Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (8 page)

^{80
See: Johnston, ‘Subversive Tales’, 71–2.}

^{81
The main findings are summarized in: Inkeles and Bauer,}
The Soviet Citizen
and Bauer, Inkeles, and Kluckhohn,
How the Soviet System Works
.

^{82
Harvard Interview Project on the Soviet Social System, Henceforth HIP. ‘Code}

Book A’, (Unpublished, Davis Centre Library, Harvard University), 57. The percentages
relate to a total of 329 cases: 276 in Munich, 53 in New York.

^{83
HIP. ‘Code Book A’, 57–8.}

^{84
HIP. ‘Code Book A’}
,
80.

Introduction
xxxvii

HIP concluded that rumouring was a peculiarly prominent feature of
life in the Stalin-era USSR.
⁸⁵

This oral information was transmitted along informal networks of
close friends and family. When asked who told them rumours, 28 per cent of the interviewees cited family and 77 per cent friends.
^{86
As one}
respondent explained: ‘ . . . people simply soaked up these unofficial rumours. People who heard it would tell it to others and they would tell it again to others and it increased in a geometric progression.’
^87
The
study of rumours offers important insights into the social networks that traversed Soviet society.
⁸⁸

Respondents to HIP described the process of rumouring in the USSR
in a manner that illustrates the process of
bricolage
in action. Rumours supplemented, rather than replaced, the contents of the official press. Some respondents to HIP claimed that rumours were more reliable; others claimed that the official press was a better source of information.

The Soviet papers cannot be considered a source, because they are not truth-
ful.
⁸⁹

You have to have a very careful attitude towards them [rumours] and check on
them.
⁹⁰

However, they did not regard the two as intrinsically in competition
with one another. Indeed, they often spoke of cross referencing material from one source against information from another: ‘Even the members of the party among themselves don’t believe everything that they read in the Soviet newspapers . . . Conversations with members of my family or with friends were very important.’
⁹¹

The creative products of this rumour
bricolage
were not necessarily highly original, in the sense of demonstrating great inventiveness. Their creativity, in de Certeau’s terms, was of an everyday kind and involved

^{85
Inkeles and Bauer,}
The Soviet Citizen
, 164–5, 169.

^{86
These are of the 272 (83%) who answered. Of those citing friends a third specified}
close friends. HIP. ‘Code Book A’
,
60.

^{87
HIP. A. 3, 25, 10 (A schedule interview, book 3, respondent 25, page 10. Now}

online).

^{88
For a further discussion see: T. Johnston, ‘Rumours in the Stalin-era USSR:}
A Theoretical Introduction’, in
Slukhi v Rossii XX veka: neformal’naia kommunikatsiia i
‘krutye povoroty’ rossiiskoi istorii’/Rumors in the XX century Russia: Informal Communica- tion and ‘Steep Turns’ of Russian History (Moscow, 2010).

^{89
HIP. A. 12, 153, 46.}

^{90
HIP. A. 1, 5, 47.}

^{91
HIP. A. 1, 8, 74.}

xxxviii
Being Soviet

the bringing together of information from two contexts to create a
composite product.
^{92
It is comparable to Sawyer’s description of jazz}
improvisation: the soloist does not seek to create something entirely new but draws upon well-established tropes, combining them in a novel configuration.
^{93
Soviet citizens drew upon previous incarnations of}
Official Soviet Identity as well as the current press, and pre-existing assumptions about the nature of international relations, to create a composite image of the world.

The historiography of the Soviet 1930s has largely treated rumour as
an arena of subversion.
^{94
Viola describes them as an ‘offstage social}
space for the articulation of peasant dissent’.
^{95
But rumouring was too}
widespread a pastime to be exclusively associated with resistance. If rumouring was an act of resistance, then all Soviet citizens were resisters. The authors of HIP drew the same conclusion. They found that respondents who had been most strongly opposed to the regime actually relied less on rumour as a source of information.
^{96
Respondents who}
were positively inclined towards the government used rumours as a means of staying up to date with what was going on.
^{97
They concluded,}
on the basis that they had an unusually anti-Soviet sample, that their results underestimated the ubiquity of rumour as a means of transmit- ting information in the Soviet Union.

The archival sources from the Stalin era also reveal a large number of
what might be called ‘loyal rumourers’. Rumours of invasion, price rises, or the abolition of the
kolkhozy
were often passed on by individuals who were depressed or frustrated by the information they transmitted. They wrote to warn the Soviet leadership of a forthcoming event, or bemoaned to their work colleagues that something was about to

^{92
De Certeau,}
Practice of Everyday Life
.

