Thе article “Fake Stalin: An American History of a Scandalous Falsification” examines the history of fictional “interviews” with Joseph C. (sic!) Stalin, published in the American press from 1926 to 1927. The publications provoked a significant international scandal. According to Stalin, the American public was misled by “swindlers and blackmailers” who had been hired by American and British capitalists opposed to the peaceful politics of the USSR. The article identifies the author of this series of falsifications as Ivan Narodny (Jaan Sibul, 1869–1953) – an Estonian emigrant from the Russian Empire and a staff writer for the Sunday issues of William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper syndicate, – and reconstructs the “Stalin plot” (the journalistic crusade against the “father of peoples”) in the work of this exceptional fraud and “telepathic” propagandist.

This article is written in Russian.

Keywords: Joseph Stalin, Ivan Narodny, falsifications, propaganda, international scandals, “the tabloid imagination”