The cult of Stalin Flashcards
What happened from December 1929 and Stalin’s 50th birthday?
- He presented himself as a confident leader during a period of rapid change as a continuous progression of Marx, Engels and Lenin bringing enlightenment
- Paintings, poems, posters and sculptures painted him as a mighty leader and a father of the nation
- Photos were falsified to remove Stalin’s enemies and placing him at Lenin’s side
What was the history of the all-union communist party?
- Published in 1938
- It was a universal educational textbook where Stalin claimed a major role in revolution and civil war compared to the Old Bolsheviks
- By 1948, it had sold 34 million copies
How did the people start to view Stalin?
- Mass support did exist but it was manufactured, people praised it and eve if there were problems, they hoped to benefit from his patronage in the future
- People gained an emotional attachment similar to the tsar and peasants and workers began a red corner similar to a saint’s corner in Tsarist times
- Whilst Stalin didn’t encourage it, he didn’t stop it as it benefitted his position
- Khrushchev revealed in 1956 that he revised Stalin’s short biography to further praise his qualities and achievements
How did Stalin and Lenin differ on their views on art?
Lenin encouraged freedom of expression whilst Stalin compare cultural pursuits to propaganda as it was only valuable if it supported communist ideology
What changed for writers?
- Expected to be engineers of the human soul thus conformity was emphasised
- Andrei Zhdanovin in April 1934 laid at the first congress of the union of soviet writers laid down references for writers and all art forms to glorify the working man, communities working together and embracing new technology of a positive message
- One example is Nikolai Ostovsky’s popular novel how steel was tempered which had a happy ending
What were unions like?
- From 1932, all writers had to join the union of soviet writers and all artists had to join the union of artists and similar bodies were made for musicians, film-makers and sculptors
- It create control on what was created and who could do it as non-membership meant artistic isolation without commissions or sale of work
- Individual expression was politically suspicious
What were socialist realisms?
- For the writer’s union it meant, “the truthful, historically concreate representation of reality in tis revolutionary development,” but they could show what the future could be. Literature and art became the media by which citizens learned that the march to communism was inevitable
- Moscow became a showpiece with Lenin’s mausoleum shrine, the imperial eagle being replaced by 5 red stars, the Moscow metro and the unfinished palace of soviets that was meant to be the tallest building in the world with Lenin’s statue on top
How was culture made for the common man?
- 19th century woks were read, seen, heard and copied so ordinary people could relate and understand
- Real subject matter into painting and classical forms of architecture
- Lanscape art was favoured especially if it showed industrial achievement
- Return of Russian classical composers such as Glinka and Tchaikovsky and in literature, Pushkin and Tolstoy
How was Folk culture promoted?
- Traditional peasant arts and crafts were praised
- Museums were set up
- Folk choirs and dancing troops represented Russian national culture at festivals
- Whilst folk culture praised national values, in practice, it was a Stalinist invention
How did propaganda appeal to workers?
- Harnessed support for policies against the Kulaks, military illusions and happy, productive workers for industrialisation and collectivisation
- Hardships were romanticised to emphasises glories that the worker’s dreams were coming true
- Worker-hero through the Stakhavovites
- Young men who accomplished heroic endeavours featured more on the cover the pravda than Stalin in 1937-8
How were women presented in propaganda?
- Female Stakhavovites were featured in Pravda as 25% of all factory workers were descried as norm-breaking
- Mother-heroines through large families
- Vera Mukhina produced a massive steel sculpture, the worker and Kolkhoz woman for the 1937 world trade fair in Paris with a raise sickle and hammer to show worker’s solidarity
How were soviet aviators and artic explorers portrayed as heroes?
They could produce cheap bulk books to encourage propaganda messages in the literate
What was Pavlik Morozov?
An extremely popular book to show the sacrifices to the socialist cause to children as he denounced is father and a kulak and was killed by angry relatives
How was propaganda spread to the iliterate?
- Wall posters
- Films
- Radios in communal locations
