Stalin, Volume 1

Stalin, Barnaul, Siberia, January 22, 1928. Many of these Siberian officials, including regional party boss Sergei Syrtsov (on Stalin’s right), opposed a policy of forced collectivization, which Stalin had proclaimed in an epochal closed-door speech in Novosibirsk two days earlier. “Now,” Stalin said to those in this photo from Barnaul, appropos of forcing collectivization, “we will see who is a true Communist and who just talks like a Communist . . . . We possess all the power we want, but we lack the ability to exercise our power.”