In one line: From 1922 to 1953 Joseph Stalin, as General Secretary of the Communist Party, led the Soviet Union through forced collectivisation and industrialisation, the famine of 1932 to 1933, the mass arrests and executions of 1937 and 1938, the war with Germany and postwar reconstruction, in a one-party state whose press, schools, film and literature were directed by the party's propaganda departments.
The leader and the people under the leader
Photo: US government photographer (Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs), Public domain (PD-USGov) Joseph Stalin
General Secretary of the Central Committee; from 1941 also Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars · 1922 to 1953
Joseph Stalin: Read more
Controlled party appointments through the Secretariat from 3 April 1922, became head of government on 6 May 1941 and Supreme Commander on 8 August 1941, and held these offices until his death on 5 March 1953.
In their words
“The press must grow day in and day out—it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.”
“Education is a weapon the effect of which is determined by the hands which wield it, by who is to be struck down.”
“What does this mean? It means that we have passed from the policy of restricting the exploiting tendencies of the kulaks to the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class. It means that we have carried out, and are continuing to carry out, one of the decisive turns in our whole policy.”
“Now we are able to carry on a determined offensive against the kulaks, break their resistance, eliminate them as a class and replace their output by the output of the collective farms and state farms. Now, dekulakisation is being carried out by the masses of poor and middle peasants themselves, who are putting complete collectivisation into practice. Now, dekulakisation in the areas of complete collectivisation is no longer just an administrative measure. Now, it is an integral part of the formation and development of the collective farms. Consequently it is now ridiculous and foolish to discourse at length on dekulakisation. When the head is off, one does not mourn for the hair.”
“Collective farms must not be established by force. That would be foolish and reactionary.”
All 25 quotes from Joseph Stalin, and 5 often attributed but not verified
In the archive: 'Trotskyism or Leninism': the press campaign that removed Trotsky from Soviet leadership (1924-1929), The Lenin cult after 1924: an embalmed body, a mausoleum and a doctrine called "Leninism", "Liquidate the kulaks as a class": the propaganda campaign for collectivization (1929-1933)
Party leadership
Photo: G. Weil (Grigory Vayl) for TASS, Public domain (PD-Russia; PD-1996) Lazar Kaganovich
Secretary of the Central Committee; People's Commissar of Railways · 1928 to 1939
Lazar Kaganovich: Read more
Handled party personnel as a Central Committee secretary from 1928, led the Moscow party organization from 1930 to 1935, headed the railway commissariat from 1935 to 1937 and again from 1938 to 1942, and sat on the Politburo from 1930.
In their words
“Criticism should be undertaken at the Ukrainian conference of the work of the CC CP(B)U, whose shortcomings have brought about a difficult situation in some regions. The question arises of how this should be explained in the press. In order not to give fodder to the foreign press, we deem it necessary to expound on this criticism in our press in moderate tones, without printing facts about the situation in the bad regions.”
“In ten districts of the Kuban, delivery of goods to cooperative and state stores was halted, and in another ten districts that most shamefully failed in sowing and procurements, in addition to stopping deliveries, all goods were removed. Residents of the blacklisted stanitsy were warned that in the event sabotage continued in sowing and grain procurements, they would be deported beyond the borders of the territory to the northern oblasts, and these stanitsy would be settled by conscientious collective farmers....”
“We will deport those purged from the Party beyond the borders of the territory to the northern oblasts as traitors to the working class and as politically dangerous.”
In the archive: Collectivisation, the 1932-33 famine and its denial: the kulak label, the silence and the foreign press
Photo: G. Weil (Grigory Vayl) for TASS, Public domain (PD-Russia; PD-1996) Georgy Malenkov
Secretary of the Central Committee; head of its cadres department · 1939 to 1953
Georgy Malenkov: Read more
Ran the Central Committee's personnel assignments from 1939, sat on the wartime State Defence Committee, delivered the Central Committee report to the 19th Party Congress in October 1952, and became Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 6 March 1953.
In their words
“The other trend in international politics is headed by the ruling clique of American imperialists. In their efforts to consolidate the position which American monopoly capital gained in Europe and Asia during the war, this clique has taken the path of outright expansion, of enthralling the weakened capitalist states of Europe and the colonial and dependent countries. It has chosen the path of hatching new war plans against the USSR and the new democracies under the banner of combating the “Communist menace”. The clearest and most specific expression of this policy pursued by American capital is provided by the Truman-Marshall plans.”
