Cultural Control

• Stalin is seen as a Demi-God and is unparalleled + unchallenged
• Stalin outmanouveres potential threats

  • General Zhukov ( organised retaliation + stalingrad battle ) - sent him far away
• Cult of personality is at its peak

  • Pictures of him everywhere
  • December 1949 - 70th birthday - massive portrait hung up in red square and lit up - made him look God-like
  • known as comrade - family - brother
• Stalin has free reign over every aspect of Soviet life

  • anything western is bad and soviet is superior
  • Anyone with western contact was contaminated and he needed to contain them - he doesn’t want an unfavourable comparison of Soviet with west
  • Sent to gulags and very very few people could leave or enter
  • Anything western books were attacked, music, films etc were criticised and vilified
  • cutting Soviets off from outside world
  • Any news had to be censored twice to be accurate to Stalins perception
  • Party decided what was soviet culture
• Zhdanov - head of culture

  • Drive for cultural purity = Zhdanovschina
  • Little say - he was stalins mouthpiece - his job was to bring Intelligensia into line
• Zhanodvschina 


  Hundreds of writers were condemned for bowing to West and expelled from the writers union = expelled + can’t publish

  • Anna Akhamatova took a hit - half nun - half whore - makes leningrad a target as its independant
  • Shostakovich ( symphony in Leningrad by candlelight ) attacked as a composer - couldn't perform again
  • Stravinsky - you had to have a special pass to listen to him = target on your back
• Theatres

  closed down for performing bourgeoise or west plays

  • if you wanted to paint you had to follow state rules
  • Eisenstein - producing film on Ivan the terrible and Stalin personally intervened and had to justify brutality as parallels
  • Stalin liked old classics - class didn’t matter as much as message
• Patriotism and nationalism pushed
• linguistics

  stalin wrote a book 1950 - discredits all the experts for saying russian originated from Kiev - it had to have come from russia

  • Russia is superior
  • Over inflate russias importance - he’s asking people to give 30 hours weekly to rebuild
  • galvanising population
• Science

  Russians invented steam - engine + aeroplane

  • Overinflated Russia and misleaded Soviets - easier for him to implement state guidelines
  • had to produce things for state stupidly
  • Relied on people he liked - Lysenko = biologist + agronomist - argued it was possible to make changes to plants by using environment instead of genetic modification
  • Giving Stalin easy solutions to complex issues and they’re rubbish - if you challenged theories you were jobless
  • biology + chemistry suffered
  • Physics less Intervention - theory of relatively ignored due to Marxist clash - develop atomic bomb
• What was Lenin's view on Russian nationalism?

  He saw it as ironic.
• What was Stalin's ethnic background?

  He was Georgian.
• What was the purpose of the new Russification policy?

  To control ethnic minorities.
• How did the Russification policy affect non-Russian republics?

  Top jobs went to Russians in various sectors.
• What were the countries behind the Iron Curtain referred to as?

  Satellite states.
• What was the central planning system established from Moscow?

  It included collective farms.
• How many people were deported in the Baltics due to collectivization resistance?

  150,000.
• What happened to the houses of peasants who resisted collectivization?

  Russians took over their destroyed houses.
• How was Ukraine affected by the policies similar to the Baltics?

  It experienced similar deportations and repression.
• What was the impact on individual cultures in Latvia?

  They were repressed.
• What changes occurred in Moldova regarding language?

  Russian words were added and written in Cyrillic.
• How did the Ukrainian language fare under these policies?

  It was spoken less and Russian was taught.
• anti- Semitic

  • jewish first instead of Russian
  • vicious campaign o anti-Semitism after war - during war antifascist committee helped send Russian Jews to fight Nazi‘s - 1948 Stalin closes it and arrests leaders and executes 13 of them
  • Jewish politicians were redundant and lawyers, teachers etc writers and artist arrested and synagogues and schools shut
  • no textbooks recognised Marx’s Jewish
  • special area set up in Siberia discussed
  • jews out on trials for zionism - anyone wth family in Israel is connected to US - owed loyalty to Isreal instead of soviet - agents of west