culture, high stalinism

Question 1

condition of the ussr after ww2

Answer 1

• exhausted after war, economic depletion
• worried about america
• war had made stalin a hero - war took place on the streets so victory had greater impact
• 20 million soviets died in war

Question 2

successes of industry in post war reconstruction

Answer 2

• rebound effect - rapid growth from 1946 reflects disasters from well before war
• war reparations from soviet sphere - scrap metals and whole factories and workers sent to russia
• 1948 wages reached 1938 levels
• heavy industry, consumer food and growth of living standards

Question 3

failures of industry in post war reconstruction

Answer 3

• sudden end of lend lease august 1945
• economy overloaded by military expenditure - army grew by over 2 million 1948-53 and 25% of budget on military by 1952
• housing shortage

Question 4

agriculture post war - failures

Answer 4

• post war food production was 60% of 1940 level
• poor harvest 1946 (dry)
• slow and patchy recovery even after death, stalin held back reforms
• grain and potatoes didn’t return to 1940 levels in 1952

Question 5

revival of the terror

Answer 5

• 1946
• prisoners of war and anyone who had contacted west - sent to camps or expelled
• purged former officers
• beria as head of nvkd- 12 million wartime survivors sent to camps

Question 6

cultural changes

Answer 6

• authors that were apolitical or not directly communist purged and expelled, journalists purged
• socialist realism asserted
• foreign films and papers banned
• leopold trepper - spy in nazi germany - sent to the gulag until 1955

Question 7

Leningrad affair

Answer 7

• long lasting rivalry between moscow and leningrad
• 1949 purged leningrad party and all leading officers executed oct 1950
• > 2000 officials removed and replaced by pro stalinists

Question 8

mingrilian affair

Answer 8

• 1951 height of cold war
• georgian purge and targeted officials accused of working with the west
• beria and his supporters targeted

Question 9

doctors plot

Answer 9

• dr lydia timashuk wrote to stalin 1948
• accused doctors of neglecting zhdanov (led cultural purge)
• 1552 stalin blamed zionist doctors - arrested and sent to gulags

Question 10

cultural revolution - state control success

Answer 10

• cult of personality
• socialist realism: only art post 1932, other artists explelled
• religion: priests murdered and hounded, 80% closed by 1930 and 97% by 1940
• collective farms and 5yps

Question 11

cultural revolution - impact

Answer 11

• shock brigades and stakhanovite movement
• speech amended “comrade”
• magnitogorsk sold 60,000 cinema tickets yearly, masses of books sold
• 1930s 10 million women entered the workforce

Question 12

cultural revolution for women

Answer 12

• pravda promoted taking family and marriage seriously
• abortions banned 1936
• costs to divorce
• mothers with 6 children = 2000roubles/yr
• more feminine in propaganda

Question 13

young people in cultural revolution

Answer 13

• 1930s saw traditional methods and discipline
• school military training in lead up to war
• young pioneers
• komsomol - oath to live fight and study
• literacy rates to 94% for towns and 86% countryside

Question 14

men in cultural revolution

Answer 14

• new soviet man: communist character
• magnitogorsk: pushed for new soviet man
• stakhanovites
• changed speech to be more communist

Question 15

religion in cultural revolution

Answer 15

• stemmed from lenin 1921 union of the militant godless
• priests attacked churches closed and raided - over 50,000 killed by 1941
• taxed as punishment
• 1937 over 1/2 million citezens described themselves as religious