USSR: Theme 3

Central to advancing the revolution and ensuring the Communists retained power

‘bourgeois ideas’

By restricting press freedom

• The Decree on the Press

• The Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press

• The All-Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA)

• Glavlit

Gave the gov. power to close any newspapers that supported ‘counter revolution’

1917

Gave the state the power to censor the Press → journalists and editors who committed ‘crimes against the people’ could be punished by the Cheka

1918

Gave the state control of all advertising and news reporting

1918

Employed professional censors to examine all books, old and new, for anti-Communist ideas

1922

He closed down papers that supported the Tsar or the Provisional Government

He outlawed opposition socialist papers as well

Lenin and the Communists had estahblished control of the media throughout the Soviet Union by 1921

Often very experimental → radical artists used new artistic techniques to spread the Communist message

• ROSTA produced cartoon films to support the revolution

• Gustav Klutsis used photomontage to create posters advertising Lenin’s electrification campaign

• El Lissitzky designed the poster ‘Beat the whites with the red wedge’, which used techniques from abstract art

• The works of Trotsky, Bukharin and other rivals were banned

• Lenin’s own works were ‘edited’ to remove complimentary statements about Stalin’s opponents

• Glavlit controlled access to economic data from 1928 onwards

• Restrictions were placed on all kinds of ‘bad news’ → the Soviet media were forbidden from publishing stories about natural disasters, suicides, industrial accidents, or even bad weather → in order to creat ethe impression that the Soviet Union was a place in which only good things happened

Idealised images of workers and peasants happily building socialism in modern factories and farms

• Popular magazines were encouraged to publish readers’ letters → allowed Soviet citizens to express their own thoughts on ‘non-political’ subjects in magazines

• Letters to women’s magazines, e.g. Rabotnitsa, exposed profound social problems → readers complained about male alcoholism, inequalities in the home relating to childcare and housework, and domestic violence

Changed → instead of presenting idealised images of workers and peasants, satirical cartoons were allowed

E.g. Krokodil → satirical magazine that poked fun at men who arrived at parades drunk, late, or not at all

Relaxed during his cultural thaws

Very nostalgic → focused on WW2 victory in posters, books and films

Made films set in contemporary Russia → focused on fashionable citizens living in luxurious apartments

Due to the nature of the films, they stoked public desire for consumer goods and fashion

Khrushchev’s cultural thaws

Through Western magazines → which were available on the black market

Opposed to religion → but understood its power

Personality cults → similar to religious cults

Supported the Communist regime by inspiring personal loyalty to the leader → leaders were presented as wise, humane and benevolent

• From 1918 → Lenin’s image and sayings were used regularly in Soviet propaganda

• Lenin was presented in religious terms as a prophet who was leading the Soviet people to a better future

• Lenin was also described as being saintly → a man who was willing to suffer and sacrifice his life for his people

• Built on the cult of Lenin

• Emphasised that Stalin was the legitimate ruler of the Soviet Union because he was the ‘Lenin of today’

• Like Lenin → he was presented as a visionary, who was leading the way to socialism

Manipulation of history → in order to suggest that Lenin and Stalin had led the revolution together since 1917

From the early 1930’s → photographs were altered and histories were written stressing Stalin’s leading role → as well as the treachery of former leaders such as Trotsky

• The ‘vozhd’ → the leader with ultimate authority

• From 1941 → the ‘Generalissimo’ → emphasising his role as the military leader who led the Soviet Union to victory in WW2

• Khrushchev criticised Stalin’s cult of personality → 1954-1964 —> images of Stalin were largely dropped from the Soviet media

• Khrushchev continued to use the cult of Lenin in propaganda

• Khrushchev became the centre of his own cult

• Khrushchev’s image was not used as widely as Stalin’s had been used

Said that 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 WW2

• An authority on literature, art, science, industry and agriculture

• The great reformer who was perfecting the Soviet system

Due to problems with his policies

Due to the smaller scale of the cult and Khrushchev’s obvious failures

• Soviet propaganda under Brezhnev dropped referenbces to Khrushchev, and rarely referred to Stalin

• The Lenin cult persisted

Said that Brezhnev was:

• A great Leninist who continued Lenin’s work

• A military hero who fought bravely in WW2

• Dedicated to ensuring world peace through detente

• A true man of the people, who began his career in the steel industry

• Counterproductive

• Brezhnev was clearly a privileged bureaucrat, not a great revolutionary → therefore, Soviet citizens laughed at official claims that he was a hero

