Social developments

How did Communist Rule impact society?

The Bolsheviks wanted to enact a social revolution to demolish the old Tsarist society. The family, church, and education/youth groups were central to this aim. Film-makers and artists were used to further embed communist ideas and messages.

Urban developments

• Red Terror removed most of the upper and middle class people
• 2-3 million emigrated
• The ruling landed elite was abolished completely
• They had the backing of the Party, and so their position was secure
• The party lacked members with such skills
• Mid-1920s onwards: The Proletariat were fast-tracked into positions of leadership despite a lack of knowledge and skills
• Experts were needed to work in the Civil Service – engineers, scientists, teachers, etc.
• The bourgeoisie were called upon and vetted to fulfil these roles
• They showed loyalty to the Party

Rural developments

• Class warfare between peasants and Kulaks was over-exaggerated
• Kulaks, for the most part, were barely better off than a normal peasant
• By the mid-1920s, 25% of former landowners were farming on small peasant plots alongside their former serfs

Women and Family

• Women's positions were overseen by Alexandra Kollontai, the People's Commissar for social welfare
• Kollontai wanted women to be "relieved of the cross of motherhood" through the establishment of socialist kindergartens
• Divorce laws were relaxed during the 1920s
• Abortion on demand was facilitated in Russia

Wanted to:

• Enable women to gain economic independence from men
• To destroy the bourgeoise concept of marriage

The realities

• Russia had the highest rate of divorce in Europe: 25x more than Britain
• Most divorces were instigated by men, with 70% often due to pregnancy
• Divorced couples often cohabited (violence and rape were common for many) – they could not afford their own place, so had to continue living together
• Many Russian children grew up in gangs of beggars and prostitutes
• 7-9 million orphans during the mid-1920s
• Due to the failure of the NEP, women were forced from skilled to unskilled work
• There was high unemployment: when men needed unskilled work, women were forced into begging and prostitution for survival
• A 1920s survey found that proletariat women worked an 8-hour day + a further 5 hours of domestic labour
• Men did not help in the home

Education

• Schools suffered from underfunding and poor discipline
• By 1923, the number of schools and pupils attending was half the 1921 total
• Indoctrination was central to Soviet education
• However, it often didn't work
• Many young people had negative attitudes towards the state and ideology
• 50 million young people were still deeply religious
• Illiteracy was harmful to the regime
• From Dec 1919, "Liquidation of illiteracy" sites were set up
• Refusal to learn how to read and write would result in criminal prosecution
• From 1920-25 onwards, around 5 million European Russians undertook the courses

Impact on religion

• Bolsheviks were aggressively atheist
• Jan 1918: issued the decree on the separation of Church and State
• Declared that the Church could not own property, church buildings had to be rented and religious instruction in schools was outlawed
• Priests and clerics were declared 'servants of the bourgeoise'
• When clergy and local people tried to protect their churches, there were violent clashes. Lenin saw this as an opportunity to smash the church
• At first, the war against the church mainly took the form of propaganda
• In 1921, the Union of the Militant Godless was established to challenge the Church more directly
• Bolsheviks launched a fierce attack on the Orthodox Church in 1922
• The Orthodox Church was central to the lives of millions of peasants and an integral part of the village community
• It was enjoying something of a revival at the beginning of the NEP
• Orders were sent out to strip churches of their precious items, ostensibly to help famine victims
• He overruled a Politburo decision to suspend the action
• He demanded to be informed daily of the number of priests who had been shot
• More than 8000 people were executed or killed in 1922 in the anti-Church campaign
• This included the Metropolitan of Petrograd (a very high-ranking churchman), 28 bishops and 1215 priests – thousands of priests were also imprisoned
• Komsomol was also particularly associated with active hostility to religion
• Members were much more of a presence in the villages than the Communist Party in the 1920s

They:

• Broke up religious services
• Played tricks on priests and worshippers
• Staged parodies of the Orthodox service in the square outside the church
• Civil marriage and divorce began to make an appearance in villages
• The majority of peasant weddings were still celebrated in church
• Army serving men who had returned to their village were noted for their indifference in religion
• Older women remained staunch believers

Youth groups

• Bolsheviks did not leave indoctrination to non-communist teachers

Two youth organisations were set up:

• The duty of these organisations was to inculcate communist values and to promote loyalty to the working class
• In later years they were used as instruments of social control and to promote discipline in schools
• Pioneers were much like the Boy Scouts, with activities, trips and camping
• Komsomol was much more serious
• Was used by the Communist Party to take propaganda into the towns and villages and to attack religious beliefs and bourgeoise values
• Komsomol membership was seen as a preparation for entry into the Communist Party
• Played an important role in the Cultural Revolution of 1928-31

