Control of the people 1917-85

Question 1

What was media like in the Lenin years 1917-24

Answer 1

Newspapers
- 1917 all non socialist newspapers banned, 1920s all non-bolshevik press banned
- Printing press nationalised and to be used by government employees and bolsheviks
- Glavlit, censorship office, gave approval for every publication

Radio
- 1917, radio broadcast news about revolution in morse code, 1921, voice radio developed with little music and propaganda material and installed loudspeakers in public places so they were heard.
- Broadcasts controlled by the commisariat for posts and telegraphs and news was featured by the spoken newspaper of the russian telegraph agency
- 65% of the population was illiterate so radio was effective
- 1920’s music broadcast with news to make it more palatable
- One radio station

Question 2

What was media like in the Stalin years? 1924-53

Answer 2

Newspapers
- Used newspapers to show success of targets being met
- 1924, Red sport gave sport news, 1946 sovetskii sport gave honest sports news at the cost of government praising news on the cover
- Kyshtym disaster and nuclear waste storage tanker exploded effecting 270,000

Radio
- German forced 50 miles away from Moscow and Stalin gave a speech in Moscow heavily raising moral amongst the population
- One radio station

TV
- USSR had 10,000 tvs so this isnt important just yet

Magazines
- Sovetskii sport, 1946, accurate sport magazine but had to put political praise on the cover

Question 3

What was media like in the Khrushchev years? 1953-64

Answer 3

Newspaper
- Acceptable to criticise minor bureaucrats, mainly about housing quality but criticising party leaders was not allowed

Radio
- One radio station

Television
- 3 million TVs in 1958
- TVs mass produced so they were cheap and affordable

Question 4

What was the media like during the Brezhnev years? 1964-83

Answer 4

Newspaper
- Censorship of a vast fire outside of Moscow for a whole month

Radio
- Three radio stations, radio maiak, broadcasted foreign music popular with young people

Television
- Most people had access to a TV
- Soviet life presented as joyous and capitalism was not
- Trololo became a famous singer

Question 5

What was media like during the Andropov years? 1983-84

Answer 5

Television
- Two television channels, emphasis on light entertainment

Question 6

What are some examples of soviet newspapers?

Answer 6

• Pravda, for the communist party, propaganda, 10.7 million distributed 1983
• Izvestiya, for the government, propaganda
• Trud, trade union paper, 13.5 million distributed
• All cheap and available, posted in public areas

Question 7

What were the key factors of Stalin’s personality cult?

Answer 7

• Links between Stalin and Lenin highlighted and fabricated and links between Trotsky and Lenin removed
• 1925, Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad
• ‘Stalin is the Lenin of today’
• Paintings showed successes of 5 year plans and Stalin of a father figure
• WW2, Pictures of Stalin in a military uniform, propaganda posters showed Stalin as a down to Earth man with peasants etc
• official biographies fabricated Stalin’s early life and enshrined his old home even though his family was dysfunctional
• ‘gardener of human happiness’
• Records of speeches distributed
• Statues of Stalin erected making him taller than he was
• Films showed Stalins role in major events such as him visiting Berlin at the end of the war when he never did

Question 8

What were the key factors of Khrushchev’s personality cult?

Answer 8

• Visits to peasants good photo opportunities
• Appointed his son in law as editor of Izvestiya
• Very egotistical

Question 9

What were the key factors of Brezhnev’s personality cult?

Answer 9

• People made fun of him but he welcomed it
• Appearance of leadership during Brezhnevs years of health decline

Question 10

How did the soviet union attack the Russian orthodox church?

Answer 10

• 1918, Decree on freedom of conscience took land without compensation and banned publications
• Churches destroyed or converted, 1918, head of orthodox church under house arrest
• Civil war famine, priests denied votes and rations. Red terror victims and 1,000 priests killed by 1923
• 1929, league of militant godless launched atheistic campaign, flew peasants into the sky to deny existence of heaven
• Baptisms replaced with octoberings and people given soviet names such as Lenin backwards
• 1930 4/5s of village churches destroyed,
• mid 1920’s 55% still Christian

Question 11

What religious policy did Stalin implement?

Answer 11

• Priests labelled kulaks and deported
• 151 priests killed by the end of the great purge, 1939
• Church supported against the German invasion and Stalin allowed training of priests to raise moral during the war

Question 12

What were the key points of Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign?

