Control of the people, 1917–85 Flashcards
(71 cards)
1
Q
How did the new government establish control of the press and media?
A
- Announcing the Decree on the Press in November 1917, which gave the government the emergency powers to close any newspapers which supported a counter-revolution
- Creating a state monopoly of advertising in November 1917, which ensured that only the government could publish adverts
- Nationalising the Petrograd Telegraph Agency in November 1917, which gave the new government control of electronic means of communication.
- Establishing a Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press in January 1918, with the power to censor the press; journalists and editors who committed ‘crimes against the people’ could be punished by the Cheka, who were empowered to impose fines or prison sentences, confiscate property or exile offending writers
- Establishing the All-Russia Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), which was solely responsible for distributing news.
2
Q
How was the initial cult of Lenin?
A
- The cult of Lenin was one example of a type of propaganda that emerged early in the regime that Lenin did not approve of.
- Following an assassination attempt, Lenin was described in essentially religious terms. His survival was described as ‘miraculous’, and the emphasis on his willingness to suffer and sacrifice his life for his people made Lenin into a modern day Christ.
- In 1919, during the Civil War, even though resources were scarce, busts and statues of Lenin were produced. Lenin’s photograph also appeared with various titles, such as *‘Leader of the Revolutionary Proletariat’. Significantly, the new cult had a socialist edge.
- Lenin was aware of these trends and was uncomfortable with them, but he understood their importance and therefore allowed the cult to grow. The media and propaganda focus on Lenin gave the revolution and the Communist Party a face, someone the Russian people could identify with and support.
3
Q
How were cartoons and photomontage used in the first years of the revolution?
A
- The government collaborated with avant-garde artists to produce posters promoting the revolution. Many of these featured Lenin. ‘A Spectre is Haunting Europe – the Spectre of Communism’ was one early poster which showed a grim and determined Lenin standing in front of a red banner pointing to the west.
- Gustav Klutsis used photomontage to create posters advertising Lenin’s electrification plan, which was unveiled on his fiftieth birthday.
4
Q
How did the NEP control the media?
A
In 1922, Felix Dzerzhinsky, leader of the Soviet political police, introduced Glavlit, a new organisation which oversaw a more systematic censorship regime. Glavlit’s censorship worked on the following principles:
- The GPU was put in charge of policing every publication available in the Soviet Union.
- New professional censors were employed.
- All books were investigated for anti-Communist bias.
- The GPU compiled a list of banned books.
- New special holding libraries, or ‘book Gulags’, were set up to house the banned books.
5
Q
How did Stalin increase the censorship of media?
A
- In the mid-1930s the works of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky and other leading revolutionaries from the 1920s had to be purged from Soviet libraries.
- Even Stalin’s works were edited to remove any indication that he had once been close to those he purged.
- Soviet history was rewritten, too, to remove the contributions of Stalin’s opponents and to emphasise Stalin’s role in the revolution.
- Propaganda in the Stalin period focused on the leader. The cult of Stalin turned him into a semi-divine figure, whose unique vision and unique wisdom would lead the nation to socialism.
6
Q
What were consumer magazines in the 1950s and 60s?
A
- As part of the drive to create a consumer society, magazines were encouraged to publish readers’ letters. However, rather than praising the achievements of socialism, readers’ letters often exposed long-term problems with Soviet society.
- Letters to women’s magazines, like Rabotnitsa (the Woman Worker), exposed more profound problems. Readers complained about male alcoholism, inequalities in the home relating to childcare and housework, as well as domestic violence.
- Khrushchev’s media responded with its own campaigns against worthless men. Cartoons in Krokodil, a satirical magazine, poked fun at men who arrived at parades drunk, late or not at all.
7
Q
How did Soviet cinema and television change under Khrushchev?
A
- Soviet cinema also changed under Khrushchev as part of a broader cultural ‘thaw’, or liberalisation.
- Yet, rather than focusing on the contribution of Stalin, films such as The Forty-First (1956) focused on the role played by ordinary people.
- Television also took off in Khrushchev’s last years. First, it played a major role in celebrating the Soviet Union’s triumphs in the space race
- In 1961 millions of viewers watched a five-hour programme celebrating Yuri Gagarin’s space flight. Similar shows in 1963 focused on Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.
- Television coverage stressed her ordinariness: she was born on a collective farm and then became a textile worker in a Soviet factory.
8
Q
How did Soviet cinema and television change under Brezhnev?
A
- There were traditional elements such as films celebrating Soviet victory in the Second World War.
