To illustrate a story on Stalin's death last week, the New York Times printed a photo of a solemn-faced Moscow crowd. Their mood seemed to fit the prose of the Times's Moscow Correspondent Harrison Salisbury: "One had the feeling that here were persons who had suffered a heavy and severe blow."
Actually, the editors had dug out an old Sovfoto picture taken back in 1937, when Joseph Stalin was busily purging his Old Bolshevik pals and grinding out propaganda that they were traitors who deserved to be shot. One sharp-eyed Times reader, Editor, Author and ex-Communist Max Eastman, who reads Russian, spotted...
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