20. The Soviet Union’s Most Famous Dictator-and-Cute-Kid Pic
Buryat-Mongol official Ardan Markizov toiled away for the USSR in remote Siberia. A passionate communist, he named his daughter Engelsina after Friedrich Engels, and his son Vladlen, after Vladimir Lenin. Markizov traveled to Moscow in 1936, as part of a Mongol delegation to meet Stalin. His seven-year-old daughter, Engelsina “Gelya” Markizova, came along. Gelya stole the show when she gave some flowers to the Soviet dictator. Stalin picked her up and placed her on the table, and a photo of Gelya hugging Stalin became a sensation. The editor-in-chief of Pravda newspaper enthused: “God himself sent us this little Buryat girl. We’ll make her an icon of happy childhood“. The photo, nicknamed “Children’s Friend”, went viral. After the photo was published, the hotel lobby was filled with toys and other presents gifted to her.
Upon her return to Buryat, Gelya was greeted like astronauts were later. A famous sculptor even created a monument to Stalin and Gelya. That did not save her family from Stalin’s Great Purge, however. In 1937, her father was arrested by the NKVD, accused of being, Trotskyite, subversive plotter, and spy. Gelya wrote to Stalin, begging for mercy, but to no avail. Her father was executed in 1938. Her mother was also arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan, where she died, probably at the hands of the NKVD. From celebrity, Gelya now became a pariah, shunned as the daughter of an “enemy of the people”. The images and sculptures of Stalin with the daughter of an enemy of the people were awkward. Too many to destroy, officials simply changed the girl’s name from Gelya Markizova to Mamlakat Nakhangova.
