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Book Review, © Copyright 1999, Jim Loy
Subtitled "The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia," this book is a collection of Soviet photographs and art, depicting the leaders of the Soviet Union. As you examine each photograph, something very eery happens. The next photograph is the same, except that one man, or two, or three, have vanished from the photograph. And, over and over, Stalin is the only man left in the photo. Sometimes one of the men reappears. Sometimes more people disappear in subsequent copies of the same photo. These people were executed, or died of natural causes, and three of them committed suicide in protest to Stalin's policies. Sometimes a cheering crowd has the same faces over and over throughout the crowd. Sometimes Lenin is staring off to the side, and in another version of the same photograph he is looking affectionately at Stalin, and is touching Stalin's arm.
This is a fascinating book. You see these men (and a woman) disappear, and the assasinations take on an immediacy that history has dulled.
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