Joseph Stalin

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Old Print Article: Stalin’s Second Wife A Suicide (1932)

March 15, 2017 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics | Permalink

At least Eva Braun never tied the knot. 

Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalin was not so fortunate. The second wife of the Soviet Union’s murderous leader, one of history’s greatest villains, was said to have died from appendicitis after thirteen years of marriage, but she actually shot herself to escape her tyrannical husband’s browbeating and humiliations.

Nina Khrushcheva, granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, recently wrote a Quartz article arguing that Melania Trump is an ideal autocrat’s wife. In the piece, she recalled Nadezhda’s demise:

In an autocracy, institutions such as the FLOTUS position—not fully formal, yet relevant—are the easiest to undermine. In Russia—first a monarchy and then a communist dictatorship—where “unsharable” power of the leader has been personalized and centralized to an extreme, there was barely ever a true “first lady,” her very fate providing a symbolic commentary on the regime.

Joseph Stalin’s Gulags—mass incarceration and prosecution of everyone suspected of opposing his personal power—were foreshadowed by the death of his wife, Nadezhda. Lacking a role to perform in the Kremlin’s politics, she committed suicide in 1932. According to a 1988 report in the New York Times, a Stalin biographer wrote that she killed herself ” after she spoke her mind about Communist Party purges and the famine and was met by a flood of vulgar abuse from Stalin.”•

As you can imagine, the mother of the communist country committing suicide was not a topic open for discussion in the Soviet Union of that era. A November 20, 1932 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article reported on the shocking-though-shrouded turn of events. 

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“The Government Has To Know What People Are Thinking”

August 15, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

joseph-stalin-5

Russian revolutionaries and leaders Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924), and Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875 - 1946), at the Congress of the Russian Communist Party. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Anatole Konstantin escaped from Stalin’s Soviet Union, for the most part.

Having moved to the U.S. in 1949 as a child refugee after the murder of his father by the secret police, Konstantin became an engineer and entrepreneur, living out an America Dream he wasn’t aware existed until emerging from behind the Iron Curtain. 

I say he escaped “for the most part” because an answer he gave in regards to an Edward Snowden question during a new Reddit AMA seems approving of a surveillance state. Of course, that attitude, perplexingly enough, probably doesn’t place him in the minority in his adopted country.

Question:

Why did your father get executed by the secret police?

Anatole Konstantin:

He was executed because he was corresponding with his parents in Romania and any correspondence with a foreign country made one suspected of being a spy. 50 years after his disappearance, a letter from the KGB informed us of his execution and also that he was being “posthumously rehabilitated,” admitting that he was innocent.

Question:

Was your father given a mock trial prior to his execution, to give the appearance of justice having been served? I’m sorry for your loss, it’s inspiring to hear someone who went through so much hardship make something of themselves.

Anatole Konstantin:

The trials were secret and we didn’t know the results until 50 years later when Gorbachev came to power. The KGB made lists of suspects who were tortured into signing prepared confessions and then were sent to the Gulags or to be executed, usually standing on the edge of a ditch and receiving a bullet in the back of the head.

Question:

What cultural difference shocked You the most?

Anatole Konstantin:

It was the availability of books on different philosophies and points of view. When I went to the library I didn’t know which book to read first and I just stood there.

Question:

How did you get enough funds to make your way to America? How was the trip arranged?

Anatole Konstantin:

I didn’t need any funds. The United Nations Refugee Organization took care of all travel arrangements for displaced persons like myself. At that time the United States admitted 200,000 displaced persons from Europe.

Question:

Any thoughts on the Syrian refugee crisis? Specifically how some Americans are worried that ISIS members can pretend to be refugees to sneak into the US. Did you experience any similar anti-communist backlash when you came to America? My parents were refugees from communist Vietnam, so I’m very interested to hear another refugee’s opinion.

Anatole Konstantin:

The Syrian refugees are victims of religious fanatics. The refugees from Communism were victims of political fanatics. While the motivations are different, they both come from fanatics who do not value human life. When I came I did not experience any backlash; I was more anti-Communist than anybody here.

Question:

What are your thoughts about current events involving Russia, Ukraine, and the US? How do you think the conflict should be resolved?

Anatole Konstantin:

From Putin’s point of view, it’s inadmissible that Ukraine should join NATO. The United States became involved because it was a signatory together with Russia and Ukraine to the agreement that Ukraine surrenders the nuclear weapons on its territory in exchange for guaranteeing its borders. The majority of people in Crimea prefer to be part of Russia rather than Ukraine. Therefore, the question is very complex and if one considers history and the different requirements of the parties, I do not see any reasonable solution.

Question:

What is your opinion of this year’s Presidential election?

Anatole Konstantin:

I think that the choice we have is the worst since I came to the United States in 1949.

Question:

How do you view Edward Snowden and the issue of warrantless surveillance by the NSA?

