--- description: LIFE examines the way Stalin's portrait — the unsmiling face of a failed revolution — made its glacial, inexorable way around the globe. title: Picturing Stalin: Photos of a Tyrant's Face Seen Around the World image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e91068938414d1c/69884653a988ca562b6b1804/01_00652781.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Picturing Stalin: Tracking a Tyrant's Face Around the World by [Ben Cosgrove](/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close May 7, 2014 1:42 AM CUT  A poster of Joseph Stalin hangs in a shop window in Mukden, China, in 1946. A poster of Joseph Stalin hangs in a shop window in Mukden, China, in 1946.George Lacks—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close May 7, 2014 1:42 AM CUT Today, when a photograph of Barack Obama or a Kardashian or [Lionel Messi](http://www.espnfc.com/player/%5F/id/45843/lionel-messi?cc=5901 "undefined") — or, for that matter, a photograph of any of us — can be seen by literally millions of people within moments of being made, it’s easy to take the ubiquity of portraits of the famous, the powerful and even the notorious for granted. The dissemination and consumption of pictures — photographs, of course, but also caricatures, posters, graffiti and all manner of other still, static images — is now so all-pervading in so many cultures that it’s easy to forget that, not too long ago, one person’s face being recognized on a global scale was a rare and striking phenomenon. Four or five decades ago, the number of public figures whose faces were familiar to people on virtually every continent was far, far smaller than it is today. Muhammad Ali, of course. Che Guevara. John F. Kennedy. Pelé. [Marilyn Monroe](http://life.time.com/icons/marilyn-monroe-at-home-color-portraits-1953/#1 "undefined"). More than a handful, for sure — but far from the countless faces of the famous, the notorious and the ubiquitous with which we’re bombarded today. Travel back another decade or two, and not only is the number of globally recognized figures even smaller, but the means of transmitting, sharing or otherwise displaying those famous faces are seriously limited. It’s a wonder, sometimes, that any major figure of the mid-20th century ever made a splash, visually speaking, outside of his or her own pond. Which brings us to Stalin. Here, LIFE looks back at the way one of the most immediately recognizable — and infamous — figures of the past 100 years was pictured in countries around the world at the very height of his power. Far from the dizzying speed with which so much era-defining imagery travels today, whether it’s pictures of government-sponsored slaughter in Syria or the [final embrace](ightbox.time.com/2013/05/08/a-final-embrace-the-most-haunting-photograph-from-bangladesh/#1 "undefined") of a couple buried alive in a disaster, looking at these images of Stalin (left: a portrait by LIFE’s Margaret Bourke-White) one senses that _his_ visual journey around the world was far more gradual, more deliberate, more akin to a glacier than a beam of light, or a series of one and zeroes flashing across the Internet. But the plodding nature of his portrait’s travels, from Russia to Finland to China to Guatemala and beyond, hardly lessens the power of its prevalence. In fact, if anything, the slow, steady creep of Stalin’s visage around the planet 60 and 70 years ago feels, in some ways, more remarkable than the instantaneous, impossibly varied juggernaut of pictures that we encounter each day. There is something at once terribly gloomy and profoundly, clinically impressive in how widespread Stalin’s portrait became — as if one is mapping, in the face of its most prominent carrier, the path of a disease seen there, and there, and there. . . .  A poster of Joseph Stalin hangs in a shop window in Mukden, China, in 1946. George Lacks—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marchers wears creative costumes in a May Day parade in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, while carrying posters of Marshal Tito and Stalin in 1946. Nat Farbman—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The Stalinallee housing project, East Berlin, 1952. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A civilian parade marches into Red Square, celebrating May Day in Moscow in 1947. Thomas McAvoy—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Soviet generals sit beneath a painting of Stalin, Moscow, 1947. Thomas McAvoy—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A woman looks through a window at Russian books and a portrait of Joseph Stalin, Praque, Czechoslovakia, 1947. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Jose Manuel Fortuny, Secretary of the Communist Party in Guatemala, sits under a portrait of Stalin in 1953. Cornell Capa—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A Soviet general and a woman stand beside a wall-sized painting of Stalin in Moscow in 1947. Thomas McAvoy—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Red Square, May Day, Moscow, 1947. Thomas McAvoy—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Posters of Lenin and Stalin hang on the wall inside a government laboratory in North Korea in 1950. Howard Sochurek—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A poster of Stalin hangs in a shop window in Mukden, China, in 1946. George Lacks—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Portrait of Stalin in a wagon, Finland, 1939. Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3879757/picturing-stalin-a-tyrants-face-around-the-world/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3879757/picturing-stalin-a-tyrants-face-around-the-world/"},"headline":"Picturing Stalin: Tracking a Tyrant's Face Around the World","datePublished":"2014-05-07T01:42:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:43.183Z","description":"LIFE examines the way Stalin's portrait — the unsmiling face of a failed revolution — made its glacial, inexorable way around the globe.","url":"https://time.com/3879757/picturing-stalin-a-tyrants-face-around-the-world/","keywords":["russia","History","Soviet Union","Ben Cosgrove","Communism"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e91068938414d1c/69884653a988ca562b6b1804/01_00652781.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ben Cosgrove","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e91068938414d1c/69884653a988ca562b6b1804/01_00652781.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Portrait of Stalin in Mukden China","caption":"A poster of Joseph Stalin hangs in a shop window in Mukden, China, in 1946.","creditText":"George Lacks—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3879757/picturing-stalin-a-tyrants-face-around-the-world/","name":"Picturing Stalin: Tracking a Tyrant's Face Around the World"}}]}] ```