C23: High Stalinism, 1945-1953

dictatorship

a form of gov. in which absolute power is exercised by a single person or small clique

totalitarianism

a political system that demands absolute obedience to the state and that each and every citizen is subject to central state authority; this means that individual rights and freedoms cannot exist; all forms of human expression must be dictated by the state and everything individual must be submerged into one mass identity

High Stalinism

the culmination of Stalin’s regime in 1945-53 when Stalin’s authority and cult of personality peaked

replaced, Great terror, slackened, patriotism, spirit of the people, better world, liberal, military, GKO(state defence committee), 1945, Zhukov, paranoia, stroke, 1946, Service, reversion, 1930s

Development of High Stalinism

German threat ______ the fear under the ___ _____ during WW2 whilst state control over was _______, e.g. religion (appeal to _______, national unity, and the ‘____ __ ___ ______’). But after the war, the Stalin cult intensified and control was tightened

– Wartime propaganda promised ‘____ ____’ after victory but after WW2 any _____ tendencies were obstructed and the ________ hierarchy was downgraded — the ___(____ _____ _____) dissolved in Sept ____ and ______ demoted to minor command in Odessa

– Post-war years saw increased ________ from Stalin who had a ____ in ____(historians attribute this as the cause)

• Historians like Moshe Lewin, Stephen Cohen, and Robert ______ have argued that the developments after “45 were not really new but a ________ to what had already existed in the ____

favour, dominance, regularly, bypass, central authority, Malenkov, Zhdanov, Mikoyan, replaced, Malenkov, Beria, 1948, Molotov, 1949, inertia, obedient, advisory body, 1939-52

Competed for Stalin's _____, which further confirmed his _______. The CC and Politburo met _______ but Stalin was often able to _____ both gov and party to exert ______ _______.

• _______ lost his position as Party secretary after _______ challenged his policy and an investigation under ______ was set up — Malenkov ______ by Zhdanov as Stalin’s closest adviser

• _______ and ____ engineered Zhdanov’s downfall¿ in ____

• _____ held great power during and after the war but fell out of favour in ____

______ became a key feature of High Stalinism as the new party members were ______ bureaucrats without initiative and who avoided ideological debate. The Politburo was reduced to an ____ ___ which waited to be told by Stalin on the ‘official’ line and there was no party congresses in ____-__

Molotov, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Beria, Zhdanov

Who was Stalin’s inner circle?

Georgii Malenkov

• 1902-88

• Rival of Zhukov

• Joined the Politburo in 1941, supervising aircraft production in WW2, and organised the purge of the Party Leadership in 1948 with Beria. Briefly leader after Stalin’s death.

Anastas Mikoyan

• 1895-1978

• the only ‘Old Bolshevik’ to remain in the governing elite all the way through Lenin, Stalin, and their successors

• Joined the Politburo in 1935

• Member of the GKO during the war

POWs, army officers, time outside, suspect, ideological contamination, Leopold Trepper, unwavering support, foreign

Renewed terror

Any foreign contact led to execution, harsh treatment of returned ____, purge of former ___ _____ and relatives of those who’d spent ____ _____ the USSR were considered ____(fear of ________ _________)

• ______ _____, a Polish Communist who was a key leader of Red Orchestra(left wing spy ring inside Nazi Germany), was sent to the gulag upon his return

Within the USSR, especially in newly incorporated areas(baltics, West Ukraine), people needed to show ________ ______

• 1947 law outlawed _____ marriage

MVD(Ministry of Internal Affairs), MGB(Ministry of State Security), 12m

The NKVD under Beria

• NKVD reorganised into MVD(Ministry of Internal Affairs) and MGB(Ministry of State Security)

  • ____: controlled domestic security and the gulags

  • ____: handled counter-intelligence and espionage

• ___ wartime survivors sent to labour camps, though fewer people were killed than under the Great Terror of the 1930s

Lavrentii Beria

NKVD chief, deputy PM, full member of Politburo, and in charge of developing Soviet atomic bomb. He presided over the expansion of the gulags

Zhdanovschchina

the great cultural purge launched by Stalin in 1946 and coordinated by Andrei Zhdanov

promote right ideology via culture’s medium for propaganda, suppress dissent and creative individualism, stalin feared spread of bourgeois western values from the war

What was the aim of Zhdanovschchina?

Adventures of a Monkey, Zoshchenko, Anna Akhmatova, Union of Soviet Writers, Boris Pasternak. apoliticalpublic recantations, American commercialism, soviet achievements,

Course of Zhdanovschchina

Began with the purge of the ‘_______ __ __ ______’ by satirist ________ and a collections of poems by _____ ________

• Publishers purged and authors expelled from the _____ __ ______ _____

• Another author — _____ _______ was condemned for his ‘_____’ poems and his gf sent to the gulag

condemned artists had to make _____ ________ of their ‘errors’ to continue working. Novels, plays, and films that denigrated _______ _______ or extolled _____ _______, and the cult of Stalin were favoured.

Jewish artists suppressed/ignored, closed Jewish newspapers, Nazi atrocities were portrayed as fascist crimes without mentioning jews

What did the Zhdanovschchina’s anti-semitism include?

