Cultural Change (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes

Cultural Change

The creation of the 'socialist man'

Stalin's government sought to reshape Soviet culture fundamentally, attempting to forge a new 'socialist man' who embodied communist values and rejected traditional attitudes. This cultural transformation was pursued through multiple channels and involved extensive state intervention in artistic, religious and intellectual life.

Komsomol members (Communist youth organisation members) formed the vanguard of this cultural revolution. These young communists enthusiastically attacked what the regime deemed 'bourgeois' values. Their activities included burning or vandalising non-socialist books and artworks, disrupting theatrical performances by heckling actors, and publicly ridiculing religious practices and institutions. They also actively promoted 'proletarian culture' through participation in 'shock brigades' – groups that worked on collectivisation and industrialisation projects – and contributed to literacy campaigns designed to spread communist ideals among the population.

Persecution of religious institutions

Churches under assault

The Christian cultural heritage faced severe repression as Stalin's regime launched coordinated attacks on religious institutions. Churches were raided and clergy persecuted systematically. By 1941, the scale of destruction was staggering: approximately 1 church in 40 continued operating as a place of worship, whilst the remainder had been destroyed or repurposed for secular activities. Of the 168 bishops holding office in 1930, 152 had been either killed or imprisoned by the end of the decade.

Other faiths

Jewish and Islamic communities similarly suffered persecution. The regime targeted synagogues, mosques, religious schools and cultural institutions associated with these faiths, viewing them as obstacles to the creation of a unified Soviet identity based on communist ideology rather than religious tradition.

Artists and intellectuals under Stalinism

Compliance and promotion

Some cultural figures aligned themselves with the regime and actively promoted its agenda. To encourage compliance, the regime organised 'artistic brigades' that encouraged writers and artists to champion socialist realism – the official artistic doctrine emphasising optimistic portrayals of Soviet life and heroic workers.

Key figure: Maxim Gorky (1868–1936)

Already an established writer before the revolution, Gorky had become disillusioned with the Civil War and lived abroad from 1921 to 1928. Stalin persuaded him to return, capitalising on his literary reputation. Gorky subsequently assisted in developing socialist realism and received extensive honours, including having a major Moscow street and his birthplace town renamed after him.

Gorky declared that under Stalin, Russian writers had 'lost nothing but the right to be bad writers'. He died in 1936 whilst receiving medical treatment; it remains possible he was murdered on Stalin's orders.

Silence and internal exile

Many writers chose or were forced into silence rather than produce work that contradicted their artistic principles. Some writers were sent to work on industrial or agricultural sites; this was not necessarily punishment but served as a method of ensuring they absorbed and promoted socialist values through direct experience of proletarian labour.

Key figure: Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)

A prominent Russian poet who had initially welcomed the revolution, Pasternak was deemed 'bourgeois' by the 1930s for his refusal to embrace socialist realism fully. Stalin reportedly had Pasternak's name removed from a list of intellectuals to be purged, possibly because he admired Pasternak's translations of Georgian classics. Nevertheless, Pasternak found it impossible to write within the restrictive atmosphere of the 1930s. His later semi-autobiographical novel Doctor Zhivago, composed during the war years, continued to attract persecution throughout Stalin's remaining years in power.

The poet Anna Akhmatova similarly remained silent of her own accord rather than compromise her artistic integrity.

The assault on avant-garde art

The mid-1930s witnessed a particularly ruthless campaign against experimental and modernist artists. In 1936, the official newspaper Pravda published a damning denunciation of Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Msensk District under the headline 'Chaos instead of Music'. Stalin had recently attended a performance of this modernist work, and despite the opera having enjoyed considerable popularity since its 1934 premiere, the composer was now accused of 'leftist distortions'.

Although Shostakovich himself avoided arrest, a theatre director who defended him was seized, brutally tortured by the NKVD and executed; the director's wife was also stabbed to death. This high-profile attack sent a clear message to other artists about the consequences of deviating from approved styles.

Key figure: Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75)

A world-renowned composer whose works included symphonies, chamber music and choral compositions. He often found himself at odds with the Soviet regime, particularly during the later Zhdanov cultural purge after 1946. During the war, he was celebrated as a hero for composing his 'Leningrad' symphony whilst the city was under German siege, but he never felt secure even after Stalin's death in 1953.

Meanwhile, leading figures in the arts during the 1930s, such as the photographer Rodchenko and film-maker Eisenstein Brodsky, were not generally recognised as artistic 'greats' beyond the USSR's borders, suggesting the regime's cultural policies had limited international artistic standing.

Effectiveness of cultural transformation

Popular resistance to propaganda

The regime's efforts to impose new cultural values achieved mixed results. Evidence suggests that ordinary Soviet citizens often resisted or ignored official propaganda. Cinema attendance patterns reveal that Russian people preferred watching Hollywood films to Soviet propaganda productions. Although How the Steel Was Tempered became the most frequently borrowed book from the Magnitogorsk library, this industrial city could hardly be considered representative of the USSR as a whole.

Historical assessment

The modern Cambridge historian Dr John Barber has argued that approximately one-fifth of workers supported the Stalinist regime and its political programme. This assessment implies that four-fifths of the working population remained largely unaffected by the regime's intensive indoctrination efforts and the promotion of new cultural values. Attempts to create the 'socialist man' therefore appear to have fallen well short of the government's aspirations, with most Soviet citizens maintaining a degree of cultural and ideological independence despite the pervasive propaganda apparatus.