“Comrades, if we are asked what is the main thing in our foreign policy, it is, to put it briefly, that the Soviet Union stands for peace and upholds the cause of peace. The Soviet Union unswervingly pursues a policy of peace and friendship among the nations. We do not want war and we shall do everything in our power to prevent it. The peaceable policy of the Soviet Union springs from the very roots and underlying foundations of the Socialist system and from the interests of the Soviet people. We have completely abolished the age-old exploitation of man by man in our country, and thereby we have eliminated the reasons and causes which in the capitalist world give rise to the policy of exploiting and enslaving other nations. We have created a model of brotherly co-operation among peoples of different races and nationalities which is unparalleled in human history, and thereby we have cast aside forever the policy of building the welfare of one State on the suppression of other States. A policy which makes the suppression of the national sovereignty of other peoples its guiding principle is alien to us. A Socialist State has no need for foreign expansion. It has no need of colonial seizures. The Soviet Socialist system has eradicated the causes that give rise to economic crises, from which the rulers of the capitalist world usually seek escape in warlike gambles. The imperialists pin their hopes on warlike gambles because they are afraid of peaceful competition with Socialism. But it is quite evident that warlike gambles promise the imperialists nothing but disaster. The Soviet people do not fear peaceful competition with capitalism. That is why they are against a new war and stand in defence of peace, although they firmly know and are absolutely convinced that their strength is invincible. The Soviet people are fully conscious of their responsibility to history. They showed this when, not sparing their strength, they rose in a solid wall to save their country and all progressive humanity from the onslaught of the fascist barbarians. They are showing it in the post-war years, when well-known imitators of the fascist barbarians are brandishing over the world the bloody sword of a new war.”
“That is why the peoples of the Soviet Union and all progressive mankind see in the person of Comrade Stalin their recognised leader and teacher. That is why today they express with particular warmth their affection and devotion to Comrade Stalin, and put on record his great services in the struggle for a happy life for the people, for peace among the nations.”
Photo: TASS, Public domain (PD-Russia; PD-US-not renewed) Nikita Khrushchev
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine; from 1949 Central Committee secretary and head of the Moscow party organization · 1938 to 1953
Nikita Khrushchev: Read more
Led the Moscow party from 1935 to 1938 and the Ukrainian party from January 1938 to March 1947 and again from December 1947 to December 1949, then returned to Moscow as a Central Committee secretary; he denounced the "cult of personality" in a closed speech on 25 February 1956.
In their words
“Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position-was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the 17th party congress, when many prominent party leaders and rank-and-file party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of communism, fell victim to Stalin's despotism.”
“Stalin originated the concept enemy of the people. This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven; this term made possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations. This concept, enemy of the people, actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one's views known on this or that issue, even those of a practical character. In the main, and in actuality, the only proof of guilt used, against all norms of current legal science, was the confession of the accused himself, and, as subsequent probing proved, confessions were acquired through physical pressures against the accused.”
“When Stalin said that one or another should be arrested, it was necessary to accept on faith that he was an “enemy of the people.” Meanwhile, Beria’s gang, which ran the organs of state security, outdid itself in proving the guilt of the arrested and the truth of materials which it falsified. And what proofs were offered? The confessions of the arrested, and the investigative judges accepted these “confessions.” And how is it possible that a person confesses to crimes which he has not committed? Only in one way –because of the application of physical methods of pressuring him, tortures, bringing him to a state of unconsciousness, deprivation of his judgment, taking away of his human dignity. In this manner were “confessions” acquired.”
All 7 quotes from Nikita Khrushchev, and 2 often attributed but not verified
State and security
Photo: G. Weil (Grigory Vayl) for TASS, Public domain (PD-Russia; PD-1996) Vyacheslav Molotov
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars; People's Commissar (from 1946 Minister) for Foreign Affairs · 1930 to 1949
Vyacheslav Molotov: Read more
Headed the government from 19 December 1930 until Stalin took the post in May 1941, was foreign commissar from 3 May 1939, signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939 and announced the German invasion by radio on 22 June 1941.
