Stalin's cult of personality Flashcards
Origins of the cult
1924-29 = After Lenin’s death Stalin wanted to carry on his legacy - ‘Stalin is the Lenin of today.’
Cult underway
1929-33 = By 1931, huge portraits of Lenin and Stalin etc appear on special occasions - still few individual portraits of Stalin are present though
Cult fully established
1933-39 = Stalin’s image used to reassure people that they have a strong leader - Stalin began altering photos to make it look like he worked with Lenin
- 1935 onwards = could only speak of Stalin positively
How did Russians positively react to the cult of personality
- people believed that the show trials were real
- Criticism often directed at local officials whereas leaders such as Stalin were praised
How did Russians react negatively to the cult o personality
- Workers were aware of the absurdities of the cult - criticised Stalin being elevated to a god-like status
- the excessive Stalinist propaganda was becoming counter-productive - leaflets ridiculing the supreme soviet were published
Proletkult
- The proletarian cultural movement started by Lenin - began just before the October revolution and tasked with the development of radical Avant-grade aesthetics tailored to the working classes
- revolutionaries hoped to create a new cultural order
- at it’s peak in 1920 it had over 400,000 members
- advocates believed the rapid and radical cultural change was crucial to the survival of the revolution
Mayakovski
Futurist in the 1920s - reflected modern technology and machines in his art - worked with the Bolsheviks in producing posters etc
Shostakovich
Banned from producing opera after Stalin disliked his work - involved in the Leningrad resistance - his work never reflected Soviet beliefs
Eisenstein
Soviet film director who was commissioned by Stalin
Pasternak
practised the genre of silence during the period of socialist realism - persecuted in his death in 1960
Meyerhold
welcomed revolution and became a Bolshevik - created films that attempted to stir up hatred of old bourgeoisie and encourage support of the new regime - however later killed as his films were ‘too realistic and not optimistic’
Gorky
Socialist writer - his works were one of the Bolshevik’s main source of income before 1917
Socialist realism
- Stalin said that writers and artists must be ‘engineers of the human soul’
- 1931 = Stalin ordered all artists to come together in a single union to help fashion the ‘new soviet man.’
- lay’s with Lenin’s view that art and literature must educate the workers int he spirit of communism
- Socialist realism meant seeing life as it would become
cultural revolution
aimed to reconstruct the cultural and ideological life of society- the method of cultural revolution was ‘class warfare’ - attacked non-Marxists
- Young people attacked religion and broke up ‘bourgeoise’ plays
Komsomol
= young communist league = set up in 1918 to help the revolution - it later helped enforced collectivisation and push out the ‘formal people’
Socialist realism - Music
- return to Russian composers - had to be positive - e.g. Shostakovich = anti-socialist composer
Socialist realism - Poetr
Developing class conscious and promoted a positive view of the socialist regime - e.g. Pasternak who was bourgeoise for his failure to embrace socialist realism
Socialist realism - Cinema
Stalin ordered increased production of documentary’s during industrialisation e.g. Eisenstein
Socialist realism - Novels
Stalin persuaded Gorky to come back to Russia to produce propaganda
Socialist realism - Art
Joyful - portrayed new machinery and healthy peasants with lots of food etc
Attitude to women
1920s = Lenin’s view = give women economic independence and free them from bourgeoise marriages etc
1930s = expected to become housewives and to work for lower wages
Attitude to marriage
1920s = More equality between the sexes
1930s = Stalin wanted to strengthen the soviet family - brought back wedding rings etc
Attitude to Divorce
1920s - Laws passed to make divorce easier - 1917 divorce law = marriages could be ended on grounds on incompatibility - By mid 1920s USSR had highest divorce rates in Europe
1930s = Made more difficult - cost 50 roubles to get divorced also
Attitude to abortion
1920s = abortion allowed to be performed
1930s = abortions restricted - 1936 = abortions banned
Attitude to Work
1920s = Under NEP prostitution thrived with 39% of proletarian men using prostitutes
1930s = 1935 = 8 million women in the workplace - could make progress within the administrative hierarchy - however women earned 40% less than men
Attitude to politics
1920s = Women only made up 12.8% membership of political parties in 1928
Attitude to children
1920s = Millions of orphans due to war and civil war - upwards of 9 million orphans
1930s = mothers with more than 6 children received tax breaks and extra government increased state allowances for each child
Attitude to Family
1920s = Traditional views on family etc
1930s = encouraged women to give up paid employment when they married
Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Children, youth movements and education
Under Lenin - Goal to raise a generation which had no memory of capitalism
- free education for all levels however schools suffered due to a lack of authority
Under Stalin - Komsomol youth movement more significant under Stalin - Stalin needed more skilled workers so created a more organised school structure = stricter etc
Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Workers
Under Lenin - industry output fell to 20% of its pre war levels - grain requisitioning also led to very low grain stocks
Under Stalin - Men’s life became easier = men’s leisure got place in soviet society
- trade unions didn’t help workers, setting unrealistic targets etc
- low wages drove women into the workforce
Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Intelligentsia
Under Stalin - grew rapidly in the gulags - gulag’s became place where prisoners were worked to death or murdered outright
Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Religion
Under Lenin - Bolshevik ideology defined religion - Lenin began destroying the power of the church after the revolution
Under Stalin - League of Militant Godless = organisation of atheists who wanted to destroy religion
- during collectivisation, brigades confiscated and burnt holt icons
- By end of 1930, 80% of churches had closed
Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - National minorities
Under Stalin - republicans hit hard by Stalin’s economic changes ad many were deported
- over 400,000 German’s deported in 1941 and antisemitism began to rise
Urban and rural differences
- more propaganda = rise in literacy rates
-1930s = collectivisation became accepted - shortage of housing - living standards dropped considerably with 1933 being the worst year
- Food consumption only one third of 1909 levels