- However, during the same period there were more films dealing with working people and their daily lives. Significantly Soviet film makers tended to focus on fashionable citizens living in luxurious apartments. In so doing they stoked public desire for consumer goods and fashion.
- The Soviet Government was able to keep tight control of the footage of the war in Afghanistan, and in so doing could keep the truth about the scale and horrors of the war hidden.
- The cameras showed a man who was clearly physically and mentally incapacitated, who struggled to make speeches, became confused mid-sentence and had difficulty walking.
- Western magazines became increasingly available in Soviet cities as part of the second economy. These tended to be consumer magazines such as Vogue.
9
Q
What was the ‘Myth of Two Leaders’?
A
- This myth led Soviet people to believe that the October Revolution, victory in the Civil War and the foundation of the Soviet Union had been masterminded by a duumvirate consisting of Lenin and Stalin.
- The myth required Soviet history to be extensively rewritten, to place Stalin at the centre of events and to remove Trotsky and other leaders from the story. This was achieved by:
- The publication in 1938 of two histories of the Communist Party, both edited by Stalin.
- Socialist Realist paintings which were created showing Stalin working closely with Lenin.
- Altering photographs – Trotsky and other former leaders were taken out of pictures with Lenin.
10
Q
How was Stalin shown to be like Lenin’s heir?
A
- Painters used a variety of techniques to show that Stalin was Lenin’s true heir. Grigory Shegal’s Leader, Teacher, Friend shows Stalin standing immediately in front of a bust of Lenin.
- Gustav Klutsis’ photomontages use a different technique. They show a row of figures running from Marx, through Lenin to Stalin, implying that Stalin is the latest in a tradition of revolutionary leaders.
11
Q
What was ‘the vozhd’ in terms of Stalin?
A
- He was routinely known as ‘the vozhd’, which simply means leader. The term is significant, because unlike words like President or Prime Minister, vozhd has no legal significance.
- Therefore while the powers of a President or a Prime Minister are limited by law, the powers of the vozhd have no obvious limit. Pravda and other Communist newspapers praised the vozhd’s wisdom daily.
- Stalin’s birthday became a national celebration with parades.
12
Q
How did Stalin’s role as Generalissimo become the focus of Soviet propaganda?
A
- As Generalissimo he was presented as a military genius, as the man who defeated Hitler and as the saviour of the nation. This change in presentation was accompanied by a change in the way Stalin was depicted in pictures.
- Up until 1945 Stalin tended to be pictured wearing blue-grey or green military tops. However, in his last years he tended to be
painted wearing a white uniform. Stalin designed the uniform himself and the military rank of Generalissimo was created specifically for Stalin.
13
Q
How did the cults of personality under Khrushchev change?
A
- Khrushchev criticised Stalin’s cult, but established two of his own. First, Khrushchev revived the cult of Lenin. However, whereas the cult of Lenin in the 1930s had stressed Lenin’s death, the cult of Lenin in the 1950s was based on the slogan ‘Lenin lives!’ Under Khrushchev, Lenin was depicted as fun, approachable, humane, a person who loved children, family and lived a simple life.
- In many ways Khrushchev’s Lenin resembled Khrushchev himself. The purpose of the cult was to move away from Stalinism. For Khrushchev, this meant rediscovering Leninism. It also reminded Soviet citizens that the government was founded on Lenin’s revolution rather than Stalin’s terror.
14
Q
What was Khrushchev’s cult of personality like?
A
According to Soviet propaganda Khrushchev was:
- A disciple of Lenin who was completing the journey that Lenin had started.
- Responsible for new successes such as the Soviet space programme and rising harvests in the Virgin Lands
- A respected statesman who negotiated with the US President as an equal
- A hero of the Second World War.
- An authority on literature, art, science, industry and agriculture.
- The great reformer who was perfecting the Soviet system.
- His embarrassing foreign policy climb-downs and his failure to deliver on his wildly optimistic promises about out-producing the USA led to a collapse in confidence in Khrushchev’s fitness to govern.
15
Q
What were the four key aspects of Brezhnev’s cult of personality?
A
- A great Leninist: Brezhnev had not known Lenin, but he claimed to be continuing the work started by Lenin, particularly working for world peace.
- A military hero: Brezhnev attempted to present himself as a military leader and official publications stressed his military prowess in the Second World War; he was promoted to the position of Marshal of the Red Arm and received 60 medals.