Answer 12

• 1958-59
• Role of priest limited to spiritual advice
• Parish councils placed under control of party officials
• 10,000 churches closed in 4 years and priests harassed by secret police by restrictions on worship

Question 13

What were Brezhnev’s policies towards the church?

Answer 13

• persecution of the church declined
• Council of religious affairs monitored religious services
• Orthodox church allowed to provide social services such as help for the poor
• 1976, Christian committee for defence of believers rights set up to highlight human rights abuse and its leader Yakunin sentenced to 5 years in prison
• Jewish and Baptists evangelical practices restricted with people dismissed from there jobs but unregistered congregations continued

Question 14

What influence did Islam have on the USSR?

Answer 14

• Asian countries of the USSR had big Muslim populations
• Religious endowments banned
• Mosques closed down
• Sharia courts phased out
• Mullahs removed under collectivisation
• 1927, international womens day campaign against veils
• Ramadan condemned
• Polygamy prohibited
• Muslims joined underground brotherhoods as a result

Question 15

What were the results of religious policy?

Answer 15

• 1980’s 25% of people believed in God
• Underground religious organisations formed
• Religious official organisations declined

Question 16

How was the secret police used to attack opponents of the government?

Answer 16

• Formed in 1917 under Felix Dzerzhinsky
• Acted outside of the law during civil war
• Red terror 1921-22, Mesheviks and SRs persecuted and 200,000 people shot
• Cheka>OGPU 1923 and only took orders from leaders of the party
• OGPU>NKVD, 1934 power increased
• Collectivisation revealed political opponents and deported them to gulags
• Widespread denunciations of the secret police after show trials, purge of the politburo and the red army during Stalin’s years
• People arrested in middle of the night and tortured in the Lubyankia building and a show trial would follow

Question 17

What was the role of Yagoda in use of the secret police?

Answer 17

• Appointed head in 1934
• No interference from regular courts
• Ideology to economic considerations with people deported to labour camps dying of harsh conditions
• White sea canal used 180,000 prisoners completed under budget killing 10,000 but was useless
• Arrested Trotskyite opposition in the party in 1936 but was removed from office and shot in 1938

Question 18

What was Yezhov’s role in the use of the secret police?

Answer 18

• Process of prosecution sped up, 1937 Troika processed 231 prisoners daily
• 1937 ordered execution quotas including officers
• Surveillance of the public increased by NKVD, 4x detectives and more staff to torture suspects
• Everyone who didnt show commitment to Revolution was purged even the secret police
• Dismissed in 1938

Question 19

What was the role of Beria in use of the secret police?

Answer 19

• Indiscriminate arrests a waste of manpower and people only arrested when sufficient evidence found
• 1939, gulag food rations improved to get maximum work from prisoners
• 1,000 inmate scientists, 1 played a major role in soviet space programme
• Gulag income increased by 2.5 billion roubles in 3 years with a third of gold being produced by the gulag

Question 20

What changes to the secret police did WW2 bring?

Answer 20

• 1941, supervision of the red army and dealing with desertions
• NKVD given power over deportations such as Crimean tartars
• 1943, Beria set up centres of previously German areas to root out traitors who were shot or sent to the gulag, SMERSH killed 4,000 polish officers in 1943
• Order 270 sent Russian war prisoners into minefields

Question 21

How did Post war rivalry affect the use of the secret police?

Answer 21

• Beria, 1949, purged 2000 members of the Leningrad branch and gained influence
• Mingrelian affair, purged Georgian party members, may be targeted at Beria
• Doctors plot, Stalin feared assassination from doctors, could be first steps towards removing Beria
• Beria was extremely powerful at this point

Question 22

What impact did the removal of Beria have on the use of terror?

Answer 22

• Independence of secret police brought under party control through the KGB
• Gulags dismantled
• Lubyanka building stopped being a prison

Question 23

What responsibility did Stalin have in the use of terror?

Answer 23

• Signed many death warrants and added to lists
• Gave NKVD quotas to meet and if they werent NKVD officers expected to add their names
• Failed quotas of five year plans required quotas and enforcing collectivisation
• Need for slave labour for the five year plans - Set parameters for purges
• Paranoid behaviour such as the doctors plot

Question 24

What responsibility did Yezhov, Yagoda and Beria have in the use of terror?

Answer 24

• Willingness to follow Stalin’s orders and had terrible personalities
• All added to death lists to enhance careers by undermining previous leader of secret police
• Yagoda expanded the use of the gulags
• Yezhov sped up the use of terror
• Beria enhanced productivity of gulags

Question 25

Dissidents were suppressed under Andropov but who were the dissidents?