In their words
“Criticism should be undertaken at the Ukrainian conference of the work of the CC CP(B)U, whose shortcomings have brought about a difficult situation in some regions. The question arises of how this should be explained in the press. In order not to give fodder to the foreign press, we deem it necessary to expound on this criticism in our press in moderate tones, without printing facts about the situation in the bad regions.”
“However, one swift blow to Poland, first by the German Army and then by the Red Army, and nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty which had existed by oppressing non-Polish nationalities.”
“One may accept or reject the ideology of Hitlerism as well as any other ideological system, that is a matter of political views. But everybody should understand that an ideology cannot be destroyed by force, that it cannot be eliminated by war. It is, therefore, not only senseless but criminal to wage such a war as a war for the ‘destruction of Hitlerism’ camouflaged as a fight for ‘democracy’.”
In the archive: Soviet wartime propaganda, 1939-1945: Sovinformburo, Agitprop and the Red Army press
No portrait with a verified licence found. Nearest: source, TASS photograph by Fyodor Kislov of 8 February 1940, tagged PD-Russia only; the photographer is named and no United States public-domain basis is recorded, so it was not used. Mikhail Kalinin
Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR; from 1938 Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet · 1922 to 1946
Mikhail Kalinin: Read more
Formal head of state, who signed laws and decrees for the country's central legislative body and presented state awards.
In their words
“The Jews, in fact, have lived in Russia for centuries, and they have as much right here as any other part of the population.”
“The Soviet Government is accused of being a Jewish Government, but this is so much nonsense. It is true that the Soviet Government restored their rights to the Jews, but to which Jews? It restored rights only to the impoverished working class Jews, but the Jewish capitalists it treated exactly like all other capitalists.”
“The Red Army, however, proved capable not only of halting the attack of the German-fascist hordes, but also of dealing them a series of heavy blows one after the other—at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, on the Dnieper and beyond—blows under which the former vanity and self-assurance of the Germans have been considerably cowed.”
Photo: G. Weil (Grigory Vayl) for TASS, Public domain (PD-Russia; PD-1996) Anastas Mikoyan
Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars; People's Commissar for Foreign Trade · 1937 to 1953
Anastas Mikoyan: Read more
Managed trade and food supply, was foreign trade commissar from 1938 to 1949, oversaw the receipt of Allied Lend-Lease deliveries in the war, and sat on the Politburo from 1935.
In their words
“The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party, for a party of the Leninist type. But we have to stress this old truth because for some twenty years we actually had no collective leadership, and the cult of the individual, condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin, prevailed. And this naturally could not fail to have an extremely adverse effect on the situation in the party and on its activities.”
“The central committee’s report speaks of the unsatisfactory nature of our propaganda work. One of the reasons for this is that, as a rule, we teach Marxism-Leninism on the basis of the Short History of the Party. That of course is incorrect. The wealth of ideas of Marxism-Leninism cannot be contained within the limits of the subject of the history of our party, all the more so since it is a brief history. For this we need special theoretical textbooks for comrades at different educational levels. That is the first thing. Secondly, the present Short History of the Party is unsatisfactory because it does not deal with the events of nearly twenty years of our party. And how can we justify the absence of a history of our party for the past twenty years?”
“In analysing the economic situation of present-day capitalism it is doubtful whether we get any help from Stalin’s thesis in the Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. or whether it is correct—in relation to the United States, Britain and France—that, with the break-up of the world market the “volume of production in these countries will shrink”. This assertion does not explain the complex and contradictory phenomena of present-day capitalism and the fact of the growth of capitalist production in many countries since the war.”
All 3 quotes from Anastas Mikoyan, and 1 often attributed but not verified
Photo: Grigory Vayl (G. Vail), RIA Novosti, CC BY-SA 3.0 Andrey Vyshinsky
Procurator of the USSR; from 1949 Minister of Foreign Affairs · 1935 to 1953
Andrey Vyshinsky: Read more
Headed the prosecution service from 1935 and was chief prosecutor at the Moscow show trials of 1936, 1937 and 1938; he became foreign minister on 4 March 1949 and held the post until Stalin's death.
