How Stalin, Mao and other tyrants airbrushed their enemies from history

When news broke yesterday that Boris Johnson had been airbrushed from a photo with Grant Shapps, there were immediately cries of foul play.

While the business secretary insisted he did not know which of his staff had been responsible for the image, it was immediately apparent online how the move to “remove” the former prime minister had rather sinister overtones.

Many pointed to the link to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who often doctored up images to remove former allies who had fallen out of favor during his reign of terror.

Most famously, he removed former secret police officer Nikolai Yezhov from an image that originally showed the couple with two other officers standing by the Moscow Canal.

And China’s Chairman Mao also used the tactic to get rid of his political enemies from old photographs.

Stalin edited his political enemies from photographs. One such enemy was Nikolai Yezhov, a secret police officer who oversaw Stalin’s purges. When he fell from grace in 1938, Yezhov was removed from a picture of him with his boss on the Moscow channel.

When news broke yesterday that Boris Johnson had been blacked out of a photo with Grant Shapps, there were immediately cries of foul play, with critics pointing to links to Stalin’s tactics. Above: Shapps tweeted a picture of him meeting and greeting staff at Spaceport Cornwall. The version broadcast by Downing Street in 2021 showed an identical scene, but with then Prime Minister Johnson in the middle.

Yezhov had been one of Stalin’s trusted men, but fell out of favor with the dictator in 1938.

He was denounced, arrested, tried in a secret court, and later executed.

The touch-ups just replaced it with new water. Stalin used similar tactics with dozens of other party officials.

Photo editing was largely a part of Stalin’s Great Purge, which saw an estimated 750,000 people murdered between 1936 and 1939 as he sought to remove any remaining influence from his former comrade Leon Trotsky and any other political rivals.

Mao Zedong had a 1936 image of him with his comrades edited to remove his rival Po Ku (left)

In addition to using the editing tactic to eliminate his new enemies, Stalin also put himself in an image of an ailing Vladimir Lenin in 1922. In the retouched photo, he is seen sitting next to his then leader, with the representation planned. to show how Stalin had visited Lenin before his death in the hope of increasing his chances of succeeding him

More than a million victims were sent to remote areas of Russia for forced labor in gulags.

Some of Stalin’s enemies disappeared from their homes, while others were publicly executed after show trials.

Another famous use of editing occurred with a picture of Stalin with communist party comrades Nikolai Antipov, Sergei Kirov, and Nikolai Shvernik in 1926.

One by one, as the men fell out of favor with their psychopathic tendencies, Stalin removed them from the picture, until only he was left.

And an image of Lenin addressing a crowd of troops in Moscow in 1920 was later altered on Stalin’s orders to eliminate Stalin’s staunch enemy Leon Trotsky.

This image of Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd of troops in Moscow was later edited by censors to remove Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev.

In addition to using the editing tactic to eliminate his enemies, Stalin also put himself in an image of an ailing Vladimir Lenin in 1922.

In the retouched photo, he is seen sitting next to his then leader, and the depiction is meant to show how Stalin had visited Lenin before his death in hopes of increasing his chances of succeeding him.

But the dictator was not the only leader who made use of the edition, since both Chairman Mao of China and Italian Benito Mussolini did the same.

Mao Zedong had an image of himself with his comrades edited from 1936 to eliminate his rival Po Ku.

And as part of efforts to present himself as a strongman, Mussolini had an image of him on a horse edited out to remove the person who looks after him.

As part of efforts to present himself as a strong man, Mussolini had an image of himself on a horse edited out to remove the person tending the horse.