'High Stalinism' 1945-1953 Flashcards
What was a key feature of leadership under High Stalinism?
unchallenged dictatorship of Stalin
How was Stalin seen as?
the heroic leader of Great Patriotic War,
god-like and apart from others
What could be said about state terror?
renewed terror,
purges in ideological ‘purity’
What was wrong about the Party during high Stalinism?
institutions weakened or ignored,
rivalries and plots,
Stalin withdrawn and paranoid,
How was the Party side-lined after ww2?
no Party congress between 1939 and 1952
What happened to Red Army heroes?
downgraded, couldn’t challenge Stalin
What example of Red Army command got downgraded?
Marshal Zhukov - sent to Odessa to lower-level command
Who plotted Zhdanov’s downfall in 1948?
Malenkov and Beria
How many returned POW were sent to Gulags?
15% of 1.8 million (offence to surrender/suspicious on collaboration with Germans)
What could get a person denounced and arrested?
contact with foreigners, 1947 - law outlawed marriage to foreigners.
How many wartime survivors were sent to the Gulags?
12 Million
Who was the head of the NKVD after the war?
Beria - deputy prime minister, as well as head of USSR’s atomic weapons programme.
How was the NKVD strengthened under Beria?
split into two separate ministries:
MVD
MGB
What was the MVD?
Ministry of internal affairs, controlled domestic security and gulags.
What was the MGB?
Ministry of State Security, handled counter-intelligence and espionage.
Who was appointed to lead cultural policy in 1946?
Andrei Zhdanov
What did Zhdanov insist Artists and writers to follow?
Socialist realism, praise of Stalin and Soviet achievements, criticism of American commercialism/