“Whether Europe’s new era will end in nationalist chaos, good or bad internationalism, or what not, the era will be new—and the end of the old era will have been finally precipitated by a man whose domain lies mostly outside Europe. This Joseph Stalin did by dramatically switching the power balance of Europe one August night. It made Joseph Stalin man of 1939. History may not like him but history cannot forget him.”
—From the January 1, 1940 issue of TIME magazine
“The year 1942 was a year of blood and strength. The man whose name means steel in Russian, whose few words of English include the American expression ‘tough guy’ was the man of 1942. Only Joseph Stalin fully knew how close Russia stood to defeat in 1942, and only Joseph Stalin fully knew how he brought Russia through. But the whole world knew what the alternative would have been. The man who knew it best of all was Adolf Hitler, who found his past accomplishments turning into dust.”
—From the January 4, 1943 issue of TIME magazine
He had pretty intense smallpox scars on his face IIRC but the photography of the time was too poor to see it.
His pox scars are nowhere near as bad as portrayed in this art. It is a deformity commonly associated with poverty, and it's exaggerated in this art as political caricature and visual propaganda
https://imgur.com/0Ln4Bsp
a lot of the kids in his village died of the same smallpox epidemic that he survived if I recall
Yeah its also very interesting seeing old footage of him.
Here's one from 1942 featuring him and Churchill
Here's one from 1947 right before the official cold war kick-off
Damn Churchill looks so daft in the beginning, like he doesn't know where he even is. Lmao. He really does look like a bulldog (I just mean his expression, not body shaming)
Well, concidering how he had spent the majority of his career being a virulent anti-communist and was at that point reliant of the Soviet Union to keep the nazi military locked up in combat do they don't actually try to invade the British islands, I'd say he looks that way because he's very internally conflicted he's forced to rely on the very Soviet peoples he wanted to destroy just a few years ago.
Also he's probably really fucking drunk.
If you think about it, Stalin was the original Zelensky, and that makes him pretty slava ukraini in my book.
