"The whole country exalts, laughs, and gleams with merriment/because children live joyfully/the country is marvelous for them/and each hour, whether study or leisure/has become unusually joyful/because, for us children/our great Stalin is our best friend."

Alexander Rodchenko's book Ten Years of Uzbekistan was published in 1934. During the Great Purges it became illegal and Rodchenko was compelled to deface it. Akmal Ikramov (left), first secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, and Yan Rudzutak (right), former Party member from Latvia, were shot in 1938.

Two undated photographs of Voroshilov, Molotov and Stalin, with Nikolai Yezhov, commissar of water transport, in the picture (top) and deleted (below). He was shot in 1940

Italo Calvino

“…the real Stalinist sin I was guilty of was precisely this: in order to defend myself from a reality which I did not know, but did not want to articulate, I… presented as…a picture of serenity and smiles something that was trauma and tension and torture. Stalinism was also the…cheerful mask which concealed the historical tragedy taking place.”