In their words
“I demand that dogs gone mad should be shot - every one of them!”
“Our whole country, from young to old, is awaiting and demanding one thing: the traitors and spies who were selling our country to the enemy must be shot like dirty dogs! Our people are demanding one thing: crush the accursed reptile!”
“Such is Bukharin, this hypocritical, false, wily creature; this piously rapacious and respectfully malicious person, this "damnable cross of a fox and a swine," to use Maxim Gorky's words about one of the heroes from the gallery of "Those Who Once Were People."”
All 5 quotes from Andrey Vyshinsky, and 1 often attributed but not verified
In the archive: The Moscow show trials: confession, spectacle and consent (1936-1938)
Photo: Unknown author (reproduced in the magazine Ogonyok, no. 3, 1938), Public domain (PD-Russia-1996) Nikolai Yezhov
People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD) · 1936 to 1938
Nikolai Yezhov: Read more
Headed the NKVD from 26 September 1936 to 25 November 1938, the period of the Great Terror and of Order No. 00447; he was arrested in April 1939 and shot on 4 February 1940.
In their words
“if during this operation an extra thousand people will be shot, that is not such a big deal.”
“Why don’t you arrest them? We are not going to work for you, imprison them, and then sort it out afterward, dropping those against whom there is no evidence. Act more boldly, I have already told you repeatedly.”
“The first category includes the most dangerous and most hostile of the above listed elements. They should be immediately arrested and after examination of their cases by troikas are—to be shot.”
All 6 quotes from Nikolai Yezhov, and 1 often attributed but not verified
In the archive: The NKVD as its own propagandist: 'enemies of the people,' informants and the vigilant state (1934-1946), The Moscow show trials: confession, spectacle and consent (1936-1938), Glavlit and the retouched photographic record
Photo: Unknown, presumed official, Public domain (PD-Russia) Lavrentiy Beria
People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD) · 1938 to 1945
Lavrentiy Beria: Read more
Headed the NKVD, which ran the Gulag, the border troops and the wartime deportations, from November 1938 to December 1945; he later supervised the atomic-bomb programme, was arrested on 26 June 1953 and shot in December 1953.
In their words
“In view of the fact that all are hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority, the USSR NKVD considers it necessary:”
“(1) To instruct the USSR NKVD that it should try them before special tribunals: (a) the cases of the 14,700 former Polish officers, government officials, land owners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, settlers in the border regions and prison guards being held in prisoner-of-war camps; (b) together with the cases of 11,000 members of various counter-revolutionary organizations of spies and saboteurs, former land owners, factory owners, former Polish officers, government officials, and escapees who have been arrested and are being held in the western provinces of the Ukraine and Belarus and apply to them the supreme penalty: shooting.”
“But what the imperialists need is not agreement. They are scared of agreements with the Soviet Union, because they might upset their aggressive plans, render unnecessary the arms drive which is the source of billions in superprofits. The imperialists need war. They need it for the robbery and enslavement of nations. And the American monopolists need it most of all, as a source of colossal superprofits.”
All 4 quotes from Lavrentiy Beria, and 1 often attributed but not verified
In the archive: The NKVD as its own propagandist: 'enemies of the people,' informants and the vigilant state (1934-1946), Selling the Gulag: the "re-forging" of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 1930-1937
Armed forces
Photo: Ivan Shagin, RIA Novosti, CC BY-SA 3.0 Kliment Voroshilov
People's Commissar for Defence · 1925 to 1940
Kliment Voroshilov: Read more
Headed the Red Army's commissariat from 1925, became one of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union in 1935, and was replaced by Semyon Timoshenko on 7 May 1940 after the Winter War.
In their words
“The trotskyites and their later accomplices, who for quite a long time occupied leading posts in the Party and in the Government, did their utmost to weaken the army cadres, to demoralize them and to turn them into a political tool for their dastardly counterrevolutionary activities, and thereby to disorganize the ranks of our Red Army. Under Stalin’s immediate direction this Trotsky-Bukharin gang and the effects of its machinations were completely wiped out.”