Answer 25

• Intellectuals, they had an independent way of thinking from the state making them threats to the party.
• Political enemies, those who tried to hold the party in account of their own laws.
• Nationalists, people called for greater status of their own cultures and languages, there was an attempted ban on 150th anniversary of a famous poet, the burning of Ukrainian archive at the academy of sciences at Kiev. 20 people were arrested also.
• Religious dissidents such as Catholics and Baptists had restraints placed on practicing their religion.
• Many of the people were communists but were concerned for the human rights aspect.

Question 26

What action was taken against the dissidents?

Answer 26

• Surveillance of suspects
• Intellectuals Threatened with expulsion and banned from publishing
• Houses searched for distribution material
• The label of dissident meant discrimination at work, university, continued surveillance and harassment
• 10,000 political prisoners by mid 70’s
• New criminal code removed night time interrogations and lowered power of KGB.
• Gave KGB catch all powers for anti soviet propaganda, it required intent in order to prosecute which made the daniel and sinyavsky case hard so this was updated and removed
• 1967, leading dissidents sent to mental hospitals. Run by NKVD. Patients held until they were ‘cured’ and if they refused they’d be treated with shock therapy. Medvedev diagnosed with ‘sluggish schizophrenia’
• Some were sent in internal exile but expulsion from the USSR was still an option.

Question 27

What were the impacts of the dissidents?

Answer 27

• Court record smuggled out and used by human rights activists, 33 countries who signed the helsinki accords saw this as a violation of the treaty.
• They had little effect on society as they were individuals rather than a group.
• Andropov succeeded in keeping dissident groups at bay, with developments in surveillance technology

Question 28

How did Andropov monitor popular discontent after 1982?

Answer 28

• increase in 1982
• conversations recorded using tapes and cassette records
• cameras hidden in briefcases
• Andropov became focused on economic factors because he knew this reflected the wider populations concerns
• KGB officers conducted spot checks on attendance and looked in the streets for truanting workers to clamp down on absenteeism and alcoholism.
• Andropov try to understand society by visiting factories but people didn’t speak to him because he was leader of the KGB
• Andropov appointed economists and sociologists to understand society

Question 29

What were Bolshevik attitudes towards arts and popular culture?

Answer 29

• Culture vital but subordinate to class warfare
• Tried to keep artists and writers as allies
• Created a commisariat of enlightenment to support artists

Question 30

What was proletkult?

Answer 30

• Bogdanov proposed a proletarian culture named ‘proletkult’ and those who added to it were constructivists
• Peasants encouraged to make own culture such as theatre plays or poems
• Magazine, smithy had poems about machines
• Anniversary of revolution in 1920 celebrated by reenactment of storming a palace and extra rations offered to make people attend rallies
• Opposed bourgeoisie culture

Question 31

What is avant-garde?

Answer 31

• Mayakovsky, slogans and posters for the government, innovative propaganda
• Malevich and Kandinsky produced ‘fellow man’ sculptures focusing on visual arts
• Futurism impacted reading and music such as jazz
• Often too complex for people to understand such as the Mystery Bouffe pageant which was closed after 1 performance due to being confusing

Question 32

What was the cultural revolution?

Answer 32

• Stalin’s attempt to clamp down on bourgeois culture
• Komomsol encouraged to attack the bourgeoisie
• Theatre production booed, Russian association of proletarian writers attacked avant-gardism and fellow travellers
• Encouraged the cult of the little man, focused on little achievements such as factory work

Question 33

What is socialist realism?

Answer 33

• 1932, RAPP closed and replaced by Union of soviet writers putting the cultural revolution to an end
• A term used to present images of life under socialism
• The Union policed people’s art and some suffered by conforming but others emigrated out of the country
• Those who didn’t comply were put in concentration camps.

Question 34

What impact did socialist realism have on art?

Answer 34

• No experimentation
• Abstract art rejected
• Images included that of peasants and workers
• It should made clear who was responsible for the successes of socialism which often fused with the cut of personality.

Question 35

What impact did socialist realism have on Literature?

Answer 35

• Often stories were about heroes connected to the party
• Extremely cheap and low brow meaning they were easily accessible to the public

Question 36

What impact did socialist realism have on architecture

Answer 36

• The style ‘Stalinist Baroque’ ow ‘wedding cake’ became popular
• The university of Moscow and the Moscow metro system are examples
• Places were decorated with chandeliers and murals showing the triumphs of workers.