- Dedicated to ensuring world peace: Brezhnev stressed his foreign policy successes in developing détente with the USA
- A true man of the people: Brezhnev biographies told of his humble origins and how he worked as an engineer in the steel industry.
16
Q
Why did Brezhnev’s cult of personality fail?
A
- Brezhnev’s Cult was simply not plausible. Whereas Stalin had been respected and feared, Brezhnev became the butt of numerous jokes that focused on his vanity and his hollow claims. Whereas Stalin’s cult inspired loyalty and respect, the Brezhnev Cult inspired cynicism.
17
Q
Why did Marxists critical of religion?
A
- Marx famously claimed that religion was the ‘opium of the masses’.
- For Lenin, the Russian Orthodox Church was an essential ally of the Tsar. Moreover, the Church was an extremely rich institution, and some Russian Orthodox priests led lives of immense privilege while working people were poor.
- Because religions stood for values that were sometimes opposed to Communist values.
- Because religious groups were organisations that were independent of the Communist Government and therefore could organise in opposition to the government.
18
Q
What were the series of decrees introduced to define the relationship between government and religion by Lenin?
A
- The October 1917 Decree on Land gave peasants the right to seize land belonging to the Church.
- The January 1918 Decree Concerning Separation of Church and State, and of School and Church meant the Church lost its privileged position in society. Church land, buildings and property were nationalised, state subsidies for the Church were ended, and religious education was banned in schools.
- The 1922 Soviet Constitution guaranteed freedom of conscience for all Soviet people.
19
Q
How did Lenin use the terror to undermine the Church?
A
- Orthodox priests in Moscow were massacred in January following a Church decree excommunicating the Bolsheviks.
- More extreme measures were sanctioned in November 1918 when the Politburo issued a secret order to the Cheka sanctioning the mass execution of priests. Within two years most of the most popular Orthodox priests had been killed.
- Soviet authorities seized Church assets to fund famine relief and blamed priests who resisted for sabotaging relief efforts.
20
Q
What was the Living Church?
A
- The Living Church claimed to be a reformed version of the old Orthodox Church in which ordinary people had power.
- The Living Church, aided by the GPU, organised a national congress in April 1923 which introduced a new decentralised structure. This was part of a government-backed strategy to split the Church, take away its central leader and weaken its national structure.
- Their policy of splitting the Church by backing the Living Church was more successful, but the Church split did not diminish Church growth, nor faith in saints and miracles which continued through the 1920s.
21
Q
How was Islam weakened in the 1920s?
A
Communists objected to Islam for two main reasons. They claimed that Islam encouraged ‘crimes based on custom’ and they recognised that Islamic organisations had the loyalty of many people in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and therefore they wanted to destroy the religion in order to extend their own power. Therefore the authorities:
- Closed mosques, turning them into sports clubs or storage depots.
- Discouraged pilgrimages.
- Attacked Islamic shrines.
- Started campaigns against women wearing the chador, a traditional form of dress which sometimes included a veil.
- Opened anti-Islamic museums in the midst of recognised holy places.
22
Q
How did Stalin have a pragmatic approach to religion?
A
- Stalin ordered the closure of many churches in the country largely because they were aiding resistance to his policies.
- The NKVD also attacked groups that had been set up to defend Islam in the 1920s from Soviet attacks. This included attacking Jadids and Sufi groups who were dedicated to ‘saving Islam from Marxist pollution’.
23
Q
Why did Stalin reach out to the church during the Second World War?
A
- The Russian Orthodox Church was linked to Russian national identity. Therefore as patriotism re-awoke, it was natural for Russians to look to the Church.
- The war was a time of continual crisis when all families faced losing loved ones. The Church provided comfort for bereaved families.
- Soldiers also found comfort in the thought that God would welcome them into heaven. When facing death in battle, one soldier commented that there was more comfort and inspiration in a few of Jesus’s words than there was in the entire works of Marx and Lenin.
24
Q
How and why did Stalin’s government change their policy towards the Church?
A
- Metropolitan Sergey urged Christians to fight for the motherland, proclaiming Stalin ‘God’s chosen leader’.
- From the outset of war anti-religious propaganda ceased. Communist publications, such as Bezbozhnik (‘The Godless’), were officially closed.
- Stalin promised to end the censorship of religious magazines following the war.
- Stalin promised that churches that had been closed by the government would re-open; 414 churches re-opened during the final year of the war.
- The Orthodox Church grew and the priesthood expanded from 9254 in 1946 to 11,827 in 1948.
25
How did Khrushchev approach religion?
