Stalin could not be seen to be usurping the legendary image of the great Bolshevik hero and leader of the revolution. The real problem was the giant shadow of Lenin. This was not just because the man himself was so physically unprepossessing – diminutive and squat, his face dominated by a big walrus mustache and heavily pitted from smallpox – or that he was a secretive, intensely private individual who spoke in a quiet, undemonstrative voice, his Russian couched in a strong Georgian accent that never left him. The building of the cult of personality around Stalin had to proceed judiciously, as British historian Ian Kershaw explains in his history of Europe in the first half of the 20th century, To Hell and Back:Ī Stalin cult had to be built carefully. Stalin's image in propaganda and the mass media Female members of the FDJ carry portraits of Stalin in the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin Historian Archie Brown sets the celebration of Stalin's 50th birthday on 21 December 1929 as the starting point for his cult of personality. For the rest of Stalin's rule, the Soviet press presented Stalin as an all-powerful, all-knowing leader, with Stalin's name and image appearing everywhere. Joseph Stalin's cult of personality became a prominent feature of Soviet popular culture beginning in 1929, after a lavish celebration of his purported 50th birthday. Portrait of Stalin displayed at a public event in Leipzig in 1950 A celebration of Stalin's purported 70th birthday in the People's Republic of China Stalin at his 70th birthday ceremony with Marshal Nikolai Bulganin, Chinese Communist Leader Mao Zedong, Mongolian Communist Leader Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal and German Communist Leader Walter Ulbricht
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