Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (16 page)

The Official Soviet Identity of the USSR as a benefactor bringing
freedom was constantly reaffirmed as the ex-capitalist residents of Finland, the Baltic, Bessarabia, and Bukovina were brought into the

Soviet family.
Ogon¨ek
dubbed the Red Army the ‘Great Liberator’ during the Finnish War.
^{82
The liberation narrative was most dramati-}
cally embodied in the government of the Finnish Democratic Republic,

headed by the Communist Kuusinen, that was established on the day
Soviet troops crossed into Finnish territory. This democratic govern- ment then called on the USSR to overthrow the oppressors in their country.
^{83
The fiction of the Terijoki government—so called because}
it was created at the Finnish border town of Terijoki—was quietly abandoned once the Red Army failed to overrun Finland. Despite this setback, the liberation narrative was run once again when the Baltic population were brought into the Soviet family in June 1940. Soviet citizenship brought economic, cultural, political, and constitutional liberation, and the local peoples played their role by expressing their warm thanks to the USSR.
^{84
The same motifs were deployed when}
Ogon¨ek
printed images of former Romanian citizens greeting the incoming Red Army with flowers in their hands and smiles on their faces a few weeks later.
^{85
The liberating power of the Soviet armed}
forces became a central feature of Official Soviet Identity in this period.

Capitalist science and culture in the Pact Period

This positivity about Soviet civilization went hand in hand with the
deepening of restrictions over access to, and use of, capitalist science and technology. Political tensions between the USSR and the Western powers had destroyed any hopes of renewed contact after the Purges. During the Pact Period, the isolation deepened Soviet institutions received 70 per cent fewer books from Britain, 75 per cent fewer from the USA, and 90 per cent fewer from France. German imports also fell

^{81
A. Resis, ed.,}
Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. Conversations with Felix
Chuev (Chicago, 1993), 13.

^82
Ogon¨ek
, 02.1940: 4, p. 1.

^83
Pravda
, 01.12.1939, pp. 1, 2, 5; 02.12.1939, p. 2.

^84
Pravda
, 05.08.1940, p. 2.
^85
Ogon¨ek
, 08.1940: 23, pp. 10–11.

18
Being Soviet

by 10 per cent.
^{86
However, despite the fact that they enjoyed limited}
personal contact with foreign science and its products, Soviet research- ers and ordinary citizens were still encouraged to admire certain advances made overseas.
Ogon¨ek
ran a regular feature on innovations in science and technology that covered progress made in Britain, Germany, France, and above all the USA. Automobiles and aeroplanes were particularly popular topics, but medical and chemical innovations were also detailed.
^87
Pravda
also occasionally ran similar stories, such as its October 1940 report on the forty-first automobile exhibition in New York that waxed lyrical about advances in comfort, window size, and chassis design.
⁸⁸

However, whenever the official press discussed foreign science in
detail, the emphasis was on competition. Government publications regularly stressed how Soviet scientists outperformed their overseas equivalents in areas such as wheat production or construction.
^89
As
Pravda
proclaimed in January 1941, ‘The Soviet Union stands at the head of the educated world dispensing law, science and art.’
^90
The

successes of Soviet science were sometimes presented as the continua-
tion of the great Russian historical tradition. Pre-Revolutionary heroes such as Lomonosov, who did not ‘grovel before western culture’ were hailed as the fathers of contemporary Soviet science.
^{91
However, the}
primary cause of the success of Soviet science was that it was Soviet. An October 1939 story about economizing on raw materials stressed there was much that could be learned from the Americans and British. However, it concluded by stating that Soviet scientists would not just match but surpass the West because of the superiority of the Bolshevik system.
^92
As
Pravda
’s editorial explained in March 1941, the Revolu- tion had liberated the talented people of the Soviet world in a manner that capitalism never could. It had ‘created completely different condi- tions for the development of science than in the capitalist world’.
^{93
Soviet scientists were also inspired by the knowledge that their results}
were used to serve the people, rather than the capitalist exploiters. Capitalist science was not entirely to be ignored, but Soviet scientists were to find their own domestic and superior Soviet road ahead.

^{86
RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 65, l. 61.}

^87
Ogon¨ek
, 01.1940: 2, p. 17; 08.1940: 24, p. 21.

^88
Pravda
, 20.10.1940, p. 5.

^89
Pravda
, 09.01.1940, p. 2; 31.01.1940, p. 3.

^90
Pravda
, 04.01.1941, p. 1.
^91
Pravda
, 15.04.1940, p. 4.

