Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (11 page)

1941–45: the war

Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the war. They challenge the idea that
wartime Soviet patriotism was simply a ‘decked out’ version of Russian nationalism.
^{137
Both ethnicity and Sovietness mattered in this period.}
Indeed there was a limit to how hard the Russian ‘nationalist drum’ could be beaten, because of the risk of offending the other peoples of the USSR.
^{138
Chapter 2 addresses Official Soviet Identity in diplomatic}

^{137
S. K. Carter,}
Russian Nationalism: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
(London, 1991)
,
52; E. Iarskaia-Smirnova and P. Romanov,
‘
At the Margins of Memory: Provincial Identity and Soviet Power in Oral Histories, 1940–53’, in D. Raleigh, ed.,
Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953
(Pittsburgh, 2001), 309–14; Hosking,
Russia and the Russians
, 475. Lieven, and to some extent Weiner, take a slightly different view—that they were unconsciously overlapping identities: D. Lieven,
Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals
(London, 2000) 318; A. Weiner,
Making Sense of War:
The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2001)
,
337.

^{138
J. L. H. Keep,}
A History of the Soviet Union 1945–1991: Last of the Empires

(Oxford, 1995), 26.

Introduction
xlix

terms between the German invasion in June 1941 and the
German capitulation in May 1945. Rather than examine the widely discussed image of Nazi Germany during the war, it fills a gap within the current historiography by focusing on the Soviet relationship with Britain and America.
^{139
Relations with America and Britain did}
not conform to the simple binary of good and evil that shaped Soviet interaction with the hated Germans.
^{140
The central argument}
of Chapter 2 is that many Soviet citizens experienced the Alliance relationship as an ongoing act of betrayal. In particular, the Allied failure to open the Second Front spawned a large number of rumours about Anglo-American perfidy in other areas.

Chapter 3 examines Official Soviet Identity and the behaviour of
Soviet citizens in relation to Anglo-American civilization during the war. The popular experience of Lend Lease and the interactions of Soviet citizens with allied servicemen in wartime Arkhangel’sk form the heart of the chapter. By focusing on the Arctic Convoys, rather than the interac- tion between Red Army troops and allied soldiers in Germany, it sheds light on another understudied aspect of the wartime experience.
¹⁴¹

Together, these two chapters offer a unique window into the beha-
viour of Soviet citizens on the Home Front. There has been remarkably little work produced in recent years on the Soviet Home Front during the war.
^{142
The strategic and military history of the war has been}
thoroughly described, as have the battlefield motivations of Soviet soldiers and the experience of occupation.
^{143
However, no major}

^{139
See for example: N. M. Naimark,}
The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet
Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge Mass., 1995); K. K. C. Berkhoff,
Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule
(Cambridge Mass., 2004).

^{140
Relationships on the ground with German troops and civilians did not always}
conform to these simplistic paradigms. See: Merridale,
Ivan’s War
, 301–2; A. Dallin,

Odessa, 1941–1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory under Foreign Rule
(Oxford, 1998), 91–3. Nonetheless, within official rhetoric at least, however, the Germans remained an almost unequivocably evil force.

^{141
M. Scott and S. Krasilshchik, eds.,}
Yanks Meet Reds: Recollections of US and Soviet

Vets from the Linkup in World War II
(Santa Barbara,1988). On Soviet fraternization with German civilians in post-war Germany see: Naimark,
The Russians in Germany
.

^{142
The paucity of literature has been noted in various places: A. Weiner, ‘Saving}
Private Ivan: From What, Why, and How?’
Kritika
, 1.2 (2000), 305–36; R. D. Mark- wick, ‘Stalinism at War’,
Kritika
, 3.3 (2002), 509–10.

^{143
A. Beevor,}
Stalingrad
(London, 1998); I. Kershaw and M. Lewin, eds.,
Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison
(Cambridge, 1997); R. Overy,
Russia’s War
(London, 1997); D. R. Stone,
A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the
War in Chechnya (London, 2006), 191–217; Merridale,
Ivan’s War
; B. Bonwetsch and

R. Thurston, eds.,
The People’s War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union

l
Being Soviet

work in English has examined the Home Front as a whole since Barber
and Harrison’s book in 1991, which offers a valuable but limited introduction.
^{144
In many ways, the most significant text remains the}
Sunday Times
correspondent, Alexander Werth’s, 1964 memoir of his experiences in the wartime USSR.
¹⁴⁵

What has been published in recent years about the Soviet Home
Front has tended to argue that the war was a time of increased personal freedom.
^{146
The Soviet police ‘liberalized’ their approach to illegal food}
trading, the mass media became increasingly personalized, and anti- religious campaigns were tempered.
^{147
However, the literature on this}
‘relaxation’ is still confined to fairly narrow fields. Furthermore, it is rarely connected with the literature that describes the struggle to carve out ‘private’ space after 1945.
^{148
This book offers one of the first}
attempts to examine the continuities between wartime ‘relaxation’ and post-war life. One of its core arguments is that the ‘tactics of the habitat’ were highly flexible and could be adapted to suit the conditions of the 1930s, wartime ‘relaxation’, or the more stringent post-war years.