The Pioneers, for children under fifteen. The Komsomol, for those from the age of fourteen/fifteen into their twenties

Propaganda and culture

• For Lenin, propaganda, education and cultural development were central to building socialism
• Following the Oct Revolution, the Bolshevik government set up the Commissariat of Popular Enlightenment
• This was the Ministry of Education and Culture (headed by Anatoly Lunacharsky)
• Focus moved away from 'high art' like ballet, opera, fine art and museums
• These were regarded as bourgeois and elitist
• Focus moved to 'popular culture': art directed at the mass audience
• Bolsheviks were anxious to harness art to benefit the new state
• Had been a flowering of creativity in the arts in the years before the revolution, which lasted into the 1920s
• Innovators in the arts, the avant-garde rejected the art of the past as linked with the bourgeois way of life, which was to be destroyed
• Many of Russia's finest artists took part in the Soviet cultural experiment in the years immediately following the October Revolution
• Bolsheviks wanted to keep well-known artists on their side if possible
• Many artists were encouraged by the end of tsarist censorship and excited by the revolution, and wanted to communicate directly with the masses
• However, just as the NEP saw a tightening of political control, culture saw a move towards greater control as well

Agitational art

• Avant-garde artists were drawn into producing propaganda for the Bolsheviks
• Designs were reproduced on agitprop trains (mobile propaganda centres), ships, and banners
• Posters were also displayed in the windows of the Petrograd ROSTA (Russian Telegraph Agency)
• More than 1000 ROSTA posters were created over two years
• Lenin wanted to take art to the streets. He had a plan for monumental propaganda and proposed that the streets of the major cities should display posters, slogans and statues
• This was to educate citizens "in the most basic Marxist principles and slogans"
• He personally unveiled the joint statue of Marx and Engels on the 1st anniversary of the revolution
• Street processions were another element of mass agitational art
• Built on a rich tradition of public festivals
• In the Orthodox tradition, communist icons were carried across the village or town
• May Day and the Oct Revolution anniversary became the great ritual festivals
• There was mass street theatre: the great re-enactment of the storming of the Winter Palace in November 1920, which involved 10,000 people and included the Winter Palace itself. It was a stage-managed October Revolution, as it should have happened with Lenin directing

Cinema

• Was, in theory, the ideal medium of propaganda (visual, technological, controllable)
• Lenin was especially keen for it to be used in areas where cinemas "are novelties, and where therefore our propaganda will be particularly successful"
• By the summer of 1918, the agitprop trains were in action
• They were equipped to spread political propaganda through films, plays, and other media far and wide
• In 1925, the Politburo decided not to intervene in matters of form and style in the arts
• This allowed the Soviet cinema a brief period of creativity
• The most outstanding filmmaker of this period was Eisenstein. He was anxious to show the power of the people acting together, E.g. in his famous film of the Bolshevik revolution, October
• Soviet audiences, however, tended to prefer Hollywood comedies to his sophisticated work
• The number of cinemas grew rapidly, and over 300 million tickets were sold in 1928
• Despite this, cinemas were almost entirely restricted to the towns

The Cultural Revolution 1928-4

Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution

• Focused upon the creation of the New Soviet Person
• Emphasis on class struggle akin to the civil war under Lenin
• Educating and promoting the proletariat was the core aim
• More than half a million workers moved from labour to white collar roles
• E.g. Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Kosygin, who would go on to be future Soviet leaders

New Soviet Person

Qualities of a New Soviet Person: willing servant of the state, moral virtue and social responsibility. Komsomols promoted cultural changes by: enforcing collectivisation, imposing labour discipline, leading and joining shock brigades, weeding out opponents of the regime, and reporting popular mood

The purpose of Stalin's Great Terror, to remove anyone Stalin believed was opposing him, was increased by his paranoia. One success of the Five-Year Plans: created more job opportunities for women. One weakness of the Five-Year Plans: living conditions worsened in the cities.

