Yet this double response–horror at atrocity, amused contempt for stupidity and Dickensian rascality–is appropriate. Orwell, still the sanest observer of the totalitarian mind, would have relished this book; his nightmare regime in ““1984’’ knew ““day-to-day falsification of the past . . . is as necessary . . . as the work of repression and espionage.’’ And he would have understood why these faked photos look so shamelessly bogus: they express contempt for the ignorant masses while warning sophisticates that the regime will stop at nothing. Today any duffer with Photoshop software can create more convincing frauds. Digital technology may be more pernicious in the wrong hands, but it’s neither as theatrically sinister nor as funny as the ham-fisted forgeries in ““The Commissar Vanishes.’’ These images could almost make you nostalgic for old-time, in-your-face totalitarianism. But behind the weirdly fun fakery, it was all real.
