books:

	The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia David King Metropolitan Books, 1997 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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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First rate

Splendid blending of text and photographs. I gave this book to my teenage son as he was reading "1984" for a school assignment. He was impressed with the book on its own merits. The pictures draw you in, and I think this is especially true for teens. I could also see that it helped my son understand that Orwell's fiction was everyday life for the people of the Soviet Union.


WOW.

I saw this book just today, in History class. Like another reviewer, i had previously read 1984, and thought it was great, but a little far fetched. would they *really* go to all those lengths to distort history? Well, "The Commissar Vanishes" answered my question. I don't think i've ever seen something so... wow.

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Fabulous

A terrific historical document. Graphically captures the paranoia and retroactive history making that was Stalinism.


Soviet pictures don't always tell the truth

This book beautifully illustrates the thought-control practiced by the Communists in the Stalin era. Although everyone who has studied Soviet history as come across references to people being "cut out" of photos or history being rewritten this book actually SHOWS the reader the process and, more important, the stories behind many of these edits.

Soviet books I had access to in the 1980s always seem to have grainy photographs... whether by design or by accident these types of photos were easier to doctor. People who were no longer in favor or whose presence in a photo put a lie to the politically-correct version of history then in vogue were taken out, sometimes in a way that made the change undetectable and in other cases quite crudely. Another shocking aspect of thought-control was that in many cases it was done by citizens themselves, inking out printed images of those known to be out of favor with the Party or cutting pictures from books because they contained "unpeople." This practice is what gave Orwell some of the ideas he used in 1984.

I shudder to think what Photoshop would have done for the Communist Party. It might have forestalled the Fall of the Wall for ten years!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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