Socialist realism

promoted as the ‘true’ Soviet art in the 20s and 30s, was re-asserted as the norm during Zhdanov’s cultural purges

Sergei Eisenstein, the great composers Shostakovich and Prokofiev, giants of russian Literature like Dostoevsky

Who was purged during the Zhdanov’s cultural purges?

1948, Trofim Lysenko, Academy of Sciences, Lysenkoism, crippled, Marxist, foreign influence, pro-soviet

Cultural Purges

• ____: _____ ______ given full control over the _______ __ ______; ‘________’ _______ Soviet scientific development and the study of maths, physics, chemistry, and economics was badly impacted by ______ principles

• _____ ______ completely blocked but a few foreign books were approved and translated into Russian, whilst only ______ foreign writers and artists were allowed into the USSR. Very few Soviet citizens allowed to visit the West

“Stalin was accorded god-like veneration in the post-war years: he was the hero of plays, folk songs, and symphonies; canals and dams were named after him; he was praised as ‘the father of all the peoples’ and “the best friend of all children’”

What did Gregory Freeze say about High Stalinism?

academic, GPW Hero, man of the people, Stalingrad, Stalino, Stalinsk, Stalinabad, Stalinogorsk, Stalin prizes, megalomania, divide-and-rule, jealousies, paranoia, conspiracies

Stalinist Cult of Personality

• First and last paragraphs of any ________ ____ had to acknowledge his genius on the subject

• Built on his reputation as the ___ _____

• Portrayed as an all knowing ‘___ __ ___ _______’ 

• towns competed for the privilege of re-naming themselves after him: ______, _____, ______, _______ and ______

• ‘____ ____’ were awarded to artistic and scientific work to count-balance the west’s Nobel prizes

• Stalin exercised ________ and the tactic of ‘_____-___-____’ to create an atmosphere of poisonous _______ and personal _______. His motives for doing this was mixed with ______ about possible ________ against him

Leningrad, Kirov, 1934, powerful, Zhdanov, 1948, resentment, 1941-4, overshadowed, Leningrad Party, Malenkov, Beria, 1950, 2k

The _________ Affair

Stalin prevented people from becoming too powerful:

• Replaced Zinoviev, who controlled the Leningrad Party, with ____. But he later got rid of Kirov in ____ after he got too ________. The same could be said about ______ when he was pushed aside in ____. But another reason for Zhdanov’s fall was Stalin’s ______ of the pride Leningrad took from its heroic role in the great siege of ____-_

  • 3 year defence of Leningrad _______ Stalin’s image as the GPW hero. This was seen as the special achievement of the defenders of the city not the USSR as a whole

• 1949: Stalin purged ________ _____ after Zhdanov’s death

  • Stalin was egged on by Malenkov and Beria to remove those appointed by Zhdanov, e.g. Nikolai Voznesenki

• Leningrad Affair escalated from attacks on Voznesenski to a major purge of leading officials, organised by _______ and ____. All victims were executed in Oct ____. More than ___ officials were replaced by Pro-stalin communists

Mingrelian Case(Georgian Purge), 1951-2, limiting, non-Russian, anti-semitic, jewish

This targeted Party officials in Georgia who were accused of western collaboration. These officials were mostly Mingrelians, a Georgian ethnic group; what made the accusations against them significant was the fact they were followers of Beria, who was of Mingrelian origin.

• Not fully settler by Stalin’s death in 1953, but it served its purpose of ________ Beria’s power.

• Suppressed ________ nationalities, ________ overtones(Mingrelians charged for conspiring with _____ plotters)

The Doctor’s Plot, Lydia Timashuk, death, 1952, excuse, Zionist, murder, members, political action, Minister of State Security(Nikolai Ignatiev)

___ _______ ____

A conspiracy revealed by ____ ______, a female doctor and secret police informer, who wrote to Stalin accusing the doctors who treated ____ in 1948 of sloppy methods contributing to his _____. In ____ Stalin used this as an _____ to arrest many doctors for being part of a ‘_____’ conspiracy to ____ Zhdanov and other _____ of the leadership.

• also an excuse for _______ _____ against men high in the regime(beria, mikoyan, molotov, and kaganovich) all fear becoming victims

• Stalin threatened his ______ __ ____, ______ ______, with execution if he did not obtain confessions

anti-Zionism, US, Israel, infiltrated, gulag, anti-jewish hysteria, press, hospitals, shunned, 9,

Reasons behind Stalin’s Doctor purges

• He made an issue of ‘___ ______’, claiming that Jewish doctors, in the pay of the ___ and _____, were abusing their positions in the medical profession to harm the USSR

• This conspiracy had supposedly ________ the Leningrad party and the Red Army

• Jews rounded up and deported to the _____; _______ ______ was whipped up by the ____ so that non-jews feared to enter _______ and ______ all jewish professionals

• __ senior doctors condemned to death but survived as Stalin died before the executions took place

jewish, 1948, secret police, molotov, Kalinin, arrested,

the doctor’s plot was combined with a wave of anti-semitism

• Director of the _______ theatre in Moscow was mysteriously killed in ____, certainly arranged by the ____ _____

• Jewish wives of Politburo members _____ and _____ were _______ in 1949 whilst a new campaign against anti patriotic group sin the arts and the universities began