- Khrushchev’s approach to religion was more hard line than that of Stalin. Khrushchev saw it as part of his mission to **revive the anti-religious campaign of the 1920s** in order to liberate Soviet society from the last vestiges of religion.
- Khrushchev’s major anti-religious campaign started in 1958. It included the following measures:
- Churches re-opened during and after the Second World War were closed.
- Anti-religious propaganda was reintroduced.
- Anti-religious magazines were reintroduced, for example **Science and Religion was published regularly from 1960**.
26
How did Khrushchev target female believers?
- Government figures showed that two-thirds of Orthodox churchgoers were women and **over 80 per cent of Protestant Christians were women**.
- There were also campaigns against nuns, which accused them of being **‘unnatural women’ for refusing to do their ‘natural duty’** by becoming wives and mothers.
- Khrushchev’s campaign also targeted Islamic women, reviving the 1920s campaign to **‘liberate’ women from Islam**.
27
What parts of Khrushchevs campaigns against religion succeeded?
- For example, the KGB successfully closed thousands of churches, reducing the number of Orthodox Church buildings from **8000 in 1958 to 5000 in 1964**.
- However, he failed to win the battle for the **‘soul of the Soviet people’**. Women organised their own campaigns to protect their religious freedoms.
- Some marched, others circulated pamphlets defending Christianity or Islam, while others took their children out of schools in order to **counter the anti-religious propaganda**.
28
How did Brezhnev approach religion in the Soviet Union between 1964–85?
- Brezhnev advocated **spreading the philosophy of atheism** rather than attacking religious organisations or practices.
- In 1968 he opened the **Institute for Scientific Atheism**, which published articles in newspapers and advised teachers how to spread atheism in the classroom.
- Under Brezhnev, the government started supporting anti-American Islamic groups. As a result, from the late 1960s the Soviet Government described Islam as a **‘progressive, anticolonial and revolutionary creed’** that was compatible with socialism.
- The proportion of people professing a religious faith remained stable at **20 per cent from 1960 through to 1985**.
29
What was the role of the Cheka during the Civil War?
- The Cheka’s role was to protect Communist rule in areas held by the Communists.
- The Cheka attacked not only the Communists’ capitalist enemies, but also **other socialists**. For example, in January 1918, the Cheka and the Red Army closed down the **Constituent Assembly**, a democratically elected parliament that was dominated by the Communists’ rivals, the Socialist Revolutionaries.
- Additionally, the Cheka did not enforce laws. Nor were they bound by laws. Rather they dispensed **‘revolutionary justice’**, which allowed them to act arbitrarily.
30
In what ways did the Cheka used terror between 1917 and 1921?
- Helped the Red Army **requisition grain from the peasants** as part of War Communism.
- **Closed down** opposition newspapers and imprisoned, tortured and executed socialist **opponents of the new government**.
- Used **extreme violence against the enemies of the Communist Party** in recently captured areas; priests were crucified, members of the white army were allowed to freeze to death and turned into ice statues, others were scalped or buried alive.
- Supported the Red Army’s attack on the **Kronstadt Naval base**; Cheka agents with machine guns were positioned behind Red Army soldiers and instructed to shoot any soldiers who retreated or refused to fight.
- Ran **concentration camps** that housed the Communists’ enemies.
- **Stopped private trading**, which was outlawed under War Communism.
31
How did the GPU controlled people through surveillance and deportations?
- The GPU kept former Tsarist officers, who now served in the Red Army, **under surveillance**.
- Lenin was also suspicious of intellectuals and experts who did not support the government fully. Again, in 1922 he instructed Dzerzhinsky to supervise the **deportation of professors and engineers** that he suspected of anti-Communist sympathies.
- The GPU kept intellectuals and students under close scrutiny, fearing that these groups were unlikely to support the new government because of their privileged, almost **bourgeois position in Soviet society**.
- The GPU also reported to the Central Committee about **moral problems, such as drunkenness, gambling and other signs of inequality** that were developing during the period of the NEP.
32
Why did the GPU organise political trials?
- Lenin was profoundly insecure about the future of the revolution.
- In 1922 Dzerzhinsky organised the trial of **Socialist Revolutionary leaders**. They were accused of treason, sabotage and plotting to overthrow the Soviet state. **At the end of the trial in August 1922 all of the defendants were sentenced to death.** Most were, however, imprisoned and only executed in the Stalinist terror of the mid-1930s.
33
How did the GPU regulate religious, moral and economic crimes?
