Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (57 page)

However, this enthusiasm for Western-made technology and styles
did not result in widespread resistance to the post-war shift within Official Soviet Identity. In the original version of Solzhenitsyn’s banned novel,
The First Circle
, set in the late-Stalin period, a Soviet diplomat phones the American Embassy to warn them that a Soviet spy is about to collect some nuclear secrets in New York.
^{88
In reality, very few}
individuals stood up against the ideas of Cold War Official Soviet Identity in this manner. A small number of academics objected during the K.R. Affair, that the government should not interfere in their research. Professor Potushniak, head of the Department of Archaeology and Ethnography in Transcarpathia, protested that Soviet scientists had to work ‘to order’ and not ‘to inspiration’.
^{89
A small number of}
writers and musicians objected to the
Zhdanovshchina
in similar terms.

^{86
On the pre-war battles in science see: Krementsov,}
Stalinist Science,
30–51.

^{87
Let. RGASPI f. 588, op. 11, d. 868, ll. 114–24; d. 885, ll. 65–6.}

^{88
A. Solzhenitsyn, ‘The First Circle’, in}
The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential
Writings: 1947–2005, eds E. E. Ericson and D. J. Mahoney (Wilmington, Del. 2006), 105–48. The nine chapters excerpted from the original publication are reprinted almost in full here.

^{89
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 122, d. 285, l. 140.}

184
Being Soviet

Kopilenko, a member of the Presidium of the Ukrainian Writers
Union, protested that, ‘Pushkin did not give anybody the opportunity to read his works so why do Soviet writers have to do it?’ The composer Barvinskii from L’vov also objected that ‘Workers of art are not inter- ested in politics’.
⁹⁰

Others resorted to abusing those who were criticizing them. Professor

A. M. Tumerman, of the Technical Institute of Irkutsk, refused to
concede that his admiration for Studebakers was inappropriate, whilst Associate Professor Ia. I. Sherlaimov said ‘that he considered it chauvinism to struggle for the preservation of the priority of Russian science . . . ’
^{91
Within the K.R. meeting files, at least, residents of the newly acquired}
territories of the western Soviet Union predominated amongst those who refused to perform the new language. They had not experienced the politicization of science in the 1930s and were still learning that their positions were dependent on successfully employing the ‘tactics of the habitat’. However, the vast majority of Soviet scientists and artists responded to the post-war ideological campaigns by adjusting their lexicon, and began to perform the new sounds and rhetoric of Official Soviet Identity. They criticized past mistakes and vowed to improve in the future. Elsewhere in
The First Circle
, Nadia, a young scientist, has to ‘weed out the foreigners’ from her dissertation by removing all refer- ences to the work of overseas scholars.
^{92
Unlike the diplomat who}
phoned the American Embassy, Nadia’s behaviour seems closer to the actions of most members of the Soviet scientific and artistic elites. Zhebrak, one of Lysenko’s main targets in 1948, wrote to
Pravda
in early 1949 to declare his alienation from the American genetics community, whose outlook was antithetical to his.
^{93
Roskin himself}

performed a
mea culpa
at the end of his honour court observing that, ‘After the war all sciences became military . . . cancer included.’
⁹⁴

However, performance was not the only ‘tactic’ employed by Soviet
researchers in the changing climate of 1945–53. Scientists and institutes employed a whole range of other strategies to manoeuvre their way through the post-war ideological campaigns. Avoidance was particularly

^{90
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 403, l. 41; op. 122, d. 286, l. 5.}

^{91
Inf. Ibid., op. 132, d. 70, l. 1.}

^{92
A. Solzhenitsyn, trans., M. Guybon,}
The First Circle
, 19th edn (1974), 339.

^{93
Let. RGASPI f, 17, op. 132, d. 117, ll. 6–11.}

^{94
Krementsov,}
The Cure: A Story of Cancer and Politics from the Annals of the Cold
War (London, 2000), 117. For other similar comments see: RGASPI f. 17, op. 122, d. 256, ll. 79–81.

Subversive Styles? 1945–53
185

widespread. Party reports in 1947 complained that many of the K.R.
discussions were vague. The speeches at the Ministry of Geology were ‘declarative’ and failed ‘to make a critical review of the life of their collective . . . ’. Even the secretary of the party Buro, Comrade Adamov, had ‘limited himself to a general indistinct discussion’.
^{95
Discussants}
often avoided naming particular colleagues and took very general deci- sions that were then followed through with ‘intolerable slowness’.
^{96
This inactivity and avoidance may have reflected a lack of clarity}
concerning exactly what the campaign required. However, it almost certainly also reveals a desire to deflect the force of the campaign away from possible targets within the department.

