Stalin

ILLUSTRATIONS

Stalin’s mother, Ekaterine (Keke) Jughashvili.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin as a pupil at the Gori Theological School in the early 1890s.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin as a young revolutionary, early 1900s.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

From party archives, a 1910 arrest record for Stalin from the files of the tsarist political police in Baku. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin at the Tsaritsyn front in 1918. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Lenin and Stalin at Gorki, Lenin’s residence outside Moscow, in 1922, a few months before Lenin’s death prompted a fierce power struggle. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin with Rykov (left) and Bukharin (right), December 1927. Rykov and Bukharin were shot in 1938. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The vozhd with his faithful comrades in 1934. Left to right: Kirov, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Stalin, and Mikoyan. Kirov was shot later that year by the husband of a staff member, and Ordzhonikidze committed suicide in 1937. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin with his wife, Nadezhda Allilueva, Voroshilov, and Voroshilov’s wife Yekaterina relaxing in the south in 1932 (with a bodyguard to the right) a few months before Nadezhda’s suicide. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

On vacation in 1933. Stalin’s daughter Svetlana sits on the lap of then Georgian party boss Lavrenty Beria. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The loving father: Stalin with Svetlana, 1933.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

A visit in the south, 1933. Left to right: chief of the Red Army General Staff Aleksandr Yegorov; Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov; Stalin; Soviet military leader Mikhail Tukhachevsky; Abkhaz leader Nestor Lakoba. Lakoba died in 1936 under mysterious circumstances and was soon proclaimed an “enemy of the people.” Tukhachevsky was shot in 1937 and Yegorov in 1938. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The near dacha, where Stalin lived (starting after his wife’s suicide) and died.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History

A rare family gathering in the mid-1930s. Left to right: Stalin’s son Vasily, Leningrad party boss Andrei Zhdanov, daughter Svetlana, Stalin, and Stalin’s son (by his first wife) Yakov, who was killed in a Nazi POW camp. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin inspects new military hardware at the Kremlin, September 1943. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The Allies: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Crimea, February 1945.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Generalissimo Stalin immediately after the war.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin and his comrades at a celebration in January 1947. Left to right: Beria, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Molotov, Kuznetsov, Stalin, Kosygin, Voznesensky, Voroshilov, and Shkiriatov. Two years later Kuznetsov and Voznesensky were arrested and shot. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin at a party congress in 1952, four months before his death.

Unflattering photographs like this one were not published. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Millions of copies of Stalin’s works were published in all languages. After his death they provided tons of recycled paper pulp. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.