Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (2 page)

Official Soviet Identity and the ‘tactics of the habitat’ xxv

Mentalit´e and sources xliii

^{Chronology xlvii}

1. BEING SOVIET IN THE PRE-WAR ERA
   

1. The Liberator State? The Crisis of Official Soviet Identity
   

during the Pact Period 1939–1941 3

Official Soviet Identity in the Pact Period 5

The diplomatic identity of the USSR 7

The identity of the USSR as a Civilization 16

Being Soviet in the ‘Pact Period’: ordinary citizens and the

‘little tactics of the habitat’ 1939–1941 20

Conclusion 41

1. BEING SOVIET DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
   

1. Perfidious Allies? Britain, America, and Official
   

Soviet Diplomatic Identity 1941–1945 45

Official Soviet Identity and the image of the

Allies 1941–1945 47

The Grand Alliance in the Soviet collective imagination 61

Soviet wartime mentalit´e: the allied states and the rumour network 78

1. ^{Patrons or Predators? Foreign Servicemen, Technology,}
   

and Art within Official Soviet Cultural Identity, 1941–1945 83

Official Soviet Identity and Western science and culture 84

Lend Lease: gift or payment? 91

xii
Contents

Lend Lease within the Soviet wartime imagination 95

Anglo-American servicemen in the wartime USSR 100

Soviet wartime mentalit´e : the glamour of the

^{outside world 121}

Conclusion 123

1. BEING SOVIET IN THE POST- WAR YEARS
   

1. Panics, Peace, and Pacifism: Official Soviet Diplomatic
   

Identity in the late-Stalin Years 1945–1953 127

From allies to enemies: Britain and America,

May 1945–September 1947 129

A peace-loving superpower: Soviet diplomatic identity

in the early Cold War: 1947–1953 141

‘Struggling for peace’ or pacifism? Popular participation

in the peace campaigns 149

Soviet mentalit´e during the early Cold War: the outside

^{world as a threatening place 160}

Conclusion 165

1. Subversive Styles? Official Soviet Cultural Identity
   

in the late-Stalin Years 1945–1953 167

The Cold War attack on capitalist life 169

Jazz, style, and science: interacting with post-war

Soviet identity as a civilization 181

Soviet mentalit´e during the early Cold War: foreign chic

^{and foreign quality 205}

Conclusion 207

Conclusion 209

Appendix: Interview Technique and Questions Used 213

Bibliography 217

Index 237

Illustrations

1. Churchill and Roosevelt literally look up to Stalin.
   Ogon¨ek
   

12.1943: 49, p. 1.
57

1. N. Denisov and N. Vatolina 1941. ‘Don’t Chatter!’ This
   famous wartime poster warns that it is a short distance from
   

chatter and gossip to treason.
63

1. ‘European Cooperation’. I. Semenov (1952). Western
   ‘collaboration’ masks ‘deception in your thoughts and a knife
   

behind your back!’
143

1. ‘The People of the world don’t want a repeat of the calamity
   of war.’ I. Gaif (1949). A brave worker rebuffs Uncle Sam’s attempts to bribe him with eggs in order to involve him in a conflict. In the background French workers demonstrate on
   

behalf of the USSR.
148

1. ‘The way of talent in capitalist countries’; ‘Show talent the
   way in the socialist countries.’ V. Koretskii, 1948. Struggling artists in the West enjoy none of the opportunities of those in
   

the socialist world.
171

1. ‘Chatter Aids the Enemy!’ V. Koretskii, (1954). Capitalist
   enemies lurked malevolently inside the USSR during the early
   

Cold War years.
175

List of Abbreviations

ARCHIVAL ABBREVIATIONS

GARF Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii
GAAO Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Arkhangel’skoi Oblasti

GAOPDiFAO Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Obshchestvenno-Politicheskikh
Dvizhenii i Formirovanii Arkhangel’skoi Oblasti

GAARK Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv v Avtonomnoi Respublike Krym
RGASPI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv

Sotsial’no-Politihcheskoi Istorii

RGANI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii
RGALI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva TsDAHOU Tsentral’nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Hromads’kykh Ob’iednan’

Ukrainy

SOURCE ABBREVIATIONS

A system of abbreviations is used throughout the book to specify what kind of
source is being cited.

