The “nationalist-fascist” who glorified Stalin

I do not know whether you have come across the blog Selected Marxist Leninist writings before.

It follows an extremely rigid Stalinist line. The blog’s author, or authors, regard Stalin as an infallible and divine political leader. Reading the articles published there feels like reading a Stalinist publication from the 1930s, the 1940s or the early 1950s.

Unsurprisingly, the blog harbours a deep hostility towards Trotsky and Trotskyism, and makes no attempt to conceal it. Indeed, that is an understatement: this hostility is one of the blog’s defining characteristics.

The blog also appears to have a connection to Turkey. The Academia.edu link in the top menu leads to Ahmet Erdoğan’s profile, where he describes himself as working in journalism and public relations. On his page, Erdoğan shares articles, translations, pamphlets and books. Some of these also appear on the blog.

What I would like to focus on in this article is the image in the blog’s banner.

The image is taken from a Stalinist propaganda poster produced as a photomontage by the Latvian photographer and graphic artist Gustav Gustavovich Klutsis (1895-1938). It shows four portraits arranged side by side on red flags: from left to right, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. The poster’s slogan reads: “Raise higher the banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!” (The bottom of the poster was cropped off when it was used for the blog’s banner.)

The complete poster (1933)

You might say, “Well, what of it? It is simply one of the propaganda posters widely used during Stalin’s lifetime, showing Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin together.” And indeed it is.

But the story is not quite so simple. Klutsis was no ordinary artist. He devoted enormous effort to mythologising Stalin’s image, played an important role in building the Stalin cult, and was later executed by firing squad on Stalin’s orders.

In January 1938, he was arrested on charges of spying for foreign powers, particularly Britain. He was subjected to severe torture during interrogation. He was accused of belonging to a “fascist-nationalist Latvian organisation” allegedly operating in Moscow. He was sentenced to death by a decision issued jointly by the NKVD and the USSR Procuracy on 11 February 1938. On 26 February 1938, during the Great Terror (1936-1938), he was executed by firing squad. Sixty-three other Latvian artists and intellectuals were executed alongside him that day.

Gustav Klutsis (1932)

When Stalin died in 1953, Klutsis’s conviction was still in force. He had been declared a non-person. His name went unmentioned, and his works were neither published nor exhibited. His conviction was never overturned during Stalin’s lifetime.

According to the official letter sent to his family, his case was re-examined in 1956, three years after Stalin’s death. The review found that Klutsis’s supposed confession and the witness statements against him could not be accepted as evidence of a crime. Moreover, the two NKVD officials who had signed the document on which his arrest was based had themselves been convicted of unlawfully arresting Soviet citizens and fabricating case files. On 25 August 1956, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court quashed his conviction, closed the case on the grounds that no criminal offence had been committed, and posthumously rehabilitated Klutsis.

Let us now return to the poster in the banner of Selected Marxist Leninist writings. This staunchly Stalinist blog gives pride of place to Klutsis’s work. Yet the dictator its authors treat as a deity had the very man who created it tortured and then shot, after branding him a member of a “fascist-nationalist” organisation.

I very much doubt that the people behind the blog are unaware of what happened to Klutsis. To display his poster so prominently while ignoring the artist’s fate is, in my view, a classic example of political hypocrisy.

I would like to put a few questions to the people behind this blog.

As loyal followers of Stalin, do you consider the verdict that branded Klutsis a member of a “fascist-nationalist” organisation justified?

If not, why do you not say so openly and criticise the verdict?

If so, why do you display a poster he designed in your blog’s banner?

Perhaps, with astonishing cynicism, you will say: “Klutsis was a nationalist-fascist, but he produced posters glorifying Stalin to conceal his true beliefs. We used one of his posters because we found it striking.”

Then put the artist’s name beneath the poster as well. Let the reader also see, directly beneath those four portraits presenting Stalin as the heir to Marx, Engels and Lenin and as carrying on their work, that the poster’s creator, Klutsis, was executed by firing squad in 1938 on the grounds that he belonged to a “fascist-nationalist” organisation, and that his conviction was not overturned until after Stalin’s death.