• Embody the morality, values and characteristics a good Soviet citizen should possess
• Would be a willing servant of the state
• Far removed from the illiterate, uneducated peasant
• Part of a new modern industrial society
• A proletarian with a sense of social responsibility and moral virtue
• Komsomol enthusiastically took this up

The Komsomols

• Members aged fourteen to twenty-eight
• By 1927, there were 2 million members
• Exclusive club
• Many applicants were rejected on the grounds of immaturity or insufficient proletarian social origins
• Membership was enthusiastic and leapt at the opportunity to drive the cultural revolution

Were to fulfil a number of roles:

• Being soldiers of production in the industrial drive
• Imposing labour discipline, leading and joining shock brigades
• Enforcing collectivisation and collecting state procurements of grain, etc.
• Keeping an eye on bureaucracy, exposing official abuses, and unmasking hidden enemies
• Weeding out students whose families had been members of the 'former people', attacking non-Party professors and teachers, with the aim of making the intelligentsia proletarian
• Breaking up 'bourgeois' plays by booing and criticising painters and writers who did not follow the Party line
• Reporting on the popular mood

The attack on religion

• Any regime determined to change society fundamentally cannot accept any alternative loyalties
• The attack on religion was renewed
• Suppression of religion in urban areas was relatively straightforward
• No churches allowed in the new cities and towns
• Fierce resentment against the Komsomols and the League of Militant Godless when they launched a major attack in the villages at the height of the collectivisation drive
• Increased peasant opposition even further

Attacks on the Arts

• Rejection of the old intelligentsia
• Emphasis is placed on the class background of artists (class background shown alongside their artwork)
• If they were not proletariat enough, their art would not be displayed
• The RAPP was created for literature
• The proletariat's struggle must form the basis of all storylines
• Writer groups set up through the USSR
• Some writers just stopped writing because of this

Cinema

• Cinema's purpose was to raise the cultural levels of the masses
• 'You must either be from the masses yourself or have studied them thoroughly by spending two years living their lives'
• Eisenstein was accused of doing nothing for the workers during this time

What was Russia like by 1941?

Political Situation

• Highly centralised and authoritarian one-party state
• All power came from Stalin himself
• Local officials protected one another against the central demands
• Purges carried out to eliminate Party members

Economic Situation

• Highly industrialised
• All Russian farms were collectivised
• Had taken over Britain in iron and steel production
• Development was uneven
• Consumer goods became scarce, and quality was poor, worse than with the NEP
• Still producing less grain than under the NEP
• Modern agricultural techniques were neglected, and insufficiently trained individuals were assigned for service and repair

Social Position

• Attacks on the bourgeois
• Hostility from the rural areas
• Communist control in the countryside was stronger
• Peasants under close watch from Party officials and the NKVD
• Increased urbanisation created a stronger proletariat
• Quality of life did not increase
• Strict censorship, and propaganda was rife
• Mass organisations, particularly in the youth
• Attacks on religion, churches closed

Preparedness for War

• Stalin was caught by surprise by a Nazi invasion in 1940, ignored intelligence reports and miscalculated the German attack
• Purges of the Red Army removed most senior officers
• Weakened the strength of the army
• Inadequate training
• The reconstruction of the Navy was slow
• Expenditure on the military to resolve this meant less investment in the collective farms, not enough food to feed the population still
• Lack of military initiative
• Re-established dual command of military units
• Increased Party control hindered combat capabilities
• The quality and quantity of equipment were reduced
• Most aircraft, tanks and guns were of old design
• Psychologically not ready for war
• Soviet troops were suddenly expected to fight former allies
• Stalin did not adequately prepare the country for attack

The Great Retreat

The Great Retreat

• Following the Cultural Revolution, there is a debate as to whether what followed was really a Great Retreat
• Stalin's central premise remained: create the New Soviet Person and the creation of a socialist society
• However, Stalin also became the gatekeeper of traditional conservative values
• Was he a pseudo-Tsar?

Russification and nationalities

• From 1938, learning Russian became compulsory, and it also became the sole language of the Red Army
• Traditional Russian culture emphasised
• Heroes of the past, like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, made a comeback
• Mission as an imperialist power was praised
• Emphasis on Russian nationalism was to increase in WWII and beyond

Education and the Family

• Examinations, homework and rote learning were reinstated, and the late 1930s uniform reappeared
• Old professors recovered authority
• Entrance requirements based on academic criteria
• Old intelligentsia returned to favour at the expense of cultural revolution activists
• Criticism of those who took marriage lightly
• Children urged to love and respect their parents

New Family Code of May 1936:

• Abortion outlawed
• Divorce made harder
• Child support payments fixed
• Mothers with six children were to receive substantial cash payments
• Newspapers reported prosecutions of doctors for performing abortions
• Some women were imprisoned for having abortions, whilst the punishment for women in these circumstances was supposed to be public contempt instead
• Birth rate rose from under 25 per 1,000 in 1935 to almost 31 per 1,000 in 1940

