Photoshop Soviet era Bashny.Net

24 photographs and text, writes Tatyana Pelipeyko

"These people do not really cover up the clock can not be»

But the old Soviet school did without Photoshop.
What I found by visiting the Moscow Gulag History Museum exhibition devoted to the falsification of photos in the Stalin era. It is called - "Vanishing Commissioner." Although it disappeared - and in the frame, and in the life - of course, not only the commissioners.

Falsification of photos in Soviet propaganda was not only a long history, but also a great technological school.
Sometimes it was just about the skilful retouching - face leaders were to appear exemplary. Here is the same picture of Stalin - before and after treatment.





Retoucher could easily change the characters and clothing. Obviously, your own face in this photo Lavrenty Beria liked - but he preferred to publish not be in uniform and in plain clothes.



Change immediately and subjected to a long, historical photographs. Here's a collection of exiled Bolsheviks - the summer of 1915, Turukhansk region. Stalin in the back row, in a black hat. A little to the right - Lev Kamenev (it with a mustache). Subsequently, the enemy - and that's on a photo it is not. However, it is still a primitive technique: instead of the figure - indistinct dark spot.



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Proverbially famous frame - Lenin and Krupskaya with children in the village of Kashino. But in fact, in the frame were adult residents of the village - almost to a man later dispossessed and deported. In any case, the frame was cut, and the background is dark.



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Group photo in 1919, VIII Congress of the RCP (b). Known publishing part of a photo, which shows the three - Stalin, Lenin and Kalinin. But then Kalinin also disappears - why then the third, when it should be clear who is the only true successor to the leader.



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Still, here we are talking about even a simple cut. There were receptions and more difficult. That frame revolutionary soldiers - but under some black flag, and in the background an advertising sign. Alla op! - And now we have the right slogans (although on the increase shows that the font came very much reproaching).



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Here eight characters left four. But source code Frunze (second from left), Voroshilov (the fifth), Stalin (sixth) and Ordzhonikidze (eighth) are not close. Do not worry - cut them out and move a thin scalpel. However, not without marriage - on the side at the Frunze nowhere drop shadow.



There were challenges and harder. In this photo (Baku, 1920) can be seen to the left of Kirov and Ordzhonikidze. Cut out the two of them - no question. But to move them into the company of the right side of the picture Anastas Mikoyan had to smash his head - in fact due to the overall perspective he left a half times taller. But it broke.



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But especially carefully edit out the photo story of Leon Trotsky. Undeterred even by the fact that the pictures were published repeatedly. Here is the famous photograph, in which Lenin and Trotsky close even became the basis for the paintings of Diego Rivera. But in later publications footage trimmed so that Trotsky could not see (the truth remains unknown whose elbow - is his).



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But there were forgers and pomasterovitee. Here Lenin speaks at a rally (Moscow, May 5, 1920), and on the steps at the podium - Trotsky (and after him, though not very prominent - and even stone). Photo very well known, but in publications after 1927 are no longer on the steps of one.



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By the way, in 1933, master of social realism Isaac Brodsky entrusted to immortalize the scene in a beautiful form. Violation of the composition well-trained artist still probably felt the skin - and in place of the missing politicians were journalists ....



Another example of diligent work. Walk along the channel Moscow - Volga, far right - the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov. But he shot and shot - and now in the frame instead of Yezhov granite parapet and splashing water channel.



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In the wake of de-Stalinization some writers rushed to redo their work and on their own initiative. For now, "Lenin proclaims Soviet power in the II Congress of the Soviets," the artist Vladimir Serov - by the way, a disciple of the above-mentioned Isaac Brodsky - was in 1948 the Stalin Prize. We have to think, and this helped the image of Stalin next to the podium. In 1962, the author rewrites the picture - so much so radically that disappear with Stalin Sverdlov and Dzerzhinsky: the trio replaced by revolutionary soldiers.



Had time to time "reforge" Serov well rested at Novodevichy. Not everyone is so lucky falsifiers of history. Gustav Klutsis - great between avant-garde artist - did not manage to bring to mind a poster of the Red Army. From sketch cut repressed and Gamarnik Tukhachevsky (shot them later Marshal Egorov on the poster is still present near the Voroshilov). However, before the shot itself Klucis.



Well, the exhibition at the Museum of the Gulag last until July. & Quot;
all.



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