One example showingNikolai Yezhov being removed after he was purged

Censorship of images was widespread in theSoviet Union. Visual censorship was exploited in a political context, particularly during thepolitical purges ofJoseph Stalin, where the Soviet government attempted to erase some of the purged figures from Soviet history, and took measures which includedaltering images and destroying film. The USSR curtailed access topornography, which was specifically prohibited by Soviet law.

Soviet law prohibited the creation and distribution ofpornography under Article 228 of thecriminal code of theRussian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and analogous legislation adopted by otherrepublics of the Soviet Union.

While nude shots appeared in a number of Soviet films before theglasnost reform of the 1980s, the 1988 filmLittle Vera was the first to include an explicitsex scene.^[1]

Pornographic images and videotapes were smuggled into the Soviet Union for illegal distribution. In addition to the anti-pornographic law, such smuggling was prohibited by legal provisions giving the Soviet state the exclusive right to conduct foreign economic trade.

On May 5, 1920, Lenin gave a famous speech to a crowd of Soviet troops inSverdlov Square, Moscow. In the foreground wereLeon Trotsky andLev Kamenev. The photo was later altered and both were removed by censors.

Leon Trotsky (Russian:Лeв Давидович Трóцкий) was a Ukrainian-bornethnically-JewishBolshevik revolutionary andMarxist theorist, and Lenin's strongest collaborator. He was an influential politician in the early days of theSoviet Union, first asPeople's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of theRed Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of thePolitburo. After Lenin's death, he led the failed struggle of theLeft Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s, leading to his exile and eventual assassination. Stalin viewed him as a leading competitor for power, and ordered Trotsky's name and image to be thoroughly erased from Soviet history.

On November 7, 1919, this image was snapped of the Soviet leadership celebrating the second anniversary of theOctober Revolution. After Trotsky and his allies fell from power, a number of figures were removed from the image, including Trotsky and two people over to Lenin's left, wearing glasses and giving a salute.Lev Kamenev, two men over on Lenin's right, was another of Stalin's opponents, and below the boy in front of Trotsky, another bearded figure,Artemic Khalatov, the one timehead of the state publishing, was also edited out.

Kamenev was born inMoscow, the son of aJewish railway worker and aRussian Orthodox housewife.^[2] He joined theRussian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1901 and its Bolshevik faction when the party split into Bolsheviks andMensheviks in August 1903.^[3] He climbed the ranks of the Soviet leadership and was briefly the nominal head of the Soviet state in 1917 and later chairman (1923–1924) of the rulingPolitburo.

AfterSergei Kirov's murder on December 1, 1934, which precipitated Stalin'sGreat Purges,Zinoviev, Kamenev and their closest associates were once again expelled from the Communist Party and arrested in December 1934. They were tried in January 1935 and were forced to admit "moral complicity" in Kirov's assassination. Zinoviev was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Kamenev to five years in prison. Kamenev was charged separately in early 1935 in connection with theKremlin Plot and, although he refused to confess, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

In August 1936, after months of careful preparations and rehearsals in Soviet secret police prisons, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 others, mostlyOld Bolsheviks, were put on trial again in theMoscow Trials. Kamenev and all the others were found guilty and wereexecuted by shooting on August 25, 1936.

Taken in 1917, the signs have been changed

On November 7, 1917,Bolshevik leaderVladimir Lenin led his leftist revolutionaries in a revolt against the ineffective Provisional Government (Russia was still using theJulian Calendar at the time, so it is still called the October Revolution). The October Revolution ended the phase of the revolution instigated in February of that year, replacing Russia's short-lived provisional parliamentary government with government bysoviets, local councils elected by bodies of workers and peasants. Liberal and monarchist forces, loosely organized into theWhite Army, immediately went to war against the Bolsheviks'Red Army.

During theRevolution a number of pictures were taken of successful fighters celebrating their victories. These were often used as postcards after the war. The background of the original image includes a store that says in Russian, "Watches, gold and silver". The image was then changed to read, "Struggle for your rights", and a flag was changed to more clearly read, "Down with the monarchy – long live the Republic!".^[4]

Alexander Malchenko has been edited out.

TheUnion for Struggle of the Liberation of the Working Class (Russian:Союз борьбы за освобождение рабочего класса), a St Petersburg-based organization, was founded by a number of Russian revolutionaries includingMikhail Kalinin and Lenin. They would eventually merge with other groups to lay the foundation for the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDRP).^[5]The RSDRP formed in 1898 inMinsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party. It would later split intoBolshevik andMenshevik factions, with the Bolsheviks eventually becoming theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.

This picture, taken in February 1897, records a meeting of the St. Petersburg chapter of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. Shortly after the picture was taken, theOkhrana arrested the whole group. The members received various punishments, with Lenin being arrested, held by authorities for fourteen months and then released and exiled to the village ofShushenskoye inSiberia, where he mingled with such notable Marxists asGeorgy Plekhanov, who had introduced socialism to Russia.

Standing at center is Alexander Malchenko. At the time of this picture he was an engineering student and his mother would let Lenin hide out at her house. After his arrest he spent some time in exile before returning in 1900 and abandoning the revolution. He moved to Moscow, where he worked as a senior engineer in various state departments before in 1929 being arrested, wrongfully accused of being a "wrecker" and executed on November 18, 1930. After his arrest and execution he was airbrushed out of all reproductions. In 1958 he was posthumously rehabilitated and reappeared in reproductions of the image.

After cosmonautValentin Bondarenko died in a training accident in 1961, the Soviet government airbrushed him out of photographs of the first group of cosmonauts. As Bondarenko had already appeared in publicly available photographs, the deletions led torumours of cosmonauts dying in failed launches.^[6] Both Bondarenko's existence and the nature of his death were secret until 1986.^[7]

As Berlin fell in the closing days of theWorld War in Europe,Red Army photographerYevgeny Khaldei gathered some soldiers and posed a shot of them hoisting the flag (called theVictory Banner) on the roof of theReichstag building. The photo represented a historic moment, the defeat of Germany in a war that cost the Soviet Union tens of millions of lives.

After taking the symbolic photo, Khaldei quickly returned to Moscow. He further edited the image at the request of the editor-in-chief of theOgonyok, who noticed thatSen. Sgt.Abdulkhakim Ismailov, who is supporting the flag-bearer in the photo, had a wristwatch on each arm, indicating he had been looting. Later Soviet sources claimed that the extra watch was actually anAdrianov compass^[8] and that Khaldei, in order to avoid controversy, doctored the photo to remove the watch from Ismailov's right wrist.^[9][10] Khaldei also copied smoke in the background of another photo to make the scene more dramatic.^[10]

The photo was published May 13, 1945, in theOgonyok magazine.^[11] While many photographers took pictures of flags on the roof, it was Khaldei's image that stuck.^[11]

Notes

References

• King, David,The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia (Metropolitan Books, 1997,ISBN 0-8050-5294-1,ISBN 978-0-8050-5294-7)

• Media related toAltered Soviet photographs at Wikimedia Commons

• Censorship in the Soviet Union
• Photography in the Soviet Union
• Soviet cover-ups

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