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Joseph Stalin

    Iconic black and white photo of Joseph Stalin in 1937. He is dressed in a light-colored buttoned-down wool shirt, and he holds a pipe in his right hand at chest-level, with his left arm extended across his lower torso. He wears a military hat. The photo highlights Stalin’s heavy dark eyelashes and the thick mustache which covers his upper lip.

    Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1937 photo for state propaganda purposes. Paul Robeson seemed unaware of Stalin’s disastrous policy of agricultural collectivization, 1928–33, and the millions of lives it cost and the labor camps (gulags) it spawned. Whatever doubts or criticisms he may have harbored about Stalin’s manic paranoia and horrific political cleansings, they were never publicly expressed. It didn’t help Robeson’s stature at home when he joined W.E.B. Du Bois and other leftists in cabling salutations to Stalin on his 70th birthday. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Robeson continued his advocacy for the Soviet Union.

    1937
    Copyright
    Public Domain
    Attribution/Credit

    Soviet Union (unnamed agency), via “Joseph Stalin,” Wikipedia