Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (3 page)

J. A. Getty, and V. Naumov,
The Road to the Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the
Bolsheviks (New Haven, 1996); Y. Gorlizki and O. Khlevniuk,
Cold Peace: Stalin and the
Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford, 2004); D. Priestland,
Stalin and the Politics of
Mobilisation:
Ideas, Power, and Terror in Inter-war Russia
(Oxford, 2007).

^{2
J. von Geldern and R. Stites, ed.,}
Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs,

Movies, Plays and Folklore, 1917–1953
(Bloomington, 1995); J. Brooks,
Thank You,
Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, 2000);

E. Pollock,
Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars
(Princeton, 2008); N. Krementsov,
Stalinist
Science (Princeton, 1997).

^{3
Y. Slezkine, ‘The Soviet Union as a Communal Appartment, or How a Socialist}
State Promoted Ethnic Particularism’, in S. Fitzpatrick, ed.,
Stalinism New Directions
(London, 2000), 313–47; T. Martin,
The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and
Nationalism in the Soviet Union 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001); G. Hosking,
Rulers and
Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union (London, 2006); S. Yekelchyk,
Stalin’s Empire
of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (Toronto, 2004); D. Brandenberger,
National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation

of Modern Russian National Identity 1931–56
(Cambridge Mass., 2002).

Introduction
xix

The mechanisms by which the Soviet government ruled in the Stalin era

Nationality policy has also played a central role in the second question
that has dominated post-1991 historiography: the mechanisms by which the Soviet state ruled in the Stalin era. Hirsch’s work has led the way, arguing that Bolshevik nationalities policy was a new form of imperial- ism: it provided a mechanism for counting, controlling, and sponsoring the development of certain groups.
^{4
This approach is typical of a wider}
tendency to stress the similarities between the technologies of govern- ment employed by both the USSR and other ‘modern’ states in this era. Under the influence of Bauman, Mazower, and Foucault, Soviet histor- ians have argued that state surveillance, mass communication, and ‘weeding’ of the citizenry were not unique to the USSR; instead they were common features of a wider Enlightenment project in the early twentieth century.
^{5
Weiner has been one of the most prominent propo-}
nents of this model in the Stalin era, arguing that Stalin-era state violence was typical of the wider Enlightenment aspiration to remake society along rational lines.
^{6
That ‘impulse to remake and improve society’ has}
also been identified in campaigns for sobriety, literacy, and cleanliness.
^{7
This approach has not sought to justify but rather to contextualize the}
excesses of the Stalin era. However, its weakness lies in its incapacity to explain what was distinctive about the Bolshevik state. As Engelstein argues, it is unsatisfactory to describe the Purges as simply mainstream state violence.
^{8
At the very least, the Stalin-era government fashioned its}
citizenry with more vigour and more brutality than most. Whether

^{4
F. Hirsch,}
Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet
Union (Ithaca, 2005).

^{5
Z. Bauman,}
Modernity and The Holocaust
(Ithaca, 1989); M. Mazower
, Dark Conti-

nent: Europe’s Twentieth Century
(London, 1998); M. Foucault, trans., A. Sheridan,
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
(London, 1977); D. Beer,
Renovating Russia:
The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880–1930 (Ithaca, 2008); Paul Hagenloh, ‘“Socially Harmful Elements” and the Great Terror’, in S. Fitzpatrick,
Stalin-
ism, 286–308; P. Holquist, ‘“Information is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work”: Bolshevik Surveillance in Its Pan-European Context’,
The Journal of Modern History
, 69.3 (1997), 415–50.

^{6
A. Weiner, ed.,}
Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth Century Population

Management in Perspective
(Stanford, 2003).

^{7
D. Hoffman,}
Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity. 1917–1941

(Ithaca, 2001).

^{8
L. Engelstein, ‘Weapon of the Weak (Apologies to James Scott): Violence in Russian}
History’,
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History
, 4.3 (2003), 679–93.

xx
Being Soviet

Marxist-Leninism, Russian statism, or some other factor was the key,
any account of the Stalin era must reveal what was distinctive as well as what was ‘normal’ about Soviet strategies of government in this period. After all, the Purges were not regarded as ‘normal’ in much of Europe in the late 1930s. This book makes little contribution to that wider debate. However, it is worth noting that the field is still awaiting a clear discussion of how the Bolshevik project deviated from, as well as reflected, the wider patterns of early twentieth-century government.

Ordinary people in the Stalin era: how did they relate to Soviet power?