1945–53: the post-war years

Chapters 4 and 5 address the post-war years. Historians of the post-war
Stalin-era have traditionally focused their attention on foreign policy and high politics.
^{149
For some time, the field of domestic politics was}

(Chicago, 2000); J. A. Armstrong,
Soviet Partisans in World War II
(Madison, 1964); Berkhoff,
Harvest of Despair
; A. Dallin,
German Rule in Russia 1941–1945: A Study of
Occupation Policies, 2nd edn (London, 1981).

^{144
J. Barber and M. Harrison,}
The Soviet Home Front, 1941–1945: A Social and
Economic History of the USSR in World War II (London, 1991).

^{145
A. Werth,}
Russia At War 1941–45
(London, 1964). This book draws on some of

Werth’s material but uses a far wider body of sources than were available to Werth at the
time.

^{146
B. Bonwetsch, ‘War as a “Breathing Space”: Soviet Intellectuals and the “Great}
Patiotic War”’, in Thurston and Bonwetsch,
The People’s War
, 137–53.

^147
Hessler,
A Social History of Soviet Trade
, 271–5; Stites,
Culture and Entertain-

ment,
4–5; S. Merritt Miner,
Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance
Politics, 1941–1945 (London, 2003).

^{148
J. Fu¨rst, ‘The Importance of Being Stylish: Youth, Culture and Identity in Late}
Stalinism,’ in Fu¨rst, ed.,
Late Stalinist Russia
, 225; Zubkova,
Russia After the War
, 27–8.

^{149
T. Dunmore,}
Soviet Politics, 1945–53
(London, 1984); W. O. McCagg,
Stalin Embattled: 1943–48
(Michigan, 1978); W. G. Hahn,
Postwar Soviet Politics: The Fall of
Zhdanov and the Defeat of Moderation 1946–1953 (London, 1982). For a summary of

recent research see: Fu¨rst, ed.,
Late Stalinist Russia
. Recent monographs include:

Introduction
li

dominated by Vera Dunham’s description of a ‘Big Deal’ between the
Soviet leadership and the middle classes to shore up support after the war.
^{150
Dunham’s work reinforced the general conception that this}
was the era of ‘High Stalinism’ and that reconstruction was simply a matter of reanimating the tired models of the pre-war era.
^151
However,
Zubkova and others have begun to offer a different interpretation of these years as an era defined by stolen hopes and disappointed expecta- tions. They argue that the populace did not accept the reversion to statism but struggled, with varying degrees of success, to achieve some degree of autonomy and individual freedom.
^{152
Weiner has provided a}
different and distinctive viewpoint, arguing that the years 1945–53 were driven by an ‘undiminished impetus for revolutionary transformation’ rather than stultification.
¹⁵³

Chapters 4 and 5 argue that in the arena of Official Soviet Identity, at
least, there was no reversion to the pre-war era. Chapter 4 describes the evolution of Official Soviet Identity in diplomatic terms from war’s end to Stalin’s death. It argues that the Soviet regime continued to posture itself as an ally of the other, progressive Great Powers until the summer of 1947. By the summer of 1948, however, the USSR had realigned itself as a patron of the oppressed peoples and a defender of peace. Asia, and China in particular, assumed a new prominence within Soviet self- understanding in the last years of Stalin’s life. This new form of Soviet identity found its clearest expression in the ‘Struggle for Peace’. I argue

N. Ganson,
The Soviet Famine of 1946–7 in Global and Historical Perspective
(Basing- stoke, 2009); M Edele,
Soviet Veterans of World War II
(Oxford, 2009). See also J. Fu¨rst,
Stalin’s Last Generation; Post-war Soviet Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism
(Oxford, 2010). For some notable dissertations, see Magnusdottir, ‘Keeping up Appear- ances’, J. Smith, ‘The Soviet Farm Complex: Industrial Agriculture in a Socialist Context, 1945–65’, PhD Diss. MIT (2006).

^150
Dunham,
In Stalin’s Time
. See also: J. E. Duskin,
Stalinist Reconstruction and the
Confirmation of a New Elite, 1945–53 (Basingstoke, 2001).

^{151
S. Fitzpatrick, ‘Postwar Soviet Society: The “Return to Normalcy” 1945–53’, in}

S. J. Linz, ed.,
The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union
(Totowa, 1985), 129–56;

K. Boterbloem,
Life and Death Under Stalin: Kalinin Province 1945–1953
(Montreal, 1999); Brooks,
Thank You, Comrade Stalin!