Political Authority 1945-53 Flashcards
What period of time is referred to as high Stalinism
The years after the war. The years were stalins authority over state and party and his cult of personality had grown around him and reached its pinnacle.
What was stalins approach after the war and why
How did Stalin deal with this
Back to the future
As war time developments had worried Stalin. Increased party membership weakened the reliability of the party and Stalin believed the military was praised to highly for his liking.
- GKO (state and defence committee) was dissolved.
- the military hierarchy was also downgraded. Stalin personally took the role of minster of defence and high ranking officer were moved down to inferior posts.
- zhukov who was seen as a potential rival was sent to the military command to Odessa, losing his position on the central committee party.
Why was there a disagreement under foreign policy
Zhdanov - favouring the Berlin lockable of 1948.
Malenkov - mode moderate path.
What was reelected in 1946
What showed Stalin had full control
A new politburo, secretariat and orgburo,
- party congress which were meant to be held every 3 years were not held between 1939 and 1952.
Only 6 full central committee meetings in this time.
Politburo was reduced to an advisory body
Who were old guards replaced with
(Those who had joined because of Marxists ideas)
Replaced by new style party members- saw the party as a way of life and were cautious and careful, both in their party position and in their personal life. Unwilling to act without the backing of higher authority.
What was zhdanovshchina
Society after the war.
Everything western was condemned as bourgeois and decadent. All things Russian were regarded as superior and uplifting.
Zhdanovshcina started with the purge of two literacy journalists published in Leningrad. One the adventures of a monkey by zoshchenko because the monkey was anti soviet. They were purged and there authors expelled from the union of soviet writers.
Why were literacy scholarships condemned
What happened to anti-semitism
For suggesting that Russian literacy had been influenced by western thinking.
- it flourished, many Jewish dramas and literacy critics disappeared and the last Jewish newspaper was closed down.
What was blocked
Western influence
Non communist foreign papers were unobtainable, foreign radio transmission were jammed only few approved foreign books were translated into Russian.
Why did stalins want isolation from the non soviet world
- concern for national security as the Cold War was emerging
- obsessive fear of ideological contamination
What could land you in a gulag
- a careless word or brief contact with a foreigner
What law was passed in 1947
Furthermore…..
Outlawing hotels and marriages to foreigners.
- restaurants were watched by police for soviet girls meeting foreign men.
Who was at the head of security
What was he responsible for
Beria
- a large expansion in the gulag system
How many war time survivors were sent back to labour camps
12 million.
How did Stalin deal with those who had fallen from favour
Removed them from history. Their very existence was taking out of text books and Stalin manipulated the science of photography using airbrushing and other techniques to remove the old disgraced Bolsheviks.
What was the Leningrad case 1949
Lenin had decided to take a stance against the Leninist party which had always shown some independence in its views and actions. On the basis of false evidence many learning officials were arrested including head of gosplan.
Why did Stalin revert to his former anti Semitic stance
How was this shown
When Israel turned out to be pro USA.
- the director of a Jewish theatre in Moscow was mysteriously killed in a car crash in 1948.
- Jewish wives of politburo members Molotov and Kalinin were arrested in 1949.
What was the mingrelian case 1951-52
A purge launched in Georgia, directed against the followers of Beria. They were accused of collaboration with western powers. Beria was himself of mingrelian ethnic extraction and the aim of the purge remained unclear, however it was likely to weaken the position of Beria.
What was the doctors plot 1952
A female doctor wrote to Stalin accusing 9 highly placed doctors of failure to diagnose and treat zhdanov professionally in 1948.
At the time nothing was done, the case was reopened and the arrest of the doctors were ordered. Stalin but it down to the Jews in pay of the USA and Israel.
Hundreds of doctors were arrested and tortured.
Ordinary Jews were rounded up from the cities and sent to remote regions in the USSR where a new network of labour camps was rapidly established.
The 9 named doctors were sent to execution but just before this went through, Stalin died.
What may have been responsible for stalins increased paranoia in the post war years
How was Stalin portrayed after the war
His stroke in 1946.
- portrayed as a god like status. He was portrayed as the worlds greatest living genius, superior in all areas. 1948 biography exalted him as the modern Lenin and leading Marxist theoretician. Even though he hadn’t visited a peasant village in 25 years he was regarded as a man of the people who knew what everyone was doing and thinking.
How did Stalin spend the last few years of his life
What was the politburo replaced with
Watching films and having all nigh drinking sessions with his war time cronies.
- enlarged presidium.