The GPU also policed the **semi-capitalist marketplace established by the NEP**. This included:
- Imprisoning Nepmen who had grown too rich.
- Harassing women who dressed in Western styles.
- Persecuting young people who danced to jazz.
- Persecuting priests.
There were no laws against these activities, but the GPU defended the interest of the revolution and therefore could act arbitrarily against perceived **class enemies**.
34
What was the NKVD like under Genrikh Yagoda?
- Although Yagoda organised the arrest, interrogation and trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin **expected more**. He wanted to use the opportunity created by Kirov’s murder to move against Bukharin and Trotsky’s supporters.
- Yagoda did, however, play an important role in the **Great Terror**: he collaborated with Stalin in turning the NKVD against the Communist Party.
35
How did the terror accelerate under Yezhov?
- Stalin set **targets** for arrests, executions and deportations.
- In 1937, the **NKVD was purged**. Many NKVD agents had been Communists since 1918. Therefore they were loyal to the Party and sometimes loyal to Stalin’s opponents. They were also opposed to the use of mass terror in a socialist society for ideological reasons. Removing these old agents allowed Stalin to speed up the pace of the terror.
- **New NKVD agents were recruited**. The new agents had no loyalty to the Party and no ideological opposition to terror. Many simply enjoyed the power and the violence, or wanted a promotion.
36
What does 'Yezhovshcina' describe?
- Under Yezhov the terror attacked all aspects of Soviet life: the Party, the army, industry and collective farms.
- During this period, **around 1.5 million, approximately ten per cent** of the male adult population, were arrested by the NKVD. Of these around **635,000 were deported**, often to Siberia, and over **680,000 were executed**.
- The terror focused on the social group that was most likely to oppose Stalin. Urban educated men between the ages of **30 and 45 holding senior positions** in the government were therefore targeted. Manual workers and women were much less likely to be arrested as they were not in a position to threaten Stalin. Indeed, **95 per cent of those targeted were men; only 5 per cent were women**.
37
How was the terror like on a local level?
- Workers and peasants organised their own **show trials**. Government employees, Party officials and factory managers were arrested by groups of citizens and tried for their crimes.
- In **Kazan** Communist officials were publicly tried for misusing government funds. They were accused of living luxurious lifestyles and falsifying figures.
38
What were the consequences of the terror?
- Stalin emerged from the terror **stronger than ever**. The terror removed almost everyone from government who had fought in the Civil War or who had worked with Lenin, and therefore could claim to have authority independent from Stalin.
- The terror also caused **massive economic problems**. Deporting and executing factory managers, economic planners and government officials removed the experts needed to run Stalin’s **command economy**.
39
How did the NKVD operate during the Second World War under Beria?
- In 1942 Beria organised the mass deportation of the Kalmyks. Stalin feared that the Kalmyks would welcome a German invasion. By 1953, only **53,000 of the original population of 130,000 survived**.
- In 1944, Beria ordered the deportation to Siberia of all 460,000 Chechens from their homeland in Chechnya within seven days. The deportation resulted in around **170,000 deaths**.
40
How did the NKVD under Beria continue to persecute the Soviet people after the war?
- In 1945, the NKVD interrogated the **1.5 million Soviet prisoners** of war who had been liberated from Germany. Most were deported to Siberia.
- **‘The Leningrad Affair’**: In 1949, Stalin launched a purge against officials in the Leningrad Party. Around **200 Party members** were arrested and forced to confess to crimes against the Party.
- **The Doctors’ Plot’**: During 1952 and 1953 many of Stalin’s medical staff were arrested for trying to poison Stalin.
41
What was Andropov's key priority when using the KGB?
- In 1968 he issued **KGB Order No. 0051, ‘On the tasks of state security agencies in combating ideological sabotage by the adversary’**. The Order set out the policy of increased surveillance of and action against dissidents.
42
43
How did Andropov deal with dissidents after identifying them?
- High profile dissidents with an international reputation were allowed to emigrate. The policy was extended and over **100,000 potential ‘trouble makers’** were allowed to leave the Soviet Union while Andropov was head of the KGB.
- Jews who wanted to leave were given exit visas. Jews, he argued, were around one per cent of the Soviet population. However, they were well represented in creative and intellectual industries. **One-fifth of writers and journalists were Jews**.
44
How did Andropov use repressive psychiatry to deal with dissidents?
- Less well-known figures could be sent to **psychiatric institutions** for compulsory psychiatric treatment. Criminal records were public documents and therefore Western journalists could trace dissidents who were sent to prison.
