Matinee idol: Stalin at a gathering of wives of officials. Grand Kremlin Palace, May 1936. Stalin kept few mistresses.
Long March: Chinese Communists find refuge from Chiang Kai-shek’s encirclement campaigns in remote Shaanxi province, 1935. Right to left: Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, and Qin Bangxian (known as Bo Gu).
Putsch in Spain: General Francisco Franco trailed by General Emilio Mola (in glasses), August 19, 1936. Neither in China nor in Spain would Stalin instigate or countenance a Communist takeover.
Stalin and Voroshilov (dancing), Kalinin (behind Stalin, with goatee and glasses), and Molotov (behind Voroshilov), Orjonikidze (behind Molotov) at an awards ceremony for the fifteenth anniversary of the Sovietization of Georgia, Kremlin Imperial Senate, March 1936. Ceremonial gatherings in the Imperial Senate and especially in the Grand Kremlin Palace became ever more central to Stalin’s rule.
Heavy industry commissar shoots himself: Sergo Orjonikidize’s bier, February 18, 1937. (Left to right) Molotov, Kaganovich, Jan Gamarnik (bearded), Voroshilov, and Stalin.
Kalinin and Stalin emerging from the Lenin Mausoleum, trailed by the diminutive Nikolai Yezhov (in NKVD uniform), May Day 1937. Stalin relentlessly goaded an already eager-to-please Yezhov to mass arrests.
Physical culture parade, Red Square, July 12, 1937, height of the terror.
Munich Pact fiasco (left to right): Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and the latter’s son-in-law and foreign minister, Ciano. The Soviet Union was not invited. Führer House, September 29–30, 1938.
Children and swastikas line the streets to welcome Adolf Hitler in the Sudetenland after the Western powers handed this region of Czechoslovakia to him. Stalin ended his mass terror almost immediately thereafter.
Chiang Kai-shek (right), head of China’s ruling Nationalist government, and Zhang Xueliang, a warlord from Manchuria known as the Young Marshal, who later had Chiang kidnapped in collusion with China’s Communists. Stalin would intervene to save Chiang.
Choibalsan, Moscow’s ruler in the puppet state of Mongolia, during the Soviet-Japanese border war, summer 1939.
The 18th Party Congress. Each delegation was afforded a photograph with Stalin and the leadership (front row). Shown here is the turn of military party members. St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, March 1939.
Revolution Day parade. Red Square, November 7, 1939.
German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop deplaning from Hitler’s personal Condor is greeted by German ambassador Werner von der Schulenburg. Soviet antiaircraft battalions at the border—in the dark about Stalin’s conspiratorial diplomacy—had attempted to shoot down the plane, but missed. Moscow, August 23, 1939.
Nazi flag on one of Stalin’s armored sedans, which he sent to transport Ribbentrop (center, back to the camera).
A study in contrasts, Ribbentrop and Stalin: lightning conclusion of a Hitler-Stalin Pact. Little Corner, August 24, 1939.
Polish foreign minister Józef Beck (in great coat) ascending the steps to meet Hitler at the Nazi leader’s mountain retreat. Beck had physically bowed to Hitler as the two shook hands, but refused his territorial demands. To the right is the head of the German protocol department, Alexander “Sandro” von Dörnberg. Berghof, January 5, 1939.
Hitler greets Ribbentrop after the signing of the Pact. Berlin, Reich Chancellery, August 25, 1939.
German engineering: a new bridge over the Vistula erected in two days for the Wehrmacht in Poland, September 1939. The wrecked Fordon Bridge is in the background.
Molotov signing a state treaty with Otto Kuusinen (far right, standing), whom Stalin appointed to head a “People’s Government” for Finland, December 1, 1939. Zhdanov and Voroshilov are to Stalin’s right. This proved to be one of Stalin’s numerous blunders.
Finnish tank traps augmented the concrete emplacements and pillboxes of their Mannerheim Line of defense, Soviet-Finnish Winter War, 1939–40.
This is a rare photograph showing both Stalin and Trotsky (both in white) at Felix Dzierżyński’s funeral, 1926. Molotov, at the front, is holding the casket (behind him); Bukharin is between him and Stalin. The bespectacled Trotsky is a ways across from Stalin to the left and next to Genrikh Yagoda (turned toward Trotsky). To Molotov’s right is Alexei Rykov (looking up), to whose right is Lev Kamenev (hand on chin). Grigory Zinoviev (bushy, dark hair) is behind the person at the rear of the casket. Stalin executed or imprisoned almost everyone in the photo.
Trotsky’s skull.
Molotov’s personal photo album from his visit to Berlin, arrival at the Anthalter train station, November 10, 1940. From left (front): Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Molotov. Behind and between Ribbentrop and Molotov is Soviet ambassador Alexei Shkvartsev, a former textile factory manager.