Inequality and privilege returns

• Emergence of a bureaucratic class
• State officials and other elites had better pay and other benefits
• Only the Government could give them private apartments and access to other shops and holidays
• Echoed Tsarist system: a re-emergence of nepotism
• Difference in pay between workers
• Magnitogorsk had different menus for different groups of workers
• Party's maximum abolished
• No longer appropriate for workers to use the familiar form of address to the plant manager

Socialist Realism: The Great Retreat in the Arts

• This term was coined in 1932. At the newly founded Union of Writers in 1934, Zhadnov proclaimed, 'Soviet literature must be able to show our heroes, must be able to glimpse our tomorrow'
• Preceding this, a decree of 1932 abolished all proletarian artistic organisations, such as the RAPP
• Going forward, avant-garde artists were shunned in society
• Artists like Malevich refused to give in to this, though
• E.g. one painting (torso with a yellow shirt) was marked as painted in 1913, but actually it was painted in 1932
• He was eventually ousted by the regime, and his work disappeared until 1988

Art

• From 1930 onwards Soviet paintings swarmed with tractors, threshing machines and combine harvesters
• Peasants at tables full of food
• Was at the height of the purges that Vera Mukhina's famous Industrial Worker and Kolkhoz Woman was sculpted
• This was a massive image of the Soviet people striding into a joyful future
• The content of pictures was more tightly controlled
• Artists were given quite detailed guidelines when commissioned to produce specific works on a given subject
• Almost no pictures of domestic and family scenes

Golomstock observes, 'to judge from art alone Soviet man passed his entire existence in the factories, on the fields of collective farms, at party meetings and demonstrations, or surrounded by the marble of the Moscow metro!'

Music

• Was to be joyous and positive
• Folk songs, dances and 'songs in praise of the happy life of onward-marching Soviet Man' were the acceptable sounds of music
• Shostakovich's new opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, was attended by Stalin
• He did not like it

• Symphonies should be in a major key
• Was criticised in Pravda in an article titled 'Muddle instead of Music'
• It was banned. After that, Shostakovich never composed another opera

Literature

• RAPP was criticised as being too narrow and was abolished by 1932
• Replaced by the Union of Soviet Writers
• Included non-proletarian and non-party writers
• Had Maxim Gorky (a non-Party member) as the first Head
• The degree of state control was just as strong
• Socialist Realism is proclaimed to be the basic principle of literary creation
• Great writers like Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova practised 'the genre of silence'
• They gave up serious writing altogether
• For Stalin, writers were the 'engineers of human souls' and Socialist Realism was the guiding principle'
• Simple, direct language and cheap mass editions were demanded
• To make books accessible to a newly literate readership

Nothing subtle about the titles:

• Cement
• The Driving Axle
• How the Steel was Tempered
• The Great Conveyor Belt

"Explore the classic works that shaped generations: Cement, The Driving Axle, How the Steel was Tempered, and The Great Conveyor Belt. Dive into stories of resilience, industry, and the human spirit forged in the fires of transformation."

Anna Akhmatova

• 1888 to 1966
• Considered to be one of the greatest poets in Russian history
• Much of her work was banned in the 1920s
• Was too bourgeois and individualistic
• Harassed by the regime nearly all the rest of her life
• Family and friends of the victims of the purges
• Pasternak was a friend
• Was determined to record the nightmare of Stalinism

Boris Pasternak

• 1890 to 1960
• Published the first collection of poems inspired by the avant-garde in 1913
• Was established as a leading lyrical poet by 1917
• Initially, they welcomed the revolution
• Soon became disillusioned by the excesses of the Bolsheviks
• Was criticised as bourgeois for writing about the individual, love and nature
• Would not compromise with Socialist Realism in the 1930s
• Earned his living as a translator of classics
• Included Georgian works that Stalin liked
• There is a story that Stalin crossed his name off an arrest list in the purges, saying, "Don't touch this cloud dweller"

Maxim Gorky

• 1868 to 1936
• Left Russia in 1921
• Become increasingly disillusioned, writing in 1918 'It is clear Russia is heading for a new and even more savage autocracy'
• Stalin was anxious for Gorky to return
• He wanted to demonstrate that the most celebrated living Russian author was an admirer of the system
• Gorky returned permanently in 1931
• He was made the first president of the Union of Soviet Writers
• Flattered on a grand scale
• By the end of his life, he regarded himself as under house arrest
• He died rather conveniently for Stalin two months before the first show trial
• Gorky was bound to have openly criticised
• At Yagoda's (head of the NKVD in 1936) show trial in 1938 he confessed to ordering Gorky's death

The Great Terror/The Great Purge

• Following the pressure, successes, failures and stresses of collectivisation and industrialisation, Stalin was pushed ever closer to vindictiveness and suspicion
• His wife committed suicide in 1932
• This was a 'great betrayal' in his eyes
• He enacted the Great Terror
• Many historians argue that this worsened his paranoia

How was the Great Terror enacted?