Anatole Konstantin:

In regards to Snowden, I can’t visualize a country functioning if every citizen could decide what is appropriate and what should be published based on their personal beliefs. The American judicial system is based on punishing acts that have already happened. The challenge now is to be able to prevent these acts from happening in the first place. This means that the government has to know what people are thinking. The difference is that suspects here are still entitled to their day in court.

Question:

Is there anything you miss about the old country?

Anatole Konstantin:

Yes, the people in those countries did a lot of singing. Someone would even sing loudly to themselves depending on how they felt.•

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Old Print Article: Vladimir Bekhterev’s Brain Is Collected, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1927)

September 1, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Vladimir Bekhterev had a great brain, but he lacked diplomacy.

Joseph Stalin probably was a “paranoiac with a short, dry hand,” but when the Russian neurologist reportedly spoke that diagnosis after examining the Soviet leader, he died mysteriously within days. Many thought he’d been poisoned to avenge the slight. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. A cloud of paranoia envelops all under an autocratic regime, whether we’re talking about Stalin in the 20th century or Vladimir Putin today: Some deaths are very suspect, so all of them become that way. At any rate, the scientist’s gray matter became an exhibit in his own collection of genius brains. An article in the December 27, 1927 Brooklyn Daily Eagle recorded the unusual series of events.

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“Today The Capitalists Have To Learn From You”

April 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Here’s a good rule: If you’re interviewing someone who holds sway over the life and death of others, don’t do it unless you’re free to ask them pertinent, probing questions. Otherwise monsters can be made to seem moderate. Case in point: In 1934, Joseph Stalin, one of the most evil bastards ever, was given the velvet glove treatment by none other than H.G. Wells, who enjoyed conversing with other great men. I’m not saying that Wells could have known everything about Stalin’s terror, but he should have known enough. While it’s interesting from an historical perspective because of the principals, it’s also disquieting for its lack of discernment. The opening of the discussion, which has been republished in the New Statesman:

“Wells:

I am very much obliged to you, Mr Stalin, for agreeing to see me. I was in the United States recently. I had a long conversation with President Roosevelt and tried to ascertain what his leading ideas were. Now I have come to ask you what you are doing to change the world . . .

Stalin:

Not so very much.

Wells:

I wander around the world as a common man and, as a common man, observe what is going on around me.

Stalin:

Important public men like yourself are not ‘common men.’ Of course, history alone can show how important this or that public man has been; at all events, you do not look at the world as a ‘common man.’

Wells:

I am not pretending humility. What I mean is that I try to see the world through the eyes of the common man, and not as a party politician or a responsible administrator. My visit to the United States excited my mind. The old financial world is collapsing; the economic life of the country is being reorganised on new lines.

Lenin said: ‘We must learn to do business,’ learn this from the capitalists. Today the capitalists have to learn from you, to grasp the spirit of Socialism. It seems to me that what is taking place in the United States is a profound reorganisation, the creation of planned, that is, Socialist, economy. You and Roosevelt begin from two different starting points. But is there not a relation in ideas, a kinship of ideas, between Moscow and Washington?

In Washington I was struck by the same thing I see going on here; they are building offices, they are creating a number of state regulation bodies, they are organising a long-needed civil service. Their need, like yours, is directive ability.”

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Joseph Stalin, In Relatively Jovial Mood (1941)

December 9, 2011 in Excerpts, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Legendary Life photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White explained how she snapped the above picture of Joseph Stalin smiling–well, smiling  by his somber standards–in quotes that ran in her 1971 New York Times obituary, I actually don’t know if she did the world a favor by locating a softer-looking Stalin, but here’s an excerpt:

“For her meeting with Stalin in the Kremlin in 1941, which was arranged by Harry Hopkins, Miss Bourke-White employed a stratagem to catch him off guard. Recalling the incident, she wrote:

‘I made up my mind that I wouldn’t leave without getting a picture of Stalin smiling. When I met him, his face looked as though it were carved out of stone, he wouldn’t show any emotion at all. I went virtually beserk trying to make that great stone face come alive.

‘I got down on my hands and knees on the floor and tried out all kinds of crazy postures searching for a good camera angle. Stalin looke down at the way I was aquirming and writhing and for the space of a lightning flash he smiled-and I got my picture. Probably, he had never seen a girl photographer before and my weird contortions amused him.’

Miss Bourke-White maintained that ‘a woman shoudn’t trade on the fact that she is a woman.’ Nonetheless, several of her male colleagues were certain that her fetching looks–she was tall, slim, dark-haired and possessed of a beautiful face–were often employed to her advantage.

‘Generals rushed to tote her cameras,’ Mr. [Alfred] Eisenstadt recalled, ‘and even Stalin insisted on carrying her bags.'”

Margaret Bourke-White, 1964.

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