“How accurate is it to say that the Soviet Union consistently relied on the Secret Police to control the people in the years 1917-85?”

Question 1

“How accurate is it to say that the Soviet Union consistently relied on the Secret Police to control the people in the years 1917-85?” Secret Police

Answer 1

• From the early days of the revolution, the Cheka attacked not only the Communists’ capitalist enemies, but also other socialists. For example, in January 1918, the Cheka and the Red Army closed down the Constituent Assembly, a democratically elected parliament that was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries.
• More generally, the GPU kept public opinion under close scrutiny during the 1920s. The GPU kept intellectuals and students under close scrutiny, these groups were unlikely to support the new government because of their privileged, almost bourgeois position in Soviet society.
• The GPU also reported to the Central Committee about moral problems, such as drunkenness, gambling and other signs of inequality that were developing during the period of the NEP.
• Under Yezhov the terror attacked all aspects of Soviet life: the Party, the army, industry and collective farms. During this period, around 1.5 million, approximately ten percent of the male adult population, were arrested by the NKVD. Of these around 635,000 were deported, often to Siberia, and over 680,000 were executed

Question 2

“How accurate is it to say that the Soviet Union consistently relied on the Secret Police to control the people in the years 1917-85?” Propaganda and Censorship

Answer 2

• Initially, Lenin closed down papers that supported the Tsar or the Provisional Government. By 1921 the Communists had closed 2000 newspapers and 575 printing presses. Control of the press was also aided by the economic controls introduced under War Communism .
• Under Stalin, censorship was tightened still further. In the mid-1930s the works of Trotsky and other leading revolutionaries from the 1920s had to be purged from Soviet libraries. Lenin’s own works were ‘edited’ to remove complimentary statements about Stalin’s opponents. Soviet history was rewritten to emphasise Stalin’s role in the revolution.
• The cult of Stalin turned him into a semi-divine figure, whose unique vision and unique wisdom would lead the nation to socialism.
• Socialist Realist art including sculptures such as ‘The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman’ (1937), depicted Soviet people as muscular, heroic, dedicated and beautiful, the perfect embodiment of the society that Stalin was trying to build.

Question 3

“How accurate is it to say that the Soviet Union consistently relied on the Secret Police to control the people in the years 1917-85?” Repression of other ideologies

Answer 3

• Lenin was convinced that the Church was an enemy of the revolution, and therefore he used terror to try to undermine the Church. In the first year of the revolution senior priests in the Orthodox Church were terrorised: Orthodox priests in Moscow were massacred in 1918.
• During the collectivisation drive, Stalin ordered the closure of many churches in the country largely because they were aiding resistance to his policies. In the Central Asian republics, where Islam was the dominant religion, the NKVD attacked local priests and intellectuals. The NKVD also attacked groups that had been set up to defend Islam in the 1920s from Soviet attacks. By the end of 1936, these anti-soviet muslim groups had been purged.
• Khrushchev saw it as part of his mission to revive the anti-religious campaign of the 1920s in order to liberate Soviet society from the last vestiges of religion.
• Khrushchev’s major anti-religious campaign started in 1958. Churches reopened during and after the Second World War were closed. Anti-religious magazines were reintroduced, for example Science and Religion was published regularly from 1960. Roman Catholic monasteries were closed in 1959.
• Aspects of Khrushchev’s campaign succeeded, For example, the KGB successfully closed thousands of churches, reducing the number of Orthodox Church buildings from 8000 in 1958 to 5000 in 1964.

Question 4

“How accurate is it to say that the Soviet Union consistently relied on the Secret Police to control the people in the years 1917-85?” Censorship of Arts and Culture

Answer 4

• Lenin and Trotsky believed that art could be used to inspire people to support the new government. In 1920, this led to the establishment of the Department of Agitation Propaganda (agitprop), a department within the Communist Party. The agitprop departments that were formed in 1920 built on propaganda work that had been going on since the revolution.
• Under Khrushchev there was a significant change in Soviet propaganda. During Stalin’s rule, Soviet people had been depicted as heroic and, in a conventional sense, beautiful, Soviet farms and factories had been depicted as modern, efficient and harmonious. However, after 1954 this changed. Increasingly, propaganda posters poked fun at Soviet people.
• The new posters attempted to challenge non-conformity through ‘popular oversight’. Posters presented non-conformist citizens as comically bald, fat or lazy. ‘The Lazy Bureaucrat (1961) shows a plump man sitting at a disorganised desk. The posters were designed to encourage ‘popular oversight’. Good citizens were encouraged to intervene with helpful moral advice.
• The poster ‘When two girls met’ (1963) tells the moral tale of how a good working-class upbringing leads to a disciplined child, whereas the children of indulgent intellectual parents grow up to be lazy, selfish and obsessed with fashion.