Stalin's cult of personality

Question 1

Origins of the cult

Answer 1

1924-29 = After Lenin’s death Stalin wanted to carry on his legacy - ‘Stalin is the Lenin of today.’

Question 2

Cult underway

Answer 2

1929-33 = By 1931, huge portraits of Lenin and Stalin etc appear on special occasions - still few individual portraits of Stalin are present though

Question 3

Cult fully established

Answer 3

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

Question 4

How did Russians positively react to the cult of personality

Answer 4

• people believed that the show trials were real
• Criticism often directed at local officials whereas leaders such as Stalin were praised

Question 5

How did Russians react negatively to the cult o personality

Answer 5

• 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

Question 6

Proletkult

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Mayakovski

Answer 7

Futurist in the 1920s - reflected modern technology and machines in his art - worked with the Bolsheviks in producing posters etc

Question 8

Shostakovich

Answer 8

Banned from producing opera after Stalin disliked his work - involved in the Leningrad resistance - his work never reflected Soviet beliefs

Question 9

Eisenstein

Answer 9

Soviet film director who was commissioned by Stalin

Question 10

Pasternak

Answer 10

practised the genre of silence during the period of socialist realism - persecuted in his death in 1960

Question 11

Meyerhold

Answer 11

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’

Question 12

Gorky

Answer 12

Socialist writer - his works were one of the Bolshevik’s main source of income before 1917

Question 13

Socialist realism

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

cultural revolution

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Komsomol

Answer 15

= young communist league = set up in 1918 to help the revolution - it later helped enforced collectivisation and push out the ‘formal people’

Question 16

Socialist realism - Music

Answer 16

• return to Russian composers - had to be positive - e.g. Shostakovich = anti-socialist composer

Question 17

Socialist realism - Poetr

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Socialist realism - Cinema

Answer 18

Stalin ordered increased production of documentary’s during industrialisation e.g. Eisenstein

Question 19

Socialist realism - Novels

Answer 19

Stalin persuaded Gorky to come back to Russia to produce propaganda

Question 20

Socialist realism - Art

Answer 20

Joyful - portrayed new machinery and healthy peasants with lots of food etc

Question 21

Attitude to women

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Attitude to marriage

Answer 22

1920s = More equality between the sexes
1930s = Stalin wanted to strengthen the soviet family - brought back wedding rings etc

Question 23

Attitude to Divorce

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Attitude to abortion

Answer 24

1920s = abortion allowed to be performed
1930s = abortions restricted - 1936 = abortions banned

Question 25

Attitude to Work

Answer 25

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

Question 26

Attitude to politics

Answer 26

1920s = Women only made up 12.8% membership of political parties in 1928

Question 27

Attitude to children

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Attitude to Family

Answer 28

1920s = Traditional views on family etc
1930s = encouraged women to give up paid employment when they married

Question 29

Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Children, youth movements and education

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Workers

Answer 30

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

Question 31

Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Intelligentsia

Answer 31

Under Stalin - grew rapidly in the gulags - gulag’s became place where prisoners were worked to death or murdered outright

Question 32

Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - Religion

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Social conditions in the USSR by 1941 - National minorities

Answer 33

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

Question 34

Urban and rural differences

Answer 34

• 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