Man spitting on the decapitated head of a statue of Joseph Stalin during the Hungarian Revolt, Budapest Hungary, 1956
"History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been."
— Stalin, Radio Address - “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Men of our army and navy!” (3 July 1941)
Photograph depicting accused Catholic priests during the Stalinist show-trial of the Kraków Curia, January 21-26, 1953
The Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia was a public trial of four Roman Catholic priests – members of the Kraków diocesan Curia – including three lay persons, accused by the Communist authorities in the People’s Republic of Poland of subversion and spying for the United States. The staged trial, based on the Soviet formula, was held before the Military District Court of Kraków from January 21 to 26, 1953 at a public-event-hall of the Szadkowski Plant.
Isaak Babel
Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature. Babel has also been acclaimed as “the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry.” Loyal to, but not uncritical of, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Isaak Babel fell victim to Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge due to his longterm affair with the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Babel was arrested by the NKVD at Peredelkino on the night of May 15, 1939. After “confessing,” under torture, to being a Trotskyist terrorist and foreign spy, Babel was shot on January 27, 1940. The arrest and execution of Isaak Babel has been labeled a catastrophe for world literature.
"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed"
— Joseph Stalin
