Clapping for Stalin

“Stalin’s Boots,” Memento Park, Budapest — Radley Balko

---

“At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). . . “

---

Workers cover the last Spanish dictator Francisco Franco's equestrian statue after dismantling it on December 18, 2008 in the northern Spanish city of Santander — photo by RAFA RIVAS / AFP) (Photo by RAFA RIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)

---

“The small hall echoed with ‘stormy applause, rising to an ovation.’ For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the ‘stormy applause, rising to an ovation,’ continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching . . .”

---

A picture taken on June 26, 2019 shows a big statue of the late communist dictator Enver Hoxha created by Albanian sculptor Odhise Paskali, lying in the basement of a former WWII museum — photo by GENT SHKULLAKU/AFP via Getty Images

---

‘And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop? . . .”

---

Park of the Fallen Heroes, Gorky Park, Moscow — Radley Balko

---

“The secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform, and it was he who had just called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first! . . .”

---

Italians remove the head of a statue of Mussolini in 1943 — Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images

---

“And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! . . .”

---

Tourists at “Stalin World” in Grutas, Lithuania — Photo by Laski Diffusion/Wojtek Laski/Getty Images

---

“At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly — but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them? . . .”

---

A man stands in the gaping hole left on the concrete bust of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos in Tuba village, December, 2002 after unidentified men set off an explosion which damaged the 99-foot statue — photo by ANDY ZAPATA/AFP via Getty Images

---

“The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! . . .”

---

Mongolian workers look at a statue of Stalin on July 26, 1990 that has been in storage since February when it was removed from in front of the National Library in central Ulan Bator. — photo by CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images

---

“In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! . . .”

---

A visitor walks behind the bronze statues of Romanian former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (L) and his wife Elena Ceausescu (R) inside an exhibition hall of the former communist era prison, a memorial to commemorate victims of the communist repression in Romania — photo by DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP via Getty Images

---

“And even then those who were left would not falter…Then after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat . . .”

---

A stone bust of Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, lies on the floor of the Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh along with chains and instruments of torture. The museum is in a former school that the Khmer Rouge turned into Prison S-21. It is documented that over 17,000 Cambodians were held, tortured and killed in this prison — photo by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images

---

“And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel . . .”

---

A picture taken on February 27, 2015 shows a statue of late Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin painted with the colours of the Ukrainian flag in the Ukrainian-held town of Velyka Novosilka — hoto by JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images

---

“That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested . . .”

---

The monument to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, which was demolished in the Georgian city of Gori in 2010, lies in the open on a plot of land that is not open to the public — photo by Ulf Mauder/picture alliance via Getty Images

---

They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of his interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

---

The removed statue of Confederate general, KKK leader, slave trader, and convict lessor Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, Tennessee — photo by Houston Cofield/Bloomberg via Getty Images

---