Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (4 page)

Historians of resistance have come under attack from scholars who
write about Stalin-era life from within a very different, ‘discursive’ para- digm. Authors such as Hellbeck and Halfin have argued that the language of the Soviet regime penetrated and dominated all areas of life in the USSR. Soviet citizens’ thinking, behaviour, and identities were entirely shaped by the official discourse of the Soviet state.
^{19
Even those who}
sought to criticize the government were forced to do so within the language of the official press itself. Those authors who write within this ‘discursive’ paradigm argue that the historiography of resistance is founded on a misunderstanding of speech in the USSR. In a terse exchange with Davies, Hellbeck argued that there was no distinction between public and private speech in the USSR: both were dominated by the discourse and categories of the Soviet state.
^{20
First and foremost,}
Soviet citizens were agents of the language that ruled them. These authors

^{17
For a critique of judging resistance purely on the basis of what the state considers it}
to be, see: C. Koonz, ‘Choice and Courage’, in D. C. Large, ed.,
Contending With Hitler:
Varieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1991).

^{18
B. Lewis,}
Hammer And Tickle: A History Of Communism Told Through Communist

Jokes
(London, 2008), 59.

^{19
J. Hellbeck,}
Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin
(Cam- bridge Mass., 2006); I. Halfin,
Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial
(Cambridge Mass., 2003).

^{20
J. Hellbeck and S. Davies, ‘Letters to the Editor’,}
Kritika
, 1.3 (2000), 437–40.

Introduction
xxiii

differ from the totalitarian model in their emphasis on the discursive, rather
than coercive, power of the Stalin-era state. Nonetheless the implications of their argument are very similar, that the official propaganda machine monopolized the thinking and behaviour of Soviet citizens.

The literature that has emerged from this ‘discursive’ paradigm has
provoked a fresh awareness of the power of official propaganda. Hellbeck’s diarists clearly struggled to articulate themselves in any other terms. However, it has also been demonstrated to be empirically wrong. Historians of resistance have shown that some Soviet citizens, such as Viola’s apocalyptic rumourers,
did
find autonomous languages of protest, outside the rhetoric of the regime. The ‘discursive’ model also fails to recognize the gap between discourse and reality that was one of the defining aspects of Soviet society.
^{21
The Soviet system, despite its}
aspirations, was not able to remake all its citizens at will. Furthermore, authors such as Hellbeck and Halfin have tended to prioritize autobio- graphical sources, such as diaries, at the expense of all others: ‘I am not sure whether we will attain a comprehensive understanding of Stalinist subjectivities merely by comparing as wide a variety of sources as possible’ (Hellbeck).
^{22
This hierarchy of credibility in regard to sources}
assumes that ‘authentic’ Soviet citizens can be found only in their diaries. In reality, the citizens of the USSR have left no pure deposit of their thoughts, feelings, and subjectivities. If we desire to hear their voices we must critically listen for them in as many different contexts as they can be heard.
²³

The weakness of this debate between the resistance and discursive
paradigms is that it tends to describe Soviet citizens in binary terms: they were either supporters or resistors of Bolshevik power.
^24
This
dichotomy between internalization and rejection is a product, to some extent, of the Soviet archival sources themselves. They tend to categorize all behaviour in terms of pro- or anti-revolutionary behaviour and consciousness. Much of the recent literature in this field has also been heavily influenced by Foucault’s emphasis on competition between rival

^{21
M. Griesse, ‘Soviet Subjectivities Discourse, Self-Criticism, Imposture’,}
Kritika
, 9.3 (2008), 619–20.

^{22
Hellbeck and Davies, ‘Letters to the Editor’, 440.}

^{23
For an overview of the sources I will employ in this book see later in the}
Introduction.

^{24
For a conceptualization of the Stalin era in these terms, see: T. Vihavainen, ed.,}

Sovetskaia vlast’—narodnaia vlast’? Ocherki istorii narodnogo vospriiatiia sovetskoi vlasti v
SSSR (St Petersburg, 2003).

xxiv
Being Soviet

discourses.
^{25
The struggle for the means of production has been sup-}
planted by the struggle between rival forms of language. As with a narrowly Marxist methodology, this approach has obscured as much as it reveals: most Soviet citizens neither supported or resisted Soviet power, they simply got by.

