"The Commissar Vanishes"

I recently read this fantastic book, The Commissar Vanishes. It's about how Josef Stalin changed history in photographs. He killed a lot of people, and every time he killed someone, he had them erased from all the pictures. David King, the author, has a huge collection of old photographs from Stalin Era Russia, and this book is just the best of them.

At first, it's almost comical to look at. Some of the pictures are so horribly falsified, I've seen falsified post cards from 1920's Wisconsin that were more believable. But then you read the stories behind the pictures. And more stories. And more stories. And, after a while of this, I started to feel a bit ill.

Stalin was surely the worst person who ever lived. He probably killed millions of people. The next time someone says that our mild-mannered leader is like Hitler, I'll have to say, "Well, at least he's not Stalin."