^92
Pravda
, 17.10.1939, p. 4.
^93
Pravda
, 15.03.1941, p. 1; 02.09.1940, p. 4.

The Liberator State? 1939–41
19

As with capitalist science, official receptivity to the cultural pro-
ducts of the Western world went even further into decline during the Pact Period. The shift in diplomatic relations with Germany had little impact on attitudes towards German music and art. Apart from Eisenstein’s famous staging of Wagner’s
Die Walku¨re
at the Bolshoi Theatre, National Socialist and German historical culture was held at arm’s length.
^{94
At the same time, the decline in relations with Britain,}
France, and America furthered the already negative trajectory of attitudes towards capitalist films and jazz music. A British visitor to the USSR in 1940 described Leonid Utesov as ‘Russia’s richest man and the king of Soviet jazz’. However, his continued public profile was a consequence of his willingness to adopt what Starr calls the ‘Slavophile’ position: Utesov adapted jazz music to Soviet conditions by toning down the swing in his performances. Others, such as Tsfasman, who took the ‘Westernizer’ approach and directly imported hotter styles were already on the defensive by 1939. International events confirmed his unorthodoxy.
^{95
Officially sanctioned ‘jazz’ per-}
sisted but only in the toned down and tame sounds of the State Jazz Orchestras. In August 1940
Ogon¨ek
gave a double page spread to the coming
Estrada
season, enquiring ‘What will Utesov delight us with this year?’ The article praised his comedic and musical abilities but made no mention of jazz.
^{96
The mass song, rather than jazz, cemented}
its position as the dominant form of popular music during the Pact Period. Several of the tunes that later achieved success during the war, such as
My Beloved
and
Little Blue Kerchief,
were first aired in these

years.
^{97
Their style varied from folksy to military, but they were never}

jazzy and therefore comfortably Soviet.

Cinema, like the mass song, continued to play a vital role within the
cultural life of the Soviet community. However, no new foreign films were aired the Soviet screen during the Pact Period. Soviet citizens were served up a diet of home-grown works, the most successful of which was the light-hearted production musical
Shining Path
.
^{98
The most explicit}

^{94
A. Weeks,}
Stalin’s Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939–1941
(Maryland, 2002).

^95
Starr,
Red and Hot
, 132.

^96
Ogon¨ek
, 08.1940: 23, pp. 20–1.

^{97
R. Stites,}
Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900

(Cambridge, 1992), 76–7.

^{98
von Geldern and Stites,}
Mass Culture in Soviet Russia
, 327–8.

20
Being Soviet

examination of Soviet cultural identity was provided by Iudin’s
Four Hearts
, produced in 1941. The film centres around two sisters: Galina who is serious, studious, and dresses cautiously; and Shura who is relaxed, frivolous, and dresses in a more casual manner. Both girls fall in love with a Red Army soldier who is the exact opposite of themselves
in terms of taste and style. The film’s message is that both relaxed and formal styles are acceptable forms of Sovietness: both girls can be heroines. However, their Moscow landlady provides a counter-point for what is not allowed. Her affected manner and elaborate clothing provided ‘a clear parody of bourgeois “high fashion”’ and stood in stark contrast to the simplicity of the heroines.
^{99
Soviet citizens could be an}
individual and have good taste without becoming intoxicated with capitalist, bourgeois luxury. The film was not completed at the outbreak of war and, being judged not serious enough, was not released until 1944. However, it presented a perfect distillation of what could and could not be Soviet in the Pact Period. Capitalist culture, like capitalist science, was an alien entity within Soviet civilization. The citizens of the USSR were to find entertainment and stimulation from the home- grown products of Bolshevik life, rather than looking beyond their borders for inspiration.

BEING SOVIET IN THE ‘PACT PERIOD’: ORDINARY CITIZENS AND THE ‘ LITTLE TACTICS OF THE

HABITAT’ 1939–41

Engaging with the diplomatic identity of the USSR

The historiography of the Stalin period has emphasized the dichotomy
between believing or disbelieving the contents of the official press and supporting or resisting the Soviet state. However, the manner in which ordinary people engaged with Official Soviet Identity during the Pact Period was far more complex than this model suggests. Soviet citizens deployed all the ‘tactics of the habitat’ in relation to the narratives of the official press. They reappropriated Official Soviet Identity in order to further their own interests; avoided the implications of the harsh labour

^{99
E. Widdis, ‘Dressing the Part: Clothing Otherness in Soviet Cinema before 1953’,}
in Norris and Torlone,
Insiders and Outsiders
, 58–60.

The Liberator State? 1939–41
21