Stalinka

While no cult of personality is quite as much fun as the cult of Lenin, I'll admit that the later (but shorter-lived) cult of Stalin is pretty interesting too.

And so, an email caught my attention announcing the launch of Stalinka, the University of Pittsburg's "digital library of Staliniana." Pretty interesting stuff, including a searchable database of over 500 photographs, paintings, and posters of Iosef Vissarionovich.

Here is the press release describing the project:

The University of Pittsburgh team and Helena Goscilo take pleasure in announcing the expansion of their STALINKA, a comprehensive digital library of Staliniana for educational purposes.

STALINKA is a scholarly-referenced digital library comprising representations of Stalin in various genres: portraits, paintings, sculptures, posters, political cartoons, propaganda leaflets, photographs, newspaper graphics, and material objects. The website assembles images from major European and American museums, photographic archives, artists, and private collections, including the Tret'iakov Gallery in Moscow, the Archive of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation (ROSIZO), the Museum for Contemporary History in Moscow, the Russian State Library, the TASS Photographic Archives, the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War, the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian & East European Culture, The Museum of Russian Art, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, and the private art and photograph collections of Vitalii Komar and Aleksandr Melamid, Leonid Sokov, and Artem Zadikian.

The collection provides visuals of historical artifacts from the Revolutionary, Stalinist, post-socialist, and Second World War periods. The recently expanded collection may be accessed at:

http://images.library.pitt.edu/s/stalinka

We welcome anyone and everyone to the site, but emphasize that (1) all the images are copyrighted and may not be disseminated or used outside the classroom without permission; (2) we are not empowered to give that permission, which must be sought from the pertinent entity or individual identified in the metadata on the site. We also welcome all scholarly input and feedback. Please note that the DRL middleware for the site is currently being upgraded and diacritics for the recent Polish political cartoons temporarily have been replaced with simpler characters.