- Psychiatric records were **private**; therefore it was easier for the government to hide its repression.
- As psychiatric patients, their ‘treatment’ could **continue indefinitely**, whereas prison terms had to come to an end. Finally, psychiatric patients could be prescribed medication to keep them quiet.
- The practice was used against **Protestant Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses**.
45
How did Andropov change the emphasis of the KGB to prevention and repression?
- From November 1972, the KGB adopted a policy of issuing official warnings. This strategy was designed to stop dissident activity without resorting to repression and without creating the adverse publicity of a trial.
- Around **70,000** Soviet citizens received a KGB warning in the 1970s. KGB agents estimated that these warnings stopped the formation of around **2000 subversive groups** in the early 1970s alone.
- Andropov was also prepared to use **show trials**, such as the 1972 trial of dissidents Pyotr Yakir and Viktor Krasin, who ran the **samizdat human rights magazine Chronicle of Current Events**.
46
Who was Andrei Sakharov and how was he repressed?
- Sakharov had come to prominence through the Soviet nuclear programme and was regarded as the ‘Father of the Hydrogen Bomb’. From 1962, Sakharov became critical of the damage caused by Soviet nuclear tests.
- However, Sakharov was well respected in the West and in the Soviet Union. Therefore the KGB were reluctant to persecute him.
- In 1975 he published My Country and the World, which proposed the reform of the Soviet Union on the basis of human rights, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Sakharov was refused the right to leave the Soviet Union and was kept under constant surveillance.
47
Who was Solzhenitsyn and how was he repressed?
- He was a writer who became famous for his novel **One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich**.
- Solzhenitsyn finished his novel **The Gulag Archipelago** in 1968, smuggling the manuscript to the West for publication. The book described the horrors of Stalin’s prison camp system and it was therefore not possible to publish it in the Soviet Union.
- Solzhenitsyn’s fame in the West meant that the KGB could not imprison him and instead he was forced into **exile in America** in 1973.
48
How was the Helsinki Agreement used by dissidents?
- The **1975 Helsinki Agreement** committed countries across Europe to respect human rights.
- Consequently, following 1975 dissidents used this to show that the treatment of dissidents was in breach of Soviet obligations under the Helsinki Agreement.
- Dissidents knew that they could use the agreement as publicity to **embarrass the government** and thereby create pressure for change.
49
What were the causes of discontent in
the late 1970s and early 1980s?
- People were anxious that as the 1970s progressed standards of living were improving more slowly.
- Were dissatisfied with the quality and availability of food and consumer goods.
- Felt that there were insufficient opportunities for promotion within Soviet industry and therefore hard work would not lead to improved status or pay.
- Resented the privileges and corruption of Party members and managers..
50
What were social malaise?
- Alcoholism
- Poor labour discipline
- Increased black market trade
- Avoidance of military service
- Demand for Western goods
- Sympathy for strikes taking place in Poland
- Increased Church attendance
- Falling birth rate
51
How did Andropov heighten discipline to tackle social malaises?
- **Anti-corruption**: Andropov investigated senior party officials and industrial managers who were using Soviet resources to make themselves rich. For example, **Brezhnev’s Minister of the Interior**, Nikolai Shchelokov, was sacked and put on trial for corruption.
- **Anti-alcohol campaign**: workers could be sacked for drunkenness and could be fined for damaging machinery or products if they were drunk at work.
- **Operation Trawl**: an anti-drunkenness and anti **absenteeism** campaign. KGB officers visited parks, restaurants and train stations arresting people who were drunk or who were absent from work.
52
What was the Proletkult?
- The new organisation was established prior to the October Revolution. From 1918 to 1920 it became a national movement with branches across Russia.
- Through Proletkult, working people had access to local studios where they could paint, sculpt, rehearse plays and put on exhibitions and shows. By 1920 there were around **84,000 members of Proletkult working in over 300 studios**.
53
Why was Lenin critical of the Proletkult?
- Lenin argued that the best culture was **universal**. It was neither bourgeois nor proletarian; rather it reflected the human spirit.
- He believed that in searching for a new culture, Proletkult was encouraging artists to embrace
**Futurism**, a style that Lenin believed was the worst kind of bourgeois art.
- Lenin argued that Futurism was degenerate, in the sense that it celebrated individual self-expression, and most working people simply could **not understand it**.
54
What was Agitprop?
- The Department of Agitation Propaganda (agitprop), a department within the Communist Party to produce art that could be used to inspire people to support the new government.