Proc. Case files of the State Prosecution Organ of the Soviet Union
Let. Letters sent by Soviet citizens to political leaders in Moscow Sv. Reports on the mood of the Soviet population (
svodki
)

Inf. Information reports created by party and state organizations

HIP Interview transcripts collected during the Harvard
Interview Project on the Soviet Social System

Mem. Memoirs and diaries of individuals who lived in, or visited,
the USSR in this period

Int. Interviews conducted between November 2003 and
September 2005 in the former USSR

TERMINOLOGY

Agitprop Agitation and Propaganda

FZO Fabrichno-Zavodskoe Obuchenie (Higher Technical School)
MGB Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (Ministry of

State Security)

List of Abbreviations
xv

MOPR Mezhdunarodnoe Obshchestvo Pomoshchi

Revoliutsioneram (International Organization for Aid to
Revolutionaries)

NKID Narodnyi Kommisariat Inostrannykh Del (Foreign Ministry)
NKVD Narodnyi Kommisariat Vnutrennykh Del (Interior Ministry) Obkom Oblastnyi Komitet (
Oblast’
Committee)

Raikom Raionnyi Komitet (
Raion
Committee)

TASS Telegrafnoe Agenstvo Sovetskogo Soiuza (Telegraph
Agency of the Soviet Union)

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Introduction

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE STALIN ERA: WHERE HAVE WE GOT TO?

The collapse of the USSR in 1991 facilitated a double revolution in the
historiography of the Stalin years. First, historians gained access to a wealth of previously inaccessible archival material. Secondly, the Cold War driven debates about the relationship between Stalinism and Leninism and the ‘totalitarian’ nature of the era became less pressing. As a result, the last twenty years have been a disorderly and highly creative time within Soviet historiography. The literature concerning the Stalin era has crystallized in three key areas: the logic and language of the Soviet government in the Stalin era; the mechanisms by which the Soviet government ruled in the Stalin era; and the experiences of ordinary people in the Stalin era, in particular how they related to Soviet power.

This book contributes to two of those three key areas of discussion.
It describes the evolution of state-sponsored rhetoric concerning Soviet- ness (Official Soviet Identity) between the Nazi–Soviet Pact (1939), and Stalin’s death (1953), and also how ordinary citizens interacted with that language. In terms of the logic and language of the Soviet regime, it challenges the current historiographical emphasis on Russian national- ism at the expense of other identities: Soviet patriotism was an impor- tant feature of the landscape in this period. It also offers a new approach to the question of the relationship between Soviet citizens and Soviet power. Ordinary members of the Soviet population deployed a number of ‘tactics of the habitat’ (Kotkin) in order to negotiate their relationship with the state that ruled them. Their behaviour was characterized by a careful creativity that belied the twin poles of support and resistance.

The logic and language of Soviet government in the Stalin era

The debate concerning the logic and language of Soviet government
has largely focused on the pre-war 1930s. One aspect of that discussion has focused on the thinking and reasoning of the Soviet elites.

xviii
Being Soviet

The political thought of Josef Stalin and the nature of Soviet high
politics have been thoroughly re-evaluated since 1991.
^1
There
has also been a fresh attempt to take seriously the propaganda of the Stalin era. Recent work has moved beyond the narrow notion of propaganda as a mechanism for control, and paid more attention to the content of Soviet film, newsprint, literature, popular culture, and science policy.
²

The most widely discussed feature of the Soviet linguistic landscape
has been nationality policy. This flurry of interest in nationality policy reflects the, sometimes tacit, assumption that ultimately it was nation- alism that pulled the Soviet state apart under Gorbachev. Slezkine’s seminal article, describing the ‘chronic ethnophilia’ of the Stalin era, set the stage for others to follow.
^{3
Indeed nationalism has been so}
prominent in recent years that it has begun to eclipse class as the primary critical tool for evaluating the actions of the Soviet state. One of the key contributions of this book is to suggest that, whilst nationalist rhetoric was an important feature of the post-1939 land- scape, the government also invested great efforts in formulating and promoting a version of Sovietness that was supposed to operate over and above the national identities that distinguished Soviet citizens from one another.

^{1
R. Service,}
Stalin: A Biography
(London, 2004); E. van Ree,
The Political Thought of
Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London, 2002);