to play an absorbing version 'Spot the Difference' with pictures that have had objects like buildings, groups of people, litter and banners moved, removed, changed, or replaced altogther, usually by something far less politically threatening. Not only is "The Commissar Vanishes' fascinating, it is also very well put together; the images, which are stories in themselves, are acccompanied by well written text which is arresting in its simplicity. This is one of the best books I've read in the last year; a book of great quality, and perfect for those interested in communism, dystopias or the media.
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Summary: Gone and Forgotten
Review: There is a secret inside this book. Inside is a collage showing about 200 people. These people were instrumental in getting Russia's October Revolution off the ground. Stalin is not one of these people. Therefore, to maintain the myth that Stalin and Lenin were the "Two Leaders" of the Revolution, Stalin had to kill off three quarters of the people on the collage because they "knew too much." And the great purges are what the rest of the book is about. Stalin, more than anyone else in history, has altered the past to serve the present. His censors have visibly altered old photographs in order to remove the latest denounced "traitor to the working class" (or whatever) from old group photographs. With the old Soviet archives now open to the public and ex-Soviet citizens now free to view the unaltered archives in the West, we can see today how extensive this process was. Trotsky, his chief opponent, was systematically removed from thousands of photographs -- those where he stood next to Lenin. With Trotsky gone, the 'Trotskyists' (however Commrade Stalin defined them) were next. The group photos had to be cropped in order to cover up the dwindling number of Revolutionary heroes. The comparison between the 'before' and 'after' pictures is chilling reminder of the immense suffering that Stalin caused to people who were as dedicated to the same ideals as he was -- but not as ruthless.
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Summary: Fascinating - even revealing of bungling bureaucracy
Review: This book is fascinating. I really appreciate the explanation of the individuals involved, as most people are not familiar with all the enemies of Stalin who were victims of the man and his underlings' airbrush. The alterations of photographs are at times sophisticated, but at other times so clumsy it reveals that even the Soviet propaganda machine, in the middle of Stalinist terror, would slip into "government work" syndrome. I suppose even Soviets get senioritis. The book also reminds me of a personal experience. In around 1979, (communist) China invaded (communist) Vietnam. A high-ranking Vietnamese Communist Party official, Hoang Van Hoan, defected to Beijing. That year, I attended an exhibit of photographs. There's a picture of the Vietnamese Politburo, and to one side, there's a blacked-out shadow of an absent member. I was only 15 years old, but smart enough to realize that that was where Hoang Van Hoan stood. That was thirty years after Stalin died, in a country thousands of miles away. How a dictator's legacy can reach so long and so far. Amazing.
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Summary: Unbelievable illustrated history of Soviet-style propaganda
Review: This is a great book for all readers interested in how modern totalitarian propaganda works. My family comes from USSR, so I learned much from my grandparents about the events of the 1930s. They told me stories of people "taken in" at midnight after telling a lunchtime joke two days earlier. My grandfather was, in fact, one of those people. Luckily, that was the time when NKVD chief Yezhov was himself "disappeared" and replaced with new chief Beria. My grandfather was later released without permanent physical damage. This makes it even more interesting to see how cleanly were the NKVD ranks decimated after each purge. There is a 1922 picture on page 90 of the 12 of the top leadership of Cheka. All of them have been executed before 1940, except the few who were lucky enough to die on their own earlier. Makes it easier to understand the secret of a successful dictatorship - eliminate all potential rivals before they even realize who they are. The only problem I have with this book is that it needlessly glorifies the victims of Stalin's purges. All those "good" Communists ascended the ranks of Soviet government because they themselves killed millions of Russians, Ukrainians and others. An example of this is a note on page 100 about Sergo Ordjonikidze. It says that "he committed suicide in 1937, ... in protest against Stalin's murderous policies." Right above this line, it says that he was a "political commissar in the Red Army during the Civil War." He led the Red Army to destroy a moderate left-wing government in Georgia and killed most of its leaders in 1920-21. Also, he was "a key figure in the massive Five-Year Plan." Plus, he was in charge of collectivizing southern Russia and Caucasus mountain regions. He must have been responsible for tens of thousands of murders of innocent civilians during his career. It obviously did not bother him to send non-Communist peasants to Siberia when the Party directed him to do so. So I don't think he and people like him deserve any sympathy for the suffering they were dealt. These people wanted to play God and rebuild the world in their own image. They obviously had to destroy the existing world before they could rebuild it. To that end, they happily killed many people. To their surprise they found out they could not control the monster they unleashed. Oops, tough luck. This book shows the kind of behavior that such efforts lead to.
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Summary: Stuff of History, Stuff of Nightmares
Review: What would it take to make Hell on earth seem real to you? This profoundly disturbing book had that effect for me. It might be possible to view this book as humorous. Mr. King's years of patient scholarship have unearthed unmarred originals of photographs that he presents with little or no comment next to what are frequently crudely butchered falsifications of those who fell out of favor with Stalin. Particularly in the age of computer photomanipulation, the alterations are initially comical to twenty-first century eyes. As one works through the book, however, the comic effect is obliterated by mute evidence of the sheer numbers of people who were expunged year after year from the historical record. Particularly frightening are the official portraits self-censored by relatives of the now-deceased in hopes of forestalling the same fate. Although not strictly a falsification, of particular interest to me was a picture of the document officially expelling Leon Trotsky from the Communist Party, complete with angry annotations in the margin by Comrade Trotsky himself. I'd like to believe that the very existence of this book and its photographic record, despite the Soviet attempt of many years to rewrite history, proves that no regime can stifle all unflattering facts about itself for all time. But then I wonder in how many cases, about how many people, they might have been successful. By all means, read this book. Be a witness. Remember the dead. But be warned. The stuff of this history is indeed the stuff of nightmares.
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Summary: Orwell Was Right On The Money
Review: When Orwell's novel "1984" came out, many on the left scoffed at his portrayal of the lengths a totalitarian regime would go to rewrite history. Surely he was being extreme. "The Commissar Vanishes", this marvelous, funny, horrifying book, demostrates how right Orwell was. Example after example is presented of photographs being retouched and artwork being redrawn. It all adds up to a portrait of political reality that a schizophrenic could easily recognize. Especially haunting are the blacked-out faces of fallen figures--someone simply took a pen to their pictures, thus objectifying their oftern horrible real-life fates. Just think what a current like-minded government could do with today's computer-imaging technology. Old George is still relevant; this side of human nature has not gone away.
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