- Agitprop was often produced by avant-garde artists working for the government. In this sense, the style of early agitprop was experimental.
55
What are some examples of avant-garde paintings and sculptures?
- El Lissitzky, a graphic designer and photographer, created the poster **‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge’ in 1918**, one of the most famous experimental posters of the Civil War.
- The **Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA)** worked with artists to produce posters that were displayed in shop windows or on the side of agitprop trains.
56
Who was Sergei Eisenstein and what did he create?
- Eisenstein made a series of **agitational films** in the 1920s, which combined a revolutionary message with experimental film making.
- By the late 1920s Eisenstein’s experimental techniques were criticised as they could not be understood by workers and peasants. Moreover, in the 1930s the films were **edited to take out references to Trotsky**.
57
What was art like under the NEP?
- From 1918 to late 1920, Lenin and senior Communists were preoccupied with **winning the Civil War**, and therefore there was relatively loose control of artists.
- According to most senior Communists, workers and peasants simply could **not understand avant-garde** art. Therefore, as the 1920s progressed, the avant-garde became less influential.
- From the mid-1920s the government was critical of the influence of American fashion and music on young people. Fashion from the USA, particularly clothes associated with the **flapper style**, and jazz were extremely popular with young people in Soviet cities.
- Party leaders claimed that the new fashion and the rhythmic new music encouraged **sexual promiscuity and drunkenness**. Communist Party bosses were using the OGPU to break up parties where Jazz was played.
58
How is Socialist Realism defined?
- It contained a **‘true reflection of reality’**.
- It aimed to **‘participate in the building of socialism’**.
- In painting, this came to mean art that was realistic, in the sense that pictures looked a lot like photographs, and socialist in the sense that they were paintings of factory construction or workers producing **raw materials**.
- In terms of literature, the new style meant novels had to have a plot that ordinary people could follow - Fyodor Gladkov’s 1924 novel Cement was held up as an example.
59
How was Artistic production changed under Stalin?
- Artists were set targets for the number of paintings or sculptures they were required to produce and sent
to factories or collective farms to record what they saw.
- Equally, in 1936, during the Great Terror Soviet artists were purged.
- Soviet artists also celebrated Collectivisation. Famous paintings from Stalin’s later years include Fedor Shurpin’s ‘Morning of Our Motherland’ (1949), which shows Stalin standing in a landscape transformed by collectivisation and industrialisation.
60
How did artists dissent under Stalin?
- There was a small amount of room in Soviet art in the 1930s to dissent from Stalin’s artistic vision.
- One way of doing this was to celebrate the **achievements of Lenin rather than Stalin**. The world famous Soviet film maker, Dziga vertov did this in his **1934 trilogy Three Songs about Lenin**.
- The film focused on Lenin’s vision and the achievements of ordinary people. Stalin was **barely mentioned** in the film.
61
What was Khrushchevs approach to art?
- Khrushchev wanted to forge an alliance between the Party and creative intellectuals. Khrushchev believed that intellectuals should help the government build **socialism**. Moreover, he believed that true intellectuals would understand the benefits of Communism and therefore would willingly collaborate with Soviet leaders.
- Khrushchev’s policies lurched between his desire to **increase freedom for some** and his concern that too much freedom, especially for ordinary citizens, could **undermine the regime**.
62
What were some Khrushchev's 'thaws'?
- 1953–54: Following Stalin’s death, the government authorised a series of novels which acknowledged generational differences between the new generation of the 1950s and the previous generation of Stalinists. The novel was critical of various aspects of Stalinism, including mass terror.
- 1956–57: Following Khrushchev’s Secret Speech there was another period of cultural liberalisation. **New World published Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not by Bread Alone**. Again, the story was critical of the Stalin period.
- During the **World Youth Festival**, held in Moscow in 1957, young people danced to jazz music and African drumming.
63
What were some Khrushchev's 'freezes'?
- 1953–54, Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago led to cultural restrictions. Pasternak’s novel was critical of Lenin’s period as leader and therefore unacceptable to Khrushchev’s regime.
- After the final thaw Khrushchev was horrified by an **exhibition** of Moscow artists. He reacted to the show with anger shouting loudly that the work of the abstract artist Ernst Neizvestny was ‘dog shit’.
- The final freeze led to the arrest and imprisonment of several artists. The poet **Josef Brodsky**, for example, was arrested in January 1964.
64
How did propaganda evolve to 'popular oversight'?