• The most ardent criticism of Stalin's leadership came in 1932
• This was in the form of the Ryutin Platform – a 200-page comprehensive criticism of Stalin's entire leadership to date
• Ryutin was previously expelled from the party due to his 'rightist' beliefs
• Despite this, his critique was still widely circulated within the party
• Stalin's only support, however, came from Molotov and Kaganovich
• 4/7 disagreed with him
• Ryutin was imprisoned for five years instead
• In 1937, Ryutin was shot dead on Stalin's orders
• His wife, children, and any blood relatives were also killed
• By this point, Stalin's power was nearly total

17th Party Congress 1934 – 'congress of victors'?

• The party felt that, following rapid collectivisation and industrialisation, the brakes needed to be applied
• They saw the policies as a success
• Undercurrents of disenchantment with Stalin through the congress
• It is believed that Stalin lost to Kirov in votes for the Central Committee
• Mysteriously, Kirov was murdered
• Stalin's role was hard to prove …
• He blamed Kamanev and Zinoviev for it
• 843 associates of Zinoviev were arrested by the beginning of 1935
• NKVD participated in a purge of 250,000 party members
• Up to 1937, the main target of the terror was party members who had been involved in/suspected of criticism of Stalin at one time or another
• The main punishment was imprisonment or being sent to a labour camp
• The majority of people were imprisoned in the early stages of the Great Terror

Role of the international situation

• Fear of impending war, following the steady rise of Adolf Hitler, engulfed the party
• War was a perfect mechanism through which to overthrow a regime
• Stalin was increasingly concerned about any 'fifth elements' (enemy sympathisers) in Russia
• His paranoia increased
• After 1937, the main victims of the terror were peasants, petty criminals and anybody dubbed 'anti-Soviet'
• Fear of mass social unrest due to the upheaval of collectivisation and industrialisation

Stages of the Great Terror

The Officers Corp

• June 1937: Tukhachevsky ('Red Napoleon' and hero of the civil war), the moderniser of the Red Army and Deputy Commissar of Defence, was brutally tortured and shot after a secret trial
• Seven of the country's senior military commanders were arrested and accused of treachery, along with Tukhachevsky

Of the 767 members of the High Command:

• 512 were shot
• 29 died in prison
• 3 committed suicide
• 59 remained in prison
• 10,000 army and navy officers were arrested
• Another 23,000 were dismissed
• The number killed, however, was modest
• The Nazi intelligence service provided disinformation and may have hoodwinked Soviet intelligence and Stalin into believing they were plotting
• The regime acted as if it believed there was a plot
• Second half of 1937: policy was to destroy anyone suspected of present or potential disloyalty

Mass arrests of loyal party bureaucrats

• Summer of 1937: saw the start of the denunciation of loyal Stalinists (highest officials below Politburo level and the thousands associated with them)
• They had been the mainstay of Stalin's majority in the Central Committee
• These officials were simply swept away
• Leadership in every organisation, like planning agencies, trade unions, Komsomol and education, was hit
• Set in motion local denunciations, too
• Stalin's letters to Molotov and Kaganovich are full of attacks on bureaucracy and ministries connected with the economy
• Stalin's solution to economic problems was to purge
• Provided scapegoats for the crises in the economy and the difficulties faced by ordinary people
• Blame was placed firmly on the Party leadership at the republican, regional and district levels
• Economic managers were also blamed
• Swept away bureaucratic families and clans that Stalin distrusted
• New appointments were young Stalinists
• They owed their education and their lives to Stalin

Mass arrests and show trials

• Used to implement fear and control
• Propaganda
• Minimal, if any evidence was used
• It was all slander against the accused, whether the crime was committed or not
• The first show trial showed how no one could speak out about Stalin, removing opposition
• Second trial scapegoated and placed blame on other officials in the government
• Showed no one could be trusted
• The third show trial highlighted how Stalin was the only hope of Russia
• Stalin wasn't actively involved in the trials, but he was 'spying' on them