Recent work in a number of other historical eras has demonstrated
that subjects often engage in a far more ambiguous manner with the states that rule them. Yurchak’s work on the last years of Soviet power stresses that Soviet citizens, under Gorbachev at least, did not live lives defined by the dual poles of support or resistance.
^{26
New material on}
Nazi Germany has challenged the traditional separation between ‘good resistors’ and ‘bad Nazis’. Peukert, in particular, has suggested that the majority of German citizens lived in a grey area in-between that was characterized by grumbling, and selective opposition to particular policies.
^{27
Gildea has taken the same approach to Vichy France, en-}
quiring what the majority of the population, who neither collaborated nor resisted, were doing.
²⁸

The most successful attempt to ameliorate this dichotomy between
support and resistance in the Stalin era is provided by Stephen Kotkin’s description of daily life in 1930s’ Magnitogorsk. Kotkin’s most widely cited tool for describing the relationship between Soviet citizens and Soviet power is his notion of ‘speaking Bolsehvik’. He argues that when workers identified themselves as shock workers or Stakhanovites they were performing the rhetoric of the state in order to ‘get ahead’ in Soviet society. However, he does not suggest that those who ‘spoke Bolshevik’ did not believe what they were saying. The act of performing embedded them within the discourse of the state, and there were few credible alternatives.
^{29
Soviet citizens neither believed nor disbelieved but lived}
in a state of ‘half-belief ’ in relation to the language of the Stalin era.
³⁰

^{25
See: M. Foucault, trans., R. Hurley et al.,}
Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984:
Power (London, 2002), 116–31.

^{26
A. Yurchak,}
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet
Generation (Princeton, 2006).

^{27
D. J. K. Peukert, trans., R. Deveson,}
Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition

and Racism in Everyday Life
(London, 1987).

^{28
R. Gildea,}
Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation, 1940–45
(Oxford, 2002). Collinson takes a similar approach to the illegal but ‘Godly’ act of ‘sermon gadding’ in 16th-century England: P. Collinson,
The Religion of Protestants: The
Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982), 248.

^{29
S. Kotkin,}
Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilisation
(Princeton, 1994), 198–237.

^{30
Ibid. 228–30.}

Introduction
xxv

OFFICIAL SOVIET IDENTITY AND THE ‘TACTICS OF THE HABITAT’

This book addresses two of the major post-1991 debates about Stalin-
ism: what was the logic and language of the Stalin era and how did ordinary people relate to the Soviet regime? It examines how Soviet power and the behaviour of Soviet people evolved from the late 1930s through the chaos of the war years and into the early Cold War. By examining both official rhetoric and everyday living it aims to bridge a gap between these two literatures and examine how the two spheres interacted with one another in the last years of Stalin’s life.

The recent historiography of the period from 1939 to 1953 has
focused attention on the revival of Russian, Ukrainian, and other national identities.
^{31
This book shifts the emphasis onto Soviet identity.}
The various communities of the USSR lacked a shared past from which to create one common identity.
^{32
Stalin’s attempts to commission a}
history of the peoples of the USSR always ended in failure. However, the contemporary global context provided a much more fruitful arena for the articulation of a shared sense of Sovietness. Unlike the rhetoric of ethno-nationalism, Official Soviet Identity was accessible to all citizens of the USSR.

Being Soviet mattered in the last years of Stalin’s life. The experience
of war, invasion, victory, and the threat of nuclear conflict made inter- national affairs, and Official Soviet Identity, a matter of vital interest to every resident of the USSR.
^{33
Sovietness did not swallow up or destroy}
all other forms of identity in this period. Residents of the Soviet Union, like most individuals, embraced a number of simultaneous and different identities. They were not simply Soviet, or Russian, or Jewish. A Soviet citizen could define himself as a labourer at the Dinamo Factory, a Kievan, a member of the global proletariat, a Ukrainian, or a citizen of

^{31
Brandenberger,}
National Bolshevism
; G. Hosking, ‘The Second World War and Russian National Consiousness’,
Past and Present
, 175.1 (2002), 162–87.

^{32
See: G. M. White,}
Identity Through History: Living Stories in a Solomon Islands

Society
(Cambridge, 1991).

^{33
See Weber’s description of how trans-local Frenchness became more prominent as}
citizens’ awareness of war increased: E. Weber,
Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernisa-
tion of Rural France 1870–1914 (London, 1977), 267–8. See also: T. Turville-Petre,
England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity 1290–1340
(1996), 8;

1. Colley,
   Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837
   , 3rd edn (New Haven, 2005), 5.
   

xxvi
Being Soviet

the USSR.
^{34
These identities were not incompatible, and were often}
complementary. As Linda Colley suggests, identities are not like hats: we can wear more than one of them at a time.
^{35
Ethno-national or class}
identities were important in this period, but this book draws attention to the rarely examined supranational Soviet identity which coexisted along- side them.