- The new posters attempted to challenge non-conformity through **‘popular oversight’**. Posters presented non-conformist citizens as comically bald, fat or lazy. **‘The Lazy Bureaucrat’ (1961)** shows a plump man sitting at a disorganised desk.
- However, rather than report misbehaving citizens to the police, good citizens were encouraged to intervene with helpful moral advice. For example, the poster **‘When two girls met’ (1963)** tells the moral tale of how a good working-class upbringing leads to a disciplined child, whereas the children of indulgent intellectual parents grow up to be lazy, selfish and obsessed with fashion.
65
How did Khrushchev's government discipline 'style hunters'?
- The government was concerned that women would be seduced by consumerism into lives of wanton glamour and reckless shopping.
- Consequently, there was an official campaign against young women who adopted Western fashion, so called **‘stilyaga’ (style hunters)**.
- The government assumed that fashionable clothes implied **sexual promiscuity**. As a result there were official campaigns against Western fashion and ‘loose women’ in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
- The **1957 World Youth Festival** had raised concerns that young Soviet women were having sex with male delegates from other countries. In some cases, these women were deported and forced to work on farms in the Virgin Lands for their ‘crimes’.
- Additionally, the Soviet Government went to great lengths to restrict public access to the **1959 American National Exhibition*** which contained an American beauty salon and fashion show.
66
How did the attempts to discourage new fashions fail under Khrushchev?
- The comedy film **An Office Romance (1977)** ridiculed a fashionable young female secretary for her love of ‘provocative’ clothes. Nonetheless, audiences identified with the secretary rather than her conservative poorly dressed boss.
- In terms of pop culture, the government lost the battle against non-conformity, at least among women in the cities. By the mid-1970s the **fashion hunters had won**.
67
How were deviant artists dealt with under Khrushchev?
- Khrushchev’s ‘thaws’ did not allow all Soviet artists to publish their work through official government-owned publishing houses. Therefore, from the late 1950s, writers produced **‘samizdat’ (self-published)** magazines and books.
- Artists who refused to submit to government control were sent to psychiatric institutions in order to be cured.
- Some artists were forcibly medicated as part of their ‘treatment’. Conditions in the hospitals were extremely poor. Inmates lived on watery soup, and in the cold and damp conditions their **physical and often mental health deteriorated**.
68
How did art under Brezhnev change?
Art under Brezhnev became nostalgic. Political scientist Piero Ostellino argues that under Brezhnev there were effectively three groups of artists and intellectuals:
- **Obedient functionaries**: intellectuals and artists who were prepared to work with the system without question, whatever their personal opinions about the regime.
- **Loyal oppositionists**: intellectuals and artists who were critical of the system, but expressed their criticisms within official channels, trying to improve the system from within.
- **Dissidents**: intellectuals and artists who expressed their criticism publicly.
69
What was the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial?
- In early 1965 the new post-Khrushchev leadership commissioned a **KGB report** which stated that there were 1292 anti-Soviet authors who had written almost **10,000 anti-Soviet documents**.
- In order to send a clear message that the thaw was over, the new leadership ordered the arrest and trial of **Sinyavsky and Daniel**, two authors who had been allowed considerable freedom under Khrushchev.
- The Sinyavsky–Daniel trial, which took place in 1966, was essentially a **Show Trial**. At the end of the trial the two authors were found guilty and sentenced to seven and five years in a labour camp.
70
What impact did international pressure have on supression of dissidents during Brezhnev's government?
- At the end of the trial the two authors were found guilty and sentenced to seven and five years in a labour camp.
- Lesser-known artists who deviated from the Party line were sent to psychiatric institutions. They lacked the profile of major artists and psychiatric treatment was not as newsworthy as a prison sentence.
- Estimates suggest that by the early 1970s there were 7000 to 8000 dissidents receiving ‘repressive psychiatric treatment’.
71
What impact did the Prague Spring have on Brezhnev?
- The **Prague Spring of 1968** led to further hardening of Brezhnev’s attitude to art and culture.
- The Prague Spring confirmed Brezhnev’s view that cultural liberalisation was a danger to Communist rule. Therefore, following 1968, there was **increasing pressure on artists to conform**.
- **Solzhenitsyn**, who published controversial work under Khrushchev, found it increasingly difficult to publish in the Soviet Union following 1968.
- Following 1968, Soviet official culture became profoundly nostalgic. This was clear in Soviet
cinema with films like **Liberation (1970)** which celebrated the Soviet victory in the Second World War.
