Joseph Stalin - a man of the era, one of the great people of the twentieth century, who determined his course. He ruled the fate of people and peoples of the vast empire that developed in the twentieth year.
His personalities give different assessments: from enthusiastically exalted to negatively dramatic, and legends are associated with his name. It is no coincidence that even Stalin’s photos are often covered with fleur of secrecy, and even the most ordinary pictures are surrounded by rumors and stories.
Behind the high Kremlin wall
On this, which has repeatedly appeared in Russian and foreign media, a photo of Stalin is captured with his daughter Svetlana. They seem to be a happy and sunny family, but inside the family, fenced off from prying eyes by the high Kremlin wall, a tangle of conflicts and contradictions was brewing.
It is known that Svetlana Alliluyeva had a difficult relationship with her father. Joseph Vissarionovich loved his daughter in his own way, as he could, and his love and guardianship often became what strangled her. Later, after interpersonal discord, Svetlana will gain an understanding of the political role of Stalin. Already in exile, recalling the years spent in the USSR, Lana Peters (that was her name now) will leave such lines about her father:
Kremlin walls around, secret police in the house, at school, in the kitchen. A devastated, fierce man, fenced off by wall from old colleagues, from friends, from relatives, from the whole world, together with his accomplices turned the country into a prison where everything alive and thinking was executed; the man who caused fear and hatred among millions of people is my father ...
Koba: Joseph Dzhugashvili in his youth
The picture taken in the police station in 1902 is one of Stalin’s rare photographs in his youth, it was taken before he became the first in the party ranks, he would actively join the power struggle and form a ossified, well-recognized image of the leader.
Then his name was Joseph Dzhugashvili, and close friends and like-minded people knew him as Koba - although Stalin has more than thirty pseudonyms in total. The pseudonym Koba, by the way, was taken by the young Dzhugashvili by the name of the literary hero who inspired him, the character of Alexander Kazbegi's novel “The Fatherslayer”.
By the way, young Stalin, who was then twenty-four years old, got to the police station for trying to organize a strike in Batu, which became known in history as the Batumi demonstration.
Damnatio memoriae
The curse of memory. The worst thing in life and in the death of any ambitious politician. Known from Ancient Egypt, it survived the era of the Roman emperors, and ended up in the Present, not calendar, Twentieth Century.
The jokes about tricks were not at all jokes: in the corridors of the Kremlin witchcraft was performed, due to technology. Sleight of hand and no fraud. Those who were objectionable to Stalin, shot, disappointed, were erased from general photographs, turning them into plants, now into false shadows, then into columns. The party leadership cannot be mistaken and communicate with the politically unreliable!
There is a large David King study book about Stalin's disappearing former comrades in photographs.
Girl in felt boots
Sometimes a photo of Stalin may look friendly and bright (like ceremonial portraits always filled with laughing children), but his story may not be so positive at all.
This also applies to photographs taken by the celebrity Engelsin Markizov. She came to the reception of the Buryat delegation in the Kremlin almost by accident and, bored, decided to deliver flowers much earlier than the scheduled time, which attracted general attention to her. Joseph, according to eyewitnesses, was fascinated by a stubborn girl who decided that now was the right time to give him a gift from the "children of Mongolia."
Handing flowers and steadily waiting for the end of the meeting, Engelsina loudly recalled that she, too, deserved a gift, to the whole hall (although she tried to remind only her father). The happy laughing girl was presented with a watch, a gramophone and an engraved medal “From the Leader of the Stalin Party, Gele Markizova”.
A photo of Stalin and Geli, as her relatives called, was distributed throughout the Union in the form of newspaper pages and posters with the caption: "Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for a happy childhood!"