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Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
G.P. GOLDSHTEIN (1840-1941) Vladimir Lenin, with Leon Trotsky and Lev Borisovich Kamenev, addressing soldiers in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow. Silver print, the image measuring 4 1/2x7 3/8 inches (11.4x18.7 cm.), the sheet slightly larger, the later mount 8x10 inches (20.3x25.4 cm.), with a caption in pencil on mount recto and the Culver Pictures label and barcode on mount verso. May 5, 1920
Provenance: The Culver Archive
This image, which depicts Lenin addressing troops in Sverdlov Square in Moscow before their departure to the Polish front, represents a powerful example of Stalinist censorship and attempts to erased purged political rivals. Here, after Trotsky's exile from the party seven years after the image was made, he and Kamenev were removed from the image and replaced by an empty stairway. Though the original image had been reproduced throughout the world as an iconic symbol of revolutionary Russia, the original, unfabricated image was never shown again in the USSR.
