When George Orwell published his dystopian masterpiece 1984, he was in part inspired by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. There are lots of parallels between the world of 1984 and Stalin’s Russia, and one concerns the protagonist’s occupation. He works in the “Ministry of Truth,” where people “revise” history, deleting every trace of those who fell out of Big Brother’s grace.

This also happened in Stalin’s USSR. One day a politician may have been in favor, the next he could be facing the firing squad as an enemy of the people. In Soviet Russia, people were literally written out of the history books. Here are some examples.

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