“Invaluable was the service Comrade Stalin rendered to our Motherland when he divined just in time the plans of the enemy agents in our country as represented by the trotskyites, bukharinites, and other traitors, wreckers and emissaries of the bourgeoisie. These enemies of the people attempted to undermine the economic and military might of our country and create a situation favourable to the imperialists in the event of war. Comrade Stalin directed the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet people along the line of defeating their enemies, which was decisive in the question of successfully building Socialism and strengthening the defensive capacity of the U.S.S.R.”
“Resorting to monstrous hypocrisy, such as vows of loyalty to Socialism, the Tito clique has tried to deceive the Yugoslav people and the peoples in the democratic camp, conceal from them, at the behest of Anglo-American imperialism, their fascist interior, their sinister designs against the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. The recent Budapest and Sofia trials of the imperialist agents Rajk and Kostov demonstrated to the whole world how the Belgrade adventurers made the peoples of Yugoslavia pass under the yoke of Wall Street and the City, converting that country into a nest of spies, a centre of fascist imperialist aggression in the Balkans”
Photo: Grigory Vayl (G. Weil), published by Time Inc. in Life magazine, Public domain (PD-US-not renewed) Georgy Zhukov
Chief of the General Staff; from 1942 Deputy Supreme Commander · 1941 to 1945
Georgy Zhukov: Read more
Chief of the General Staff from January to July 1941, Deputy Supreme Commander from August 1942, and a commander or coordinator of fronts from Moscow to Berlin; he signed the German surrender in Berlin for the USSR on 8 May 1945.
In their words
“We’ll definitely hold Moscow. But we’ll need at least two more armies and another two hundred tanks.”
“We, representatives of the Supreme Command of the Soviet Armed Forces and the Supreme Command of the Allied Forces, have been authorized by the governments of the anti-Hitler coalition to accept the unconditional surrender of Germany from the German Military Command. Bring in the representatives of the German High Command.”
“There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the the vehicular mine. When we come to a mine field our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider only equal to those we would have got from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area with strong bodies of troops instead of with mine fields. The attacking infantry does not set off the vehicular mines, so after they have penetrated to the far side of the field they form a bridgehead, after which the engineers come up and dig out channels through which our vehicles can go.”
All 4 quotes from Georgy Zhukov, and 1 often attributed but not verified
Propaganda and culture
Photo: TASS, Public domain (PD-Russia; PD-US-not renewed) Andrei Zhdanov
Secretary of the Central Committee; head of the Leningrad party organization from 1934 · 1934 to 1948
Andrei Zhdanov: Read more
Led the Leningrad party from December 1934, including through the siege, and from 1946 supervised the party's ideology and culture, directing the resolution of 14 August 1946 on the journals Zvezda and Leningrad; he died on 31 August 1948.
In their words
“In addition to this, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic portrayal should be combined with the ideological remolding and education of the toiling people in the spirit of socialism. This method in belles lettres and literary criticism is what we call the method of socialist realism.”
“We demand that our comrades, both practising writers and those in positions of literary leadership, should be guided by that without which the Soviet order cannot live, that is to say, by politics, so that our young people may be brought up not in the spirit of do-nothing and don't-care, but in an optimistic revolutionary spirit.”
“To be an engineer of human souls means standing with both feet firmly planted on the basis of real life. And this in its turn denotes a rupture with romanticism of the old type, which depicted a non-existent life and non-existent heroes, leading the reader away from the antagonisms and oppression of real life into a world of the impossible, into a world of utopian dreams.”
“We demand that our comrades, both practising writers and those in positions of literary leadership, should be guided by that without which the Soviet order cannot live, that is to say, by politics, so that our young people may be brought up not in the spirit of do-nothing and don’t-care, but in an optimistic revolutionary spirit.”
“The Leningraders in charge of Zvezda must indeed be lacking in vigilance if a ‘work’ of this sort is offered to the journal’s Soviet readers, if it is found possible to publish works steeped in the venom of bestial enmity towards the Soviet order. Only the scum of the literary world could write such ‘works’, and only the blind, the apolitical could allow them to appear.”