• Whereas Stalin had been respected and feared, Brezhnev’s cult led to ridicule

That it was an enemy of freedom and equality

That people who respected the teaching of the Church would never fully embrace Communist ideology → therefore, Communist ideology tended to persecute the Church

• The Decree on Land

• The Decree Concering Separation of Church and State

Took away the tradition privileges of the Orthodox Church

1918

• November 1917 → Archpriest Ivan Kochurov was murdered outside Petrograd

• January 1918 → Metropolitan Vladimir was tortured and shot in Kiev

• January 1918 → Orthodox Priests in Moscow were massacred following a Church decree excommunicating the Bolsheviks

• Established by Lenin to rival the Orthodox Church

• Removed the Church’s traditional leaders & had a decentralised structure

Hoped that the reforms would make it hard for the new Church to oppose the regime

The Living Church was not prepared to support the regime → the majority of Russians continued to believe in Christianity throughout the 1920’s

• Initially → he backed attacks on property owned by Islamic institutions

• However, this policy was quickly reversed → the new goverment funded Islamic schools

• Communists encouraged Muslims to join the Party

• Communists were less antagonistic towards Islam in comparison to Russian Orthodox Christianity → because there had been no official link between Islam and Tsarism

Stalin’s policies often had religious implications → but, as time went on, Stalin tolerated religion to his advantage

Many churches were closed and turned into grain stores as a result of collectivisation

Stalin’s terror destroyed Islamic groups

Sufi groups in Turkmenistan were destroyed by 1936

Made a pragmatic alliance with the Church

Stalin asked Church leaders to support the government’s war effort

• Ended censorship of Church magazines

• Ended anti-religious propaganda

• Allowed some churches to re-open

414

He abandoned compromise → believed that religion had no place in a socialist society

1958 → major anti-religious campaign

• Closure of churches that re-opened during and after WW2

• Anti-religious propaganda was reintroduced

• Placing Orthodox convents under surveillance

• Refusing believers access to holy sites

The Soviet space programme:

• Yuri Gagarin commented that having travelled up to the heavens he had found no God

• Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, argued that her trip into space had led to the victory of atheism

• Ended Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaigns → hoped that a scientific education would persuade young people that there was no God

• Gov. started supporting anti-American Islamic groups in the Middle East

The Spiritual Board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan

Allowed Soviet Islamic leaders and scholars to have limited contact with Muslims in other countries

A shift in Communist ideology

• Previous leaders → described Islam as a ‘backward and barbaric’ religion

• Brezhnev → described Islam as a ‘progressive, anticolonial and revolutionary creed’

1917

That they would be a short-term measure until the Communists had consolidated their power

• Supporters of the former Tsar

• Trade unions demaning higher pay for workers

• Socialists who were in rival political parties

• Requisitioning grain during the Civil War

• Closing down opposition newspapers

• Torturing and executing opponents of the regime → including people trading on the black market

• Executing deserters from the Red Army

People they believed to be taking advantage of the freedom to trade

• Traders who became rich

• Women who wore Western clothes and makeup

• Young people who danced to Western music → e.g. jazz

The Cheka

Very different to Lenin → Stalin used the secret police against the Party

Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria

1934

He collaborated with Stalin in turning the secret police against the Communist Party

With respect → resulted in the purge of Stalin’s opponenets occuring slowly under Yagoda → lead to Stalin being critical of his leadership

1936

A massive escalation of the terror → the worst years of the Great Terror (1936-38)

He replaced Yagoda’s agents with new officers who were willing to use torture much more widely

Yezhovshchina → meant that the whole of Soviet society was engulfed in Yezhov’s terror

Soviet secret police

1.5 million people

10%

Around 635,000

Over 680,000

1938

He organised mass deportations and mass executions of ethnic groups such as the Chechens → whom Stalin did not trust

Put in charge of Soviet efforts to build a nuclear bomb

Highly successful → Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb was tested successfully in 1949

1949

The Moscow Show Trials

Removed the leaders of one of the Party’s factions which had opposed Stalin in the 1920’s

• 1936

• Organised by Yagoda

• Led to the execution of Zinoviev and his allies

• 1937

• Organised by Yezhov

• Led to the execution or imprisonment of Trotsky’s main supporters

• 1938

• Organised by Beria

• Led to the execution of Bukharin and his former allies, including Yagoda