The Commissar Vanishes

"This book is intriguing because it’s not focusing on something that happens in our mind. It is about what others do to our externalised memory. Photographs, books and letters are all part of that. But, as we realise that our own recollection isn’t that perfect and begin to rely on these, we may become quite dependent on the authenticity of these objects as pieces of (our) memory. In this book David King looks at Soviet photoshopping. Whenever someone in official photos fell from grace he or she was manually retouched from the photographs. Dozens of people were airbrushed out of history. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter As we externalise our memories and put stuff up on Flickr, Facebook and YouTube, these companies will have the power to change our history. And it is easier than in Stalin’s times. Because, unfortunately, digital memories are much more malleable than analogue memories, and digital changes are harder to detect. In fact, a US colleague of mine told me that in the medical field peer reviewers of academic journals now struggle with digital photos that have been digitally altered."