In the archive: The Union of Soviet Writers and socialist realism, 1932-1969, The Agitprop Department: the Communist Party's standing propaganda apparatus, 1920-1991
No portrait with a verified licence found. Nearest: source, dated 1938 to 1945 and tagged only PD-RU-exempt (the exemption for official documents and symbols), which does not clearly cover a portrait photograph, so it was not used. Aleksandr Shcherbakov
Secretary of the Central Committee; head of the Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformburo) · 1941 to 1945
Aleksandr Shcherbakov: Read more
Headed Sovinformburo from its founding on 24 June 1941 and the Red Army's Main Political Administration from June 1942, and led the Moscow party organization; he died on 10 May 1945.
In their words
“Inadvisable at this present time. Let the Jewish writers work for Moscow newspapers.”
“Mekhlis is coming off the list. He's a general; let him go on fighting. Ehrenburg is coming off the list. He writes well and writes every day. Impossible to send him. Markish is coming off the list. He's muddle-headed and hysterical; he doesn't know what's going to come out of his mouth two minutes from now. And then there is Epshteyn.”
“We absolutely have to have one person in the delegation who isn't a party member.”
In the archive: Soviet wartime propaganda, 1939-1945: Sovinformburo, Agitprop and the Red Army press
No public-domain or openly licensed portrait found on Wikimedia Commons; the English Wikipedia article carries no image. Georgy Aleksandrov
Head of the Central Committee's Propaganda and Agitation Department (Agitprop) · 1940 to 1947
Georgy Aleksandrov: Read more
Directed the party line for the press, lectures and the arts from 6 September 1940 and wrote the Pravda article of 14 April 1945, "Comrade Ehrenburg oversimplifies"; he was removed in 1947 after criticism of his history of Western philosophy.
In their words
“At present, Ehrenburg does not reflect the public opinion in the Soviet Union. Carrying out its great liberating mission, the Red Army is fighting to liquidate not only the German Army, but also the Hitlerite state and its government. However, its goal has never been to exterminate the German nation. That would be unwise and thoughtless”
In the archive: The Agitprop Department: the Communist Party's standing propaganda apparatus, 1920-1991, Soviet wartime propaganda, 1939-1945: Sovinformburo, Agitprop and the Red Army press
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain (PD-Russia-1996) Solomon Lozovsky
Deputy head, from 1945 head, of the Soviet Information Bureau; Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs · 1941 to 1948
Solomon Lozovsky: Read more
Ran Sovinformburo's foreign-language output, initiated the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee under it in 1942, was arrested in January 1949 and was shot on 12 August 1952 with twelve other committee defendants.
In their words
“The mission was to get into all foreign press outlets. There was a war on, they were our allies, we had to print things about the Soviet Union. We wormed our way into the papers, each committee in its own way-the Slavic committee in its own way, the Jewish, Women's, and Youth committees each in their own ways. If the word "information" implies "espionage," then all of the Sovinformburo's activity was espionage activity.”
“As regards my testimony in all of the interrogation records, it is wrong, starting from February 3,1949, all the way to the end, and this was conscious on my part.”
“As you know, my family name is Dridzo. This name cannot be translated into any language. When we asked our father what it meant, he told us that, according to a story passed down from father to son, a distant ancestor of ours was among the eight hundred thousand Jews who fled from Spain in 1492, when the chief inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, issued a decree compelling Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Anyone who refused was required to leave Spain within two months. I became Lozovsky in 1905 at a conference of Bolsheviks in Tammerfors, where I first met Comrade Lenin and also Comrade Stalin.”
In the archive: Soviet wartime propaganda, 1939-1945: Sovinformburo, Agitprop and the Red Army press
![Destroy the Enemy's Tanks Like the Brave Rifleman Nikita Likhanov! (Russian War Poster [2])](../../collection/images/soviet-destroy-enemy-tanks-like-nikita-likhanov-1942-640.jpg)
![Убей фашиста-изувера! [Kill the fascist brute!]](../../collection/images/soviet-kill-the-fascist-brute-deni-1942-640.jpg)
![Воин Красной Армии, спаси! [Red Army warrior, save!]](../../collection/images/soviet-warrior-of-the-red-army-save-koretsky-1942-640.jpg)
![Во имя Родины вперед богатыри! [For the Motherland's Sake, Go Forward, Heroes!]](../../collection/images/soviet-for-the-motherlands-sake-go-forward-heroes-toidze-1943-640.jpg)
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