The lives and experiences of ordinary people have been at the centre of
Soviet historiography in recent years. Fitzpatrick’s work,
Everyday Sta-
linism, led the field with its wealth of detail about bribery, surveillance, shopping, and elections.
^{9
Other authors have drawn attention to the}
importance of patronage, and examined the sociology of trade, identity fraud, and public celebrations under Stalin.
^{10
This literature on ‘every-}
day life’ has greatly expanded our understanding of the experiences of

ordinary citizens in the USSR. However, it has also been characterized
by a largely descriptive, rather than theoretical, approach.
Everyday Stalinism
contains a wealth of data but lacks an organizing idea to hold it together. It has added colour to our picture of the Stalin era without providing a clear framework to explain how Soviet citizens related to Soviet power.
¹¹

The theoretical caution that has typified the ‘everyday life’ literature
has not affected some of the other leading authors in the post-1991 era. The debate about the relationship between Soviet citizens and Soviet power has been dominated by two distinct paradigms. The first of these, the resistance paradigm, emerged largely in response to the model of the

^{9
S. Fitzpatrick,}
Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet
Russia in the 1930s (Oxford, 1999).

^{10
J. Hessler,}
A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and

Consumption, 1917–1953
(Princeton, 2004); G. Alexopoulos, ‘Portrait of a Con Artist as a Soviet Man’,
Slavic Review
, 57.4 (1998), 774–90; O. Figes,
The Whisperers: Private
Life in Stalin’s Russia (London, 2007); K. Petrone,
Life Has Become More Joyous Com-
rades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington, 2000).

^{11
See: C. Kelly, ‘Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Chronicles of the Quotidian}

in Russia and the Soviet Union’,
Kritika
, 3.4 (2002), 631–51.

Introduction
xxi

USSR as a totalitarian society that had been so prominent during the
Cold War. Those who wrote within the totalitarian tradition argued that Stalin-era Soviet society exhibited certain key characteristics in common with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, such as state-sponsored violence and mass propaganda. They also tended to argue that Soviet citizens were alienated from the regime but powerless to resist its coercive power.
^{12
Authors such as Viola have argued that Soviet citizens}
could, and did, resist the state. Viola draws on the anthropological methodology of Scott and others to describe how Soviet peasants deployed the ‘weapons of the weak’ during collectivization.
^13
Unable
to defeat the state in a physical confrontation, they resisted Soviet power by spreading apocalyptic rumours comparing Soviet power to the Antichrist.
¹⁴

The literature on resistance has made a significant contribution to our
understanding of life under Stalin. In particular, it has undermined the notion that Stalin-era citizens were brutalized into passivity by the violence of Soviet power. However, the weakness of the resistance literature, has been its tendency to use the term in order to describe such a wide range of behaviour that ‘resistance’ is in danger of losing meaning. Viola’s recent collection of essays includes homosexuality, wearing traditional Muslim clothing, illegal food trading, and political uprisings, all together under the rubric of resistance.
^{15
As a consequence}
it does not distinguish between active and passive resistance, nor does it recognize the difference between resistance directed against factory managers, particular government policies, or the Bolshevik state. As David-Fox suggests, once our definition of resistance has ‘ . . . expanded to include “passive” resistance, the boundaries can never be ascertained, why not sidestep the mounting number of pitfalls and find another framework?’
¹⁶

^{12
H. Arendt,}
The Origins of Totalitarianism
, 2nd edn (New York, 1958). Perhaps the most compelling image of ‘totalitarian’ society came in Orwell’s
1984
. G. Orwell,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(London, 1949).

^{13
L. Viola,}
Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivisation and the Culture of Peasant

Resistance
(Oxford, 1996); J. Scott,
Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden
Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), 160–72.

^14
Viola,
Peasant Rebels,
60–1. See also: S. Davies,
Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia:
Terror Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–41 (Cambridge, 1997).

^{15
L. Viola, ed.,}
Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the
1930s (Ithaca, 2002).

^{16
M. David-Fox, ‘Whiter Resistance?’,}
Kritika
, 1.1 (2000), 163.

xxii
Being Soviet

Equally importantly, this broad definition of resistance does not
recognize a distinction between behaviour that was directed against Soviet power itself and actions that were simply everyday strategies for ‘getting by’. Within this approach, whatever the state regarded as resis- tance was resistance. However, this leaves both Soviet citizens and the historian unable to think or act outside of the categories of the regime.
^{17
Indeed within this definition, all Soviet citizens were resistors. As the}
historians of everyday life have shown, all Soviet citizens engaged in rumouring, bribery, joking, food speculation, and forgery. Stalin himself told ‘subversive’ political jokes about the Purges.
^{18
Resistance will be one}
of the recurrent themes of this book. However, it will be used in a much more tightly defined sense as ‘action or speech that was consciously intended to undermine the practices or institutions of Soviet power’. This approach takes into account the possible meanings that Soviet citizens, as well as the Soviet state, invested in their words and actions. The coming chapters will repeatedly challenge the assumption of official sources, that certain types of behaviour constituted resistance.