Posted on May 22, 2010 - by Venik

Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union | Book review

David King’s collection of images provides a valuable record of the Soviet Union’s elusive past

David King is the outstanding individual collector of visual artefacts from the Soviet past. His house is almost a museum by itself, and he offers a generous welcome to historians wishing to see his treasures. King himself has a Trotskyist inclination that finds expression in his selection of images for Red Star Over Russia. At the same time, he welcomes open debate. He is an example to us all.

His photos of Trotsky make it clear why so many communists thought him an inspiring leader. King even has a teacup with his face on it. He bought this when the British communist party was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and one of its Stalinist veterans sold it to him to bail out the comrades. In the Soviet Union, it would have been suicidal to hold on to such crockery after Stalin deported Trotsky in 1929. Images mattered – in the Soviet regime’s quest to create a new model, citizens poured huge resources into the production of paintings, posters and films. People were indoctrinated at the dinner table and the sink, as well as in the factory and on the farm. The only positive result was that Russian painters were seldom out of work.

The book has a stunning photo of Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya who suffered from a thyroid illness that caused bulging eyes and a swollen neck. A photographer got round this by covering her neck with a cape and dimming the lighting. This achieved the effect of making her seem like the Lady Macbeth of the Russian revolution and not at all the dowdy, tired schoolmistress as in her conventional portraits.

The crowd scenes of the early revolutionary period, for me, are the pick of the book. Leninist propagandists talked fondly about “Lenin, the party and the masses”. The truth was that the Soviet dictatorship was fearful of the working class. In 1918, when workers voted against the Bolsheviks, the elections were ruled invalid. History was rewritten and photos faked so as to keep this a secret. The “masses” had to appear as if providing grateful support to their all-knowing leaders. Obedient picture editors blurred the focus of scenes so as to make any inconvenient placards and banners unreadable. King has rescued several demonstrations and street gatherings from oblivion. Russians become clearer to us not just pictorially but politically. Each crowd photo has its fervent Bolshevik or Menshevik, but it also has people looking uncertain, querulous, distracted or simply bored.

Such pictures are a reminder that on the day the Bolsheviks seized power the trams were running, the schools were open and most families in Petrograd went about their business unaware that an event of global importance was taking place. Even the Bolshevik leaders had their uncertainties. They had a plan to overthrow the government without having worked out exactly what kind of government should take its place. Most believed it should be an all-socialist coalition. Lenin and Trotsky dissented: they had not seized power only to disburse their political achievement among socialists whom they held in contempt. The hard line won and by mid-1918 the one-party state was in place.

The previous owner of the Trotsky teacup apparently kept it under the bed – truly those Stalinists had some strange habits. If David King decides to drink from it, he will no doubt choose Earl Grey tea – Trotsky’s favourite afternoon tipple in Mexican exile.

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