'High Stalinism' 1945-1953

Question 1

What was a key feature of leadership under High Stalinism?

Answer 1

unchallenged dictatorship of Stalin

Question 2

How was Stalin seen as?

Answer 2

the heroic leader of Great Patriotic War,
god-like and apart from others

Question 3

What could be said about state terror?

Answer 3

renewed terror,
purges in ideological ‘purity’

Question 4

What was wrong about the Party during high Stalinism?

Answer 4

institutions weakened or ignored,
rivalries and plots,
Stalin withdrawn and paranoid,

Question 5

How was the Party side-lined after ww2?

Answer 5

no Party congress between 1939 and 1952

Question 6

What happened to Red Army heroes?

Answer 6

downgraded, couldn’t challenge Stalin

Question 7

What example of Red Army command got downgraded?

Answer 7

Marshal Zhukov - sent to Odessa to lower-level command

Question 8

Who plotted Zhdanov’s downfall in 1948?

Answer 8

Malenkov and Beria

Question 9

How many returned POW were sent to Gulags?

Answer 9

15% of 1.8 million (offence to surrender/suspicious on collaboration with Germans)

Question 10

What could get a person denounced and arrested?

Answer 10

contact with foreigners, 1947 - law outlawed marriage to foreigners.

Question 11

How many wartime survivors were sent to the Gulags?

Answer 11

12 Million

Question 12

Who was the head of the NKVD after the war?

Answer 12

Beria - deputy prime minister, as well as head of USSR’s atomic weapons programme.

Question 13

How was the NKVD strengthened under Beria?

Answer 13

split into two separate ministries:
MVD
MGB

Question 14

What was the MVD?

Answer 14

Ministry of internal affairs, controlled domestic security and gulags.

Question 15

What was the MGB?

Answer 15

Ministry of State Security, handled counter-intelligence and espionage.

Question 16

Who was appointed to lead cultural policy in 1946?

Answer 16

Andrei Zhdanov

Question 17

What did Zhdanov insist Artists and writers to follow?

Answer 17

Socialist realism, praise of Stalin and Soviet achievements, criticism of American commercialism/

Question 18

What did those whose work didn’t embody socialist realism had to do?

Answer 18

publicly apologise to keep working

Question 19

Who was expelled under Zhdanov’s purge?

Answer 19

Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova

Question 20

What composers were criticised for ‘rootless cosmopolitanism/

Answer 20

Shostakovich and Prokofiev

Question 21

What was blocked and impossible to get?

Answer 21

Western cultural influences - such as newspapers

Question 22

what was soviet scientific development hampered by?

Answer 22

Lysenko’s Academy of Sciences

Question 23

What did Lysenko’s Academy of Sciences do?

Answer 23

suppress new theories or lines of research if contradictory of Marxist principles

Question 24

What was Stalin portrayed as after saving the USSR?

Answer 24

Stalin portrayed as greatest living genius - superior in all philosophy, science, military and economics

Question 25

What did it become customary for all books and atricles to do?

Answer 25

acknowledge Stalins genius on the subject

Question 26

What replaced Lenin's Oct/Nov revolution victory as the Greatest event of Russian history?

Answer 26

Stalin's victory in the Great Patriotic War

Question 27

How was Stalin portrayed as a man of the people?

Answer 27

he was instinctively in touch with what the average worker was thinking,What did

Question 28

What did towns and cities compete for?

Answer 28

To be renamed after Stalin,

Question 29

What was there a movement for Moscow to be renamed to?

Answer 29

Stalinodar

Question 30

What were lunched after the USSR felt Soviets being excluded from Nobel prizes?

Answer 30

Stalin prizes

Question 31

Where was Stalin suspicious of after WW2?

Answer 31

the Party base in Leningrad

Question 32

Why was Stalin suspicious of Leningrad?

Answer 32

rivals often built up power base Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kirov and Zhdanov

Question 33

What did stalin dislike about Leningraders?

Answer 33

the glorification of their struggle to survive the seige on Leningrad

Question 34

How many days did the seige of Leningrad last?

Answer 34

872 days

Question 35

When did Zhdanov die of a heart attack/

Answer 35

August 1948W

Question 36

What followed Zhdanovs death in Leningrad?

Answer 36

a purge of Leningrad Party, 2000 Party officials dismissed and replaced by 1950

Question 37

Who as targetted in 1951/

Answer 37

the Mingrelian ethnic group in GeorgiaWho was

Question 38

Who was Mingrelian?

Answer 38

Beria - accusations of working with 'Jewish Plotters'

Question 39

What did Stalin use the accusations of a 'Jewish Plot' for?

Answer 39

to limit Beria's power

Question 40

Who accused the doctors that treated Zhdanov of contributing to his death?

Answer 40

A doctor and informer - Lydia Timashuk

Question 41

When did Stalin use the complaint over Zhdanov's death to arrest Jewish doctors?

Answer 41

1952

Question 42

What did Stalin accuse the Jewish doctors of?

Answer 42

a 'Zionist conspiracy' to harm USSR on behalf of Israel and USA

Question 43

Who else was caught in the purge following 'The Doctors Plot'?

Answer 43

Wives of Molotov and Kalinin. Thousands of ordinary Jewish people

Question 44

How many senior doctors were condemned to death, but survived due to Stalin's death?

Answer 44

9