The Development of the Stalinist Cult and the Cultural Revolution Flashcards
How was the cult of personality created?
- imposed from above
- Stalin on giant flags in processions
- portraits depicted Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin
- Stalins Dec bday, grand celebration
How did Soviet newspapers glorify Stalin?
- daily accounts of his brilliance in Pravda and Itsveztsiya
What years were the cult of Stalin fully established?
1933-1939
What was the main historical textbook strengthening the Stalinist Cult?
The History of the All-Union Communist Party
When was this published?
1938
What were its contents?
- Stalin assumed a major role in Oct Rev and Civil war
- Trotsky and old Bolsheviks as ‘enemies of the people’ or minor roles
- Photographs doctored, removing enemies and showing Stalin by Lenin
How many copies had the book sold by 1948?
- 34 million copies
What was the citizen response in the development of the Stalinist cult?
- unless oppositions, extreme adulation
- seen as a father of the people
- sense of emotional attachment
- some experienced better lives under the structure of industrialisation
- created their own ‘red corner’ of the greatest leaders, much like a saints corner in Tsarist times (parallel)
What were some names given to Stalin?
- ‘mighty leader’
- ‘father of the nation’
- ‘universal genius’
Give a line from, Izakovsky’s ‘Song About Stalin’:
- ‘Let us sing a song Comrades… about our sun, about truth of nations’
What was Stalin’s role in the development of the Stalinist cult?
- somewhat ambiguous
- did not personally encourage, but did not stop it
What example shows that Stalin fed the development of the Stalinist Cult?
- Khrushchev in 1956
- revealed when Stalin read a pre-publication of the official short biography of his life
- he insisted that it be revised to praise him even more
Literature, Arts and Socialist Realism
What was the expectation of emerging culture in Stalinist Russia?
- must support a socialist ideology
- people had to be ‘engineers of the human soul’
What changes happened to Literature?
- 1932, all writers had to belong to the Union of Soviet Writers
Example of a Russian book adhering to the rules of the Union of Soviet Writers:
- How the Steel was Tempered - Nikolai Ostrovsky
What are examples of Russian writers?
- Tolstoy
- Pushkin
What changes happened to the Arts?
- 1932, painters and art critics had to join the Union of Arts
- Similar bodies created for musicians, film makers and sculptors
Famous Russian composer:
- Glinker
What was the consequence of not joining these unions?
- meant artistic isolation
- no opportunity for commissions or sale of work
- individual expression was viewed as politically suspect
What was the doctrine of Socialist realism?
- words of the Writers union “truthful, historically concrete representation… of revolutionary development
- writers not meant to show the current reality, but what it could look like in the future
- this raised citizen morale and acceptance of current situation
Who laid the groundwork for writers regulations and when and what was this framework?
- Andrei Zhdanov
- in 1934
- At 1st Congress of USW’s
- had to glorify the working man, embrace new tech and be positive
Propaganda
What were common themes in Stalinist propaganda?
- Military illusions e.g. collectivisation as a ‘socialist offensive on all fronts’
- class enemies damned (Trotsky)
- hardships associated with economic change were romanticised