Question 37

What impact did socialist realism have on music?

Answer 37

Music suffered and instruments were banned including the saxophone in the 1940’s
- In 1935 Stalin walked out of a Shostakovich performance because of the use of trombones which were considered to be jazz.

Question 38

What impact did socialist realism have on film?

Answer 38

• Achievements of the revolution were commonly displayed in films
• Eisensteins October and Alexander Nevsky were popular films
• During the second world war films promoted patriotism and the defence of mother Russia

Question 39

What was culture like during the Stalin years?

Answer 39

• Immediately after WW2 artists were allowed greater freedom, Akhmatova and Pasternak were allowed to give public readings of their poetry in 1946 which was met with applause
• Freedom was cast away soon after, after western culture was condemned in the Zhdanochvina campaign in 1946.
• This made artists such as shostakovich stop making music

Question 40

What impact did destalinisation have on culture?

Answer 40

• Khrushchev allowed the publishing of previously banned literature
• Jazz music returned
• Works by Isaac Babel returned
• More experimental poetry was allowed to be published
• Solzhenitsyn’s book about the terrible time in the gulags was allowed and more books after as his fit in line with the destalinisation policy
• literature was more critical of soviet culture with it being called ‘grey trash’ and exploring more existential and political themes.
• By the late 1950’s, the youth were influenced by western music tastes, they also developed western styles of dressing and labelled styligai by the party meaning rude ignorant freaks.
• From 1955 this music was broadcast through voice of America station.
• The guitar poet, Galich, spoke to the socially alienated and put his music on cassette tapes, magnatizdat made his music hard to control

Question 41

What was culture like during the Brezhnev years?

Answer 41

• Less freedom but more certainty of what was permitted meaning it was easier to produce art than during the cultural thaw years of khrushchev.
• Official art still contained themes of socialist success and governmental triumphs and most of the population liked it
• By the 1970’s artists had to get used to conservatism and would get in trouble if they touched on sexual themes.
• The derevenshchiki school taught about the wonders of rural life and missing the old days which could be a criticism of urban life
• The guitar poet, Galich, spoke to the socially alienated and put his music on cassette tapes, magnitizdat made his music hard to control. He spoke on sex and delinquency and his funeral in 1980 was very popular and this worried the party and the development of the cassette tape made it hard for the authorities to contain
• Despite the restrictions of the party artists became skillful at using subtexts o get their message across ad the public became skillful at reading them.

Question 42

How did Artists clash with Khrushchev?

Answer 42

• Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago contained criticisms of the revolution and banned the book without finishing the book, It was smuggled abroad and read in Italy in 1957 and Pasternak was awarded the nobel literature prize and Pasternak was banned from receiving his award
• Khrushchev hated the 1963 Abstract art exhibition but no one was arrested.
• Komsomol groups reported in misbehaving youths and held a conference to decide what dance moves were allowed but this failed
• All this shows how unpredictable Khrushchev was.

Question 43

What was the trial of Joseph Brodsky?

Answer 43

1964, A poet had his poems read out in secret and the secret police found out about it and was arrested

• He was sentenced to 5 years of hard labour but was released after 2 due to people campaigning release and he was expelled from the soviet union.
• This was a clear message t the authors who acted outside of the writers union

Question 44

What was the Sinyavsky and Daniel trial?

Answer 44

• 1965 both writers arrested for anti-soviet propaganda, depicting soviet life as harsh.
• 1966, Trial begins and over 200 students of Sinyavsky rebelled and a letter signed by 63 intellectuals.
• despite this Sinyavsky was sentenced to 7 years of harsh labour and daniel 5 years.
• These punishments were deterrent and a sign the cultural thaw was over.

Question 45

How did Brezhnev and Andropov clamp down on non-conformity?

Answer 45

• Privileges given to conformists and punishments given to those who didn’t including withdrawal of employment. Non-Conformists were given a talk and this set most straight but those who didn’t, like Solzhenitsyn who was expelled from the writers union in 69 and then from the union in 74
• 1970, Novosibirsk sentenced to 8 years in prison for displaying dissident art
• 1975, Unofficial artists were attacked by a mob hired by the party and the display was bulldozed but it was filmed and sent to foreign press so the government allowed the rehanging of the paintings.
• Andropov clamped down on non-conformity in popular media. He reduced the output of non-soviet music on the radio by 20%, rock concerts were banned by a commission and the komsomol reported bad behaviour.
• The public preferred official media and non-conformists were seen as out of touch.