'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Stalin withdrawn and paranoid,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/
What did those whose work didn’t embody socialist realism had to do?
publicly apologise to keep working
Who was expelled under Zhdanov’s purge?
Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova
What composers were criticised for ‘rootless cosmopolitanism/
Shostakovich and Prokofiev
What was blocked and impossible to get?
Western cultural influences - such as newspapers
what was soviet scientific development hampered by?
Lysenko’s Academy of Sciences
What did Lysenko’s Academy of Sciences do?
suppress new theories or lines of research if contradictory of Marxist principles
What was Stalin portrayed as after saving the USSR?
Stalin portrayed as greatest living genius - superior in all philosophy, science, military and economics
What did it become customary for all books and atricles to do?
acknowledge Stalins genius on the subject
What replaced Lenin’s Oct/Nov revolution victory as the Greatest event of Russian history?
Stalin’s victory in the Great Patriotic War
How was Stalin portrayed as a man of the people?
he was instinctively in touch with what the average worker was thinking,What did
What did towns and cities compete for?
To be renamed after Stalin,
What was there a movement for Moscow to be renamed to?
Stalinodar
What were lunched after the USSR felt Soviets being excluded from Nobel prizes?
Stalin prizes
Where was Stalin suspicious of after WW2?
the Party base in Leningrad
Why was Stalin suspicious of Leningrad?
rivals often built up power base
Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kirov and Zhdanov
What did stalin dislike about Leningraders?
the glorification of their struggle to survive the seige on Leningrad
How many days did the seige of Leningrad last?
872 days
When did Zhdanov die of a heart attack/
August 1948W
What followed Zhdanovs death in Leningrad?
a purge of Leningrad Party, 2000 Party officials dismissed and replaced by 1950
Who as targetted in 1951/
the Mingrelian ethnic group in GeorgiaWho was
Who was Mingrelian?
Beria - accusations of working with ‘Jewish Plotters’
What did Stalin use the accusations of a ‘Jewish Plot’ for?
to limit Beria’s power
Who accused the doctors that treated Zhdanov of contributing to his death?
A doctor and informer - Lydia Timashuk
When did Stalin use the complaint over Zhdanov’s death to arrest Jewish doctors?
1952
What did Stalin accuse the Jewish doctors of?
a ‘Zionist conspiracy’ to harm USSR on behalf of Israel and USA
Who else was caught in the purge following ‘The Doctors Plot’?
Wives of Molotov and Kalinin.
Thousands of ordinary Jewish people
How many senior doctors were condemned to death, but survived due to Stalin’s death?
9
