4.3 Stalin's Cult of Personality Flashcards
What event triggered the growth in Stalin’s Cult of Personality?
Stalin’s 50th birthday celebrations in December 1929. From then on, every new initiative was sold as the work of the “all-knowing leader”.
How did the book “The History of the All-Union Communist Party” alter history to raise Stalin’s popularity?
Stalin was portrayed with a major role in the October revolution and Civil War.
Trotsky and other old Bolsheviks were portrayed as enemies of the people.
Photographs were doctored to remove Stalin’s enemies and show Stalin as close to Lenin.
The book sold 34 million copies and was compulsory for educational institutes.
What was the Union of Soviet Writers 1932?
This forced all writers of poems, newspapers, magazines, novels and plays to join the Union.
Similar bodies were made for art, music, sculpting and film.
These exerted control other over creativity, and demanded adherence to “Soviet Realism”.
Any intellectual or artist who did not comply were imprisoned, exiled or even “disposed off”.
What is meant by military illusions?
Using military terms to justify an action. For example collectivisation was classed as a ‘full-scale socialist offensive on all fronts”
What was the “Worker’s Hero”?
The Stakhanovite Movement promoted hardworking role-model men on Pravda. Some were turned into statues.
25% of all female factory workers were deemed as “norm-breaking”.
“Mother Heroines” were glorified.
What was “the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman”?
A 24.5m sculpture constructed for the 1937 World Trade Fair in Paris which depicted two figures with a hammer and sickle raised over their head to convey the power of Socialism.
