High Stalinism

Question 1

How did Stalin’s attitude change from 1946 onwards?

Answer 1

Increased paranoia (partly due to a stroke he suffered in 1946)

Question 2

Historiography about High Stalinism

Answer 2

Moshe Lewin - High Stalinism began in 1934, after Kirov’s murder

Robert Service - post-1945 Stalinism was a continuation of pre-1941 Stalinism

Question 3

Key government officials post-1945

Answer 3

Molotov, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Beria, Zhdanov

Question 4

Example of infighting between government officials

Answer 4

Zhdanov challenged the policies of Malenkov, and Mikoyan set up an investigation condemning Malenkov’s actions. This lead to Malenkov losing his position as Party secretary, and Zhdanov became Stalin’s closest advisor (until Malenkov and Beria engineered his political downfall in 1948)

Question 5

Example of Stalin’s growing paranoia (Zhukov)

Answer 5

Feared Zhukov’s growing fame and influence, so demoted him to a minor military command in Odessa

Question 6

How were the institutions of the party undermined?

Answer 6

No party congresses held between 1939 and 1952

The Politburo was reduced to an advisory body

Question 7

Evidence of Stalin’s fear of returning prisoners of war

Answer 7

Leopold Trepper - had risked his life as a leader of the Red Orchestra (left-wing spy ring operating inside Nazi Germany), but was sent to the gulags upon his return

Question 8

Evidence of Stalin’s fear of foreigners

Answer 8

Any contact with a foreigner could get a person denounced or arrested.

In 1947, a law was passed outlawing marriage to foreigners

Hotels, restaurants and embassies were under constant surveillance

Question 9

Who ran the NKVD during High Stalinism?

Answer 9

Lavrentii Beria

Question 10

How was the NKVD reformed and strengthened post-1945?

Answer 10

Reorganised as two separate ministries: the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) controlled domestic security and the gulags and the MGB (Ministry of State Security) handled counter-intelligence and espionage

Question 11

How many people were persecuted in the renewed terror of High Stalinism?

Answer 11

Tens of thousands arrested annually for ‘counter-revolutionary activities’

In total, around 12 million people were sent to gulags

Question 12

What did Khrushchev say about Stalin’s personality after the war?

Answer 12

He became ‘even more capricious, irritable and brutal; in particular his suspicions grew’

Question 13

When was the cultural purge launched?

Answer 13

1946, by Andrei Zhdanov

Question 14

How did the Zhdanovschina begin?

Answer 14

A purge of two literary works: ‘The Adventures of a Monkey’ by satirist Zoshchenko and a collection of poems by Anna Akhmatova.

Zoshchenko and Akhmatova were expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers

Question 15

Example of another writer being condemned?

Answer 15

Boris Pasternak was condemned for his ‘apolitical’ poems - his girlfriend was sent to the gulag

Question 16

Example of infamous Russian writer being posthumously condemned

Answer 16

Dostoevsky - his works were attacked for lacking ‘socialist qualities’

Question 17

What was the standard for the arts reasserted during High Stalinism?

Answer 17

Socialist realism - condemned artists had to make public recantations of their ‘errors’ in order to keep working

Antisemitism was also prevalent, and many Jewish artists were suppressed and Jewish newspapers closed down

Question 18

Evidence of Soviet music suffering during the cultural purge

Answer 18

The great composers Shostakovich and Prokofiev were criticised for ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’.

They were removed from teaching posts and Prokofiev’s wife was imprisoned

Question 19

Evidence that scholarship was attacked during the cultural purge

Answer 19

The regime gave Trofim Lysenko complete dominance over the Academy of Sciences. ‘Lysenkoism’ crippled Soviet scientific development

Question 20

How did the cult of personality impact academia?

Answer 20

It became customary for the first and last paragraphs of any academic article or book to acknowledge Stalin’s genius on the subject

Question 21

How was Stalin portrayed during the period of High Stalinism?

Answer 21

Portrayed as as a war hero and the world’s greatest living genius

Question 22

What was the culmination of the Stalin cult?

Answer 22

Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949, when Moscow’s Red Square was dominated by a giant portrait of Stalin, suspended in the sky and illuminated by search lights.

Question 23

Examples of towns re-naming themselves after Stalin

Answer 23

Stalingrad, Stalino, Stalinsk, Staliabad and Stalinogorsk

Question 24

Explain the Leningrad affair

Answer 24

Stalin was cautious to prevent politicians with a power base in Leningrad from becoming too powerful (e.g. Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kirov all had significant influence in Leningrad).

Stalin decided to follow up the removal and death of Zhdanov by purging the Leningrad Party in 1949. It began as an attack on Voznesenski (an economic expert who was promoted by Zhdanov) and escalated to a major purge of all leading officials. Overall, more than 2,000 officials were replaced by loyalists.

Question 25

What was the ‘Mingrelian case’?

Answer 25

Launched in 1951, the Mingrelian case was a purge of Party officials in Georgia. It had not been settled at the time of Stalin’s death, but it served as a significant limit on Beria’s power (who was of Mingrelian origin).

Question 26

Explain the Doctors’ plot

Answer 26

The Doctors’ plot was an antisemitic campaign against doctors Stalin believed to be involved in a ‘Zionist conspiracy’. Stalin threatened the Minister of State Security, Ignatiev, with execution if he did not obtain confessions. Hundreds were arrested and thousands of ordinary Jews were deported to gulags. Nine senior doctors were condemned to death, but Stalin died before the executions could be carried out.