The academic response to the Lysenko Affair also demonstrated the
expertise with which Soviet scientists had learned to live within the environment of Stalinist society. In the run-up to August 1948, Lysen- ko’s opponents had waged a bold campaign against his institutional and intellectual monopoly within biology.
^{97
They had deployed what}
Kojevnikov dubs the ‘game’ of criticism and self-criticism (
kritika i
samokritika) to chip away at Lysenko’s position, making his downfall

seem increasingly likely.
^{98
Even after Lysenko’s resounding victory in}

August 1948, the Soviet genetics community continued to deploy the
strategy of reappropriation against him. They carried on writing letters to Soviet leaders and newspapers drawing on Bolshevik language in an attempt to undermine Lysenko’s position. The Head of the Department of Physics at Kiev University, Fainerman, wrote to
Pravda
in September 1948 stating that Lysenko’s report was full of ‘groundless and incorrect statements’. He attempted to reappropriate the language of the cam- paign and divert it in a different direction by requesting that it be made clear that Lysenko’s report was only a basis for discussion and not an authoritative statement.
^{99
In later years Soviet biologists increasingly}
turned to Malenkov for support against Lysenko, who faced two investigations in 1952 and 1958 before his final downfall, along with Khrushchev, in 1964.

Reappropriation was also evident in many other branches of the
Soviet scientific community, as academics exploited the campaign

^{95
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 122, d. 271, l. 2.}

^{96
Inf. Ibid., d. 283, ll. 2–5; d. 260, ll. 19, 45.}

^{97
Let. RGASPI f. 588, op. 11, d. 875, l. 19; Krementsov,}
Stalinist Science,
105–11.

^{98
A. Kojevnikov, ‘Games of Stalinist Democracy: Ideological Discussions in Soviet}
Sciences’, in Fitzpatrick,
Stalinism
:
New Directions
(London, 2000), 142–75.

^{99
Let. RGASPI f. 17, op. 132, d. 40, l. 69.}

186
Being Soviet

against Michurinism to seize the initiative in ongoing institutional and
personal battles.
^{100
This ‘tactic’ did not always succeed. Shaw and}
Oldfield argue that Grigor’ev, the ‘Lysenko of Geography’, actually lost out from the round of discussion prompted by the Michurin campaign.
^{101
Scientists had to skilfully manipulate the rhetoric of}
criticism and self-criticism to secure their position. Gerovitch has ar- gued that the attack on cybernetics was also a result of individuals seeking personal promotion by denouncing foreign pseudo-science, rather than the product of an official orthodoxy imposed from above.
^{102
A. F. Losev’s letter to Zhdanov in May 1948 provides a}
clear demonstration of this ‘tactic’ of reappropriation in action. Losev complained that his path to advancement had been hampered by individuals who had been proved wrong by the new ideological direc- tives. His letter was a transparent attempt to reappropriate the post-war ideological campaigns as a mechanism through which to advance his flagging career.
¹⁰³

It is possible that this kind of personal assault was not reappropriation
at all, but rather an attempt to integrate oneself, and one’s scientific research, within the narrative of Official Soviet Identity. There is no denying that some of these letter-writers may have been sincerely attempting to put themselves back into the rhetorical mainstream. However, at the very least, their letters reauthored the narrative of Official Soviet Identity to conform more closely with their personal views. It might also be argued that deploying the post-war ideological campaigns as a mechanism for a personal assault on a colleague was not reappropriation at all: it was merely directing the campaigns towards their intended goals. However, the various rounds of criticism rarely had an officially intended target at the level of individual departments and faculties. At the very least, they were often appropriated, and on some occasions reappropriated, by Soviet scientists, in order to pursue

^100
Hollway,
Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956
(New Haven, 1994), 208–13; Fateev,
Obraz vraga,
151–2; Kojevnikov, ‘Games of Stalinist Democracy’, 142–75.

^{101
V. D. Shaw and J. D. Oldfield, ‘Personal, Ideological and Institutional Rivalries}
among Soviet Geographers in the Late Stalin Era’, paper presented at University of Birmingham (2007).

^{102
S. Gerovitch, ‘“Russian Scandals”: Soviet Readings of American Cybernetics in}
the Early Years of the Cold War’,
Russian Review,
60.4 (2001), 554–62.

^{103
Let. RGASPI f. 17, op. 132, d. 160, ll. 54–73.}

Subversive Styles? 1945–53
187

their personal and institutional objectives with greater zeal than they
demonstrated for the original objectives of the campaigns themselves.

Soviet scientists also responded to the pressures created by the
Michurinist and Anti-Cosmopolitan Campaigns by deploying the ‘tactic’ of avoidance, just as they had done during the K.R. Affair. Official reports complained that figures such as Professor Beletskii of Moscow State University deliberately ‘slowed down the destruction of the cosmopolitans in the Philosophical Faculty’ and supported Jewish staff members.
^{104
Others, such as Professor Rubenstein of the Academy}
of Pedagogical Sciences, only recognized their mistakes ‘coldly and without feeling’.
^{105
Such behaviour typified the creative capacity of}
Soviet scientists to sidestep the implications of the turn towards a closed world of Michurinist, Soviet science. Institutions were covered with a ‘Michurinist veneer’, but research carried on largely as it had before.
^{106
Soviet academics simultaneously performed, reappropriated, and also}
avoided the new language of Official Soviet Identity. They negotiated the new terrain with great skill, demonstrating their ability to deploy the full range of ‘tactics of the habitat’ in order to protect their institutional and personal positions of power.