AP Euro Today How did Stalin manipulate reality? What was life (and death) like in Stalin’s Soviet Union?

Stalin’s attempts to alter history

In 1928, Stalin will deport his chief rival, Leon Trotsky

He’d have Trotsky murdered—and airbrushed out of history! Where’s Comrade Trotsky? Yoo-hoo?

Comrade Yezhov

Goodbye, Comrade Yenukidze

One by one, they disappear…

Stalin’s artists also creatively added elements to photos

This photo was altered to show Lenin and Stalin together

Anti-Vietnam war activist and actress Jane Fonda… …was, during the 1960s, hated by many Americans. Here she is, speaking to an antiwar rally in 1970. Here’s Sen. John Kerry, now our Secretary of State, who ran for President in 2004, at about the same time. And here’s a photo that Kerry’s opponents in that election circulated.

Lenin became a near-saint under Stalin Lenin became a near-saint under Stalin. Here, the crowd wasn’t big enough

This White House photo has been altered to insert extra troops listening to a speech by President Bush

A similar technique. Here, the University of Wisconsin wants to show its ethnic diversity. Look at the right-hand photo first, then look at the left.

The “meat grinder” Propaganda wasn’t enough to motivate Soviet citizens: the secret police added terror The “meat grinder” refers to Stalin’s purges—waves of executions--and to the Gulag. Stalin’s “right-hand man” was the man at right, head of the NKVD/KGB, Lavrenti Beria

The work Beria’s secret police did In 1937-38, an average of 1,000 people were shot every day Of 184 army division commanders—generals—156 were shot Approximately 1,200 of the 1,900 delegates to the 1934 Party Congress were executed

The Lubyanka: Secret Police HQ during Stalin’s time; Executions were held in the courtyard

This photo was taken in that courtyard in 1928 This photo was taken in that courtyard in 1928. I don’t know anything else about it—but it shows the kind of thing that would have happened there.

The secret police themselves would periodically be purged… That’s why the names change: Cheka becomes OGPU, which becomes NKVD, which becomes KGB. Russia’s president today, Vladimir Putin, was a KGB officer—a secret policeman. He looks like it, to me.

Words I cannot pronounce: NKVD: Narodny Komissariat Vnutrenyk Del (Народный Комиссариат Внутренних Дел) “People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs” KGB: Komitet Gosudartstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Комитет государственной безопасности) “Committee of State Security” which absorbed the NKVD after Stalin’s death in 1953

As was the case during the Reign of Terror in France (1793-94) Citizens were encouraged to denounce each other. It was a way to make your life safer…

Pavlik Morozov In 1932, Morozov denounced his father to the NKVD for hoarding grain. His father was shot; Pavlik became a national hero.

Here was Pavlik’s “real” father

What did the Ob River reveal—40 years later--about the NKVD during the 1930s purges? Reading, from The Unquiet Ghost

Similar discoveries in recent years: In 2002, a mass grave near St. Petersburg was found in a forest. Even then, Russian authorities refused to admit that the remains came from Stalin’s secret police. In 2010, workers in eastern Russia found nearly 500 skeletons, most with gunshot wounds to the head. One of the victims was a child.

From The Inner Circle. This film is based on a true story. Scene 1: The KGB Central Orphanage Scene 2: With Comrade Stalin, in the Kremlin http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0054R7052/ref=aiv_ply_inst_ctf_mov?ie=UTF8&downloadBox=&redirect=true&ref_=aiv_ply_inst_ctf_mov&ref_=avod_yvl_watch_now 46:44-1:01:18

Tonight’s Homework: Life, Culture and Terror in the Soviet Union, 961-63.