Under Stalin's regime photographs lied.  Stalinist censorship of photography was, of course, a part of a much larger official purpose – the systematic falsification of history itself.  From the mid-1930’s, almost nothing of significance could be published, exhibited, or publicly uttered in the Soviet Union that failed to glorify every aspect of Stalin's leadership.  Everything contrary to Stalin's cult was criminalized or expunged from history.  It was during the great purges in the late 1930’s, that a new form of falsification emerged.  The physical eradication of Stalin's political opponents at the hands of the secret police was swiftly followed by their obliteration from all forms of pictorial existence.
    The pictures you are about to see are some of the more explicit examples of attempts to make once prominent personalities vanish.  What is even more frightful about the brutal regime, is the fact that Soviet citizens, fearful of the consequences of being caught in possession of material considered “anti-Soviet” or “counterrevolutionary,” were forced to deface their own copies of books and photographs, often savagely attacking them with scissors or disfiguring them with India ink.