^{93
R. K. Sawyer,}
Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation
(Oxford, 2006), 223–36. See also: J. Liep, ‘Introduction’, in J. Liep, ed.,
Locating Cultural
Creativity (London, 2001), 7.

^{94
S. Fitzpatrick,}
Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after

Collectivisation
(Oxford, 1994), 5–6;
Everyday Stalinism,
184–5.

^95
Viola,
Peasant Rebels,
64–5.

^{96
Bauer and Inkeles,}
The Soviet Citizen,
164, 169. C. Kluckhohn, A. Inkeles, and

R. A. Bauer, ‘Strategic Psychological and Sociological Strengths and Vulnerabilities of
the Soviet Social System: A Final Report submitted to the Director Officer Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama’, (Unpublished, Davis Centre Library, Harvard University).

^{97
R. A. Bauer and D. B. Gleicher, ‘Word of Mouth Communication in the Soviet}

Union’,
Public Opinion Quarterly,
17.3 (1953), 306.

Introduction
xxxix

happen. Rumours were an important expression of the tactic of
brico- lage
. They embedded Soviet citizens within Soviet power, rather than removing them from it. Rumours straddled the boundaries between support and resistance, making them an ideal object for the study of the more ambiguous spaces between internalization and rejection, which were inhabited by the ‘little tactics of the habitat’.

It might be objected that respondents to HIP could have exaggerated
the prevalence of rumouring in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The Pro- ject’s respondents were atypically well educated and probably atypically curious about the world around them.
^{98
Nonetheless, respondents from}
all social groups stated that they had heard and passed on rumours.
^99
It
is also possible that the respondents to HIP exaggerated the prominence of rumours because they thought it was what the interviewers wanted to hear. However, the first questions in the Communication Section were straightforward and open without suggesting any particular sources.
^{100
The authors’ conclusion, that rumouring was a widespread phenome-}
non in Soviet society, seems credible.

The sociological and psychological literature concerning rumours
also lends weight to the idea that the USSR would have been a society rich in rumours. In their 1965 book, Allport and Postman suggested that the likelihood of a rumour spreading was related to its importance and ambiguity.
^{101
Press censorship in the Stalin years would have led to}
heightened levels of ambiguity. Many Soviet citizens were fully aware that they were not always being told the full story within the official press. That awareness drove many of them to seek out additional sources of information. In that sense the propaganda state bred the rumour network. Other studies of rumour have also suggested that rumours are more likely to spread if they are credible to their audience. Under conditions of stress and emotional tension, credibility thresholds are lowered and rumouring increases.
^{102
The upheavals and traumas expe-}
rienced by the citizens of wartime and post-war Soviet society would have contributed to a lowering of credibility and a proliferation of rumouring.

^{98
Ibid. 300–5.}

^{99
See: H. Rossi, and R. A. Bauer, ‘Some Patterns of Soviet Communications}
Behaviour’,
Public Opinion Quarterly,
16.4 (1952), 653–70.

^{100
HIP. ‘Code Book A’, 57.}

^{101
Allport and Postman,}
Psychology of Rumor,
33–40.

^{102
Rosnow and Fine,}
Rumour and Gossip,
51–2.

xl
Being Soviet

The opening of the archives of the former Soviet Union has also
affirmed the notion that rumouring was widespread in this period. There is ample primary evidence of speculative stories and rumours passing by word-of-mouth between Soviet citizens.
^{103
Rumours were a}
powerful force within Soviet society, capable of inspiring full-scale panics and acts of civil disobedience at moments of unusual tension.
^{104
They even played a part in shaping the course of elite politics at the}
highest level. Stalin’s humiliation of Molotov in late 1945 seems to have been motivated by anger about rumours that Molotov was about to replace him.
^{105
Rumouring touched on all areas of life in the USSR and}
was a widespread, everyday expression of the tactic of
bricolage
for the vast majority of the population of the Soviet Union.

The final ‘tactic of the habitat’ that is described in this book was
‘avoidance’. In
Everyday Stalinism
Fitzpatrick describes how Soviet citizens sidestepped the levers of Soviet power and evaded punishment by the state.
^{106
This ‘tactic’ of avoidance was particularly widespread in}
relation to official campaigns and attempts at physical mobilization. It is less clear how it operated in relation to official information and rhetoric. Soviet citizens could not escape official ideas about the outside world in the way they could fail to turn up for an election rally. Despite the fact that avoidance involved the attempt to escape the coercive influence of Soviet power, it can still be considered a ‘tactic of the habitat’. Creative avoidance strategies such as feigning illness, job changing, and
blat’
, were so endemic, that they became distinctive features of the Soviet environment. To describe them as resistance is to stretch that term beyond its usefulness. Even when they were dodging Soviet power, Stalin-era citizens often did so in a distinctively Soviet manner.