I found this picture when I was looking for illustrations of Napoleon for the blog posts about the great man I did a little while back. In actual fact I never used it:
That pose of the hand inside the coat was considered quite normal and ordinary at the time of Napoleon, but it was used 140 years later by people who were far from normal and ordinary:
The Russian means “Glory to the Great Stalin!”
All things considered, I think that this is the best Stalin poster I found, though. Here it is:
The Russian means “Thank you, Beloved Stalin for a Happy Childhood!”
Runner-up was the uncaptioned:
That would look just wonderful on the back wall of one of Nottingham’s fast food shops.
“Thank you, Beloved Stalin for some Happy Fish and Chips! “
John Knifton 
Stalin – whoa!
But on today, remember, John….
I’d forgotten it was St Patrick’s Day, to tell you the truth, even though I do have Irish blood in me somewhere. I think virtually everybody in England does. In my case, it was my maternal grandmother whose maiden name was O’Neill. That is enough for me to qualify to play soccer for Ireland, once I’ve lost 50 or 60 lbs.
Good answer, John. It kinda sounds like me!
That is just creepy.
It certainly is. It just shows how dreadful the situation can become when the leader of a country can organise it so that the people worship him as a god on earth. It happened with Hitler, it happened with Mao and it seems to be happening in North Korea. There must always be the opportunity for people to dissent. otherwise democracy will just wither and die….which seems to be happening over here, where some members of parliament represent 100,000 people and others represent only 50,000. And of course, nobody will vote for reform because they might be voting for their own demise.
I had always assumed that he had cold hands!
Yes, but he had a very warm heart! It surprises me that Russians nowadays look upon him as a wonderful man who won the Second World War. If Stalin hadn’t carried out all those purges in the late 1930s, the Germans might have been defeated even quicker! It was the Russian people themselves who were the heroes, refusing to submit and eventually killing almost 70% of the German casualties.
That is quite a chilling statistic!
The Russians certainly know how to make a poster!
Don’t they just. I went to what was then the Soviet Union in 1969 on a school trip and posters were dirt cheap. I bought loads at 5p each, How I wish I still had them, including a six feet wide laminated map of the country and a Lenin that measured well over eight feet high…bigger than Bigfoot. I hadn’t thought it through, because the Lenin poster was too big for indoors and my Dad wouldn’t let me put it on the wall of our house in case the neighbours didn’t like it.
Oh dear! The dangers of impulse buying!
With its hand hidden beneath the coat, fascism explores new highways.
It’s a very strange pose, which does have a history apparently. The Romans used it in the Senate, I believe, and then Napoleon took it up. Hitler ignored it although he adapted the Roman greeting into the “Hitlergruß” or ‘Hitler Greeting’. Then Stalin must have thought that hand in coat was a good idea and duly used it, if sparingly. I’m glad to see that you think that Stalin was a Fascist just like Hitler, Mussolini and the long neglected Franco who killed tens of thousands in his own concentration camps such as at Alicante. You can add Mao to the list and I have a strong suspicion that one day, it will be recognised that China in 2017 was pretty much the same. A slave society with no free speech and a total fear of dissent.
Am I the only bearded bald man who notices a correlation between smooth-chinned men with good heads of hair and a desire for world domination?
By and large I would agree with you except for Donald Trump who looks as if he doesn’t go to a hairdressers but instead employs one of Thomas Hardy’s Dorset thatchers.
I am now imagining one of Derrick’s photoshoots of New Forest thatchers. 🙂
Politicians do not change, that photo about happy childhood !!
Absolutely. The similarities between Stalin and Hitler when they were with little children are quite startling. I wonder if that very strange young man in North Korea is the same? I wouldn’t be surprised.