8. 24.3. The New Mobilisation

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Stalin and Stalinism in Russian History

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National Research University Higher School of Economics

Stalin and Stalinism in Russian History

70 notes

The course presents the life and deeds of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 till 1953. It analyses the reasons for his actions and their results, as well as the causes of his popularity in Russia today. It offers an analysis of the phenomenon of Stalinism and of its significance for Russia and beyond. In the late 1920s – early 1930s Stalin directed the massive and rapid industrialisation of the country and the forced collectivisation of its agriculture. The industrialisation was based on forced labour, and collectivisation on repression, but both helped to create the material base for the Soviet defence industry. In the late 1930s Stalin unleashed mass terror against the Soviet people, in which millions perished. In his view this helped to rid the country of any potential internal enemies on the eve of the coming war. The USSR, together with its allies, won the Second World War, but at the cost of dozens of millions of lives. Stalin was instrumental in creating the post-war order. The system which he created in the 1930s shaped the USSR as it was during his lifetime and for decades after his death. It also influenced the lives of millions of people beyond the Soviet borders. The course will enable those who take it to develop an informed understanding of the Stalin era and of the phenomenon of Stalinism.

À partir de la leçon

The Last Years of the Dictatorship

Lecture 8 is devoted to the post-war period, the last years of Stalin’s life. It describes the beginning of the Cold War, Stalin’s policy in Eastern Europe and Stalin’s relations with China. It analyses the Soviet post-war economy and Stalin’s attempt to return to the old order and to rule by terror.

8.24.1. The Post-War Soviet Economy7:20

8.24.2. The Cold War6:52

8. 24.3. The New Mobilisation6:53

Rencontrer les enseignants

Irina Filatova
Professor
Faculty of Humanities / School of History

But Stalin's most powerful weapon in

mobilizing the people was his campaign against kowtowing to the west.

Stalin was behind Zhdanov's famous 1946 speech

which denounced the literary magazines Zvezda and Leningrad.

The speech launched the campaign of unmasking

kowtowing to bourgeois culture among Soviet intelligence.

In the USSR, culture,

literature, and politics were very closely connected.

Two people who were denounced in the speech where

Mikhail Zoshchenko, a satirist, and Anna Akhmatova, poet.

The magazines published both and they were the first victims of the campaign.

In 1948, Stalin ordered the dissolution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

It was created during the war.

The hand of the committee,

Solomon Mikhoels, he was a theatre director,

was assassinated by the Security Service.

This started a wide ranging anti-Semitic campaign.

It was aimed against rootless cosmopolitans.

This was how Jews were branded at the time.

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee affair grew and branched off.

It ended in a trial in May, July 1952.

All the defendants but one were executed.

Both the trial and the campaign were driven personally by Stalin.

This is one of the posters which accompanied the campaign.

'Be vigilant: the class enemy works amongst us.'

The text of the newspaper in the hand of

this Soviet man is "Spies and assassins are exposed".

Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign went beyond

Soviet borders ahead of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was Jewish, Rudolf Slansky.

He was put on trial and executed in 1952.

Several other leaders followed.

Stalin held the trial under his personal and close control.

In the last months of his life,

Stalin devoted much time to 'The Doctors' Plot'.

The Security Service uncovered a plot among doctors,

mostly Jewish, who treated top government officials.

In October, November 1952 several were arrested.

Here is the article in the Pravda,

'Vile Spies and Assassins under the Mask of Medical professors'.

And of course a picture of a very Jewish looking doctor

with a mask and gold flooding from his pockets.

One of the accused was Vladimir Vinogradov, Stalin's personal physician.

He was 70-year-old academician.

Under torture, the doctors confessed of

attempting to shorten the lives of Soviet leaders,

and of attempts to kill them not just of their own volition but

on orders from an international Jewish organization,

and from the American and British intelligence service.

They also implicated some Soviet security officials in assisting the plot.

The doctor's affair was started by this woman,

Lidia Timashuk, whose report was used to accuse doctors of the plot to kill Zhdanov.

She was immediately awarded the Order of Lenin.

Stalin's colleagues shivered with fear because under torture

the elderly doctors might say absolutely anything about their high ranking patients.

In January 1953, Stalin decided to turn the plot into a major campaign.

It was launched by an article in the Pravda and unfolded into a frenzy of denunciations,

accusations, dismissals, arrests, and executions of Jews.

Did the campaign reflect Stalin's personal anti-Semitic feelings?

Or was it a response to anti-Semitic tendencies in wider Soviet society?

Such tendencies became much more pronounced during the war.

In other case, the campaign was very useful for Stalin's purposes.

Jews became yet another internal enemy with roots abroad.

The campaign helped to mobilize the population against

an imagined enemy distracting it from its real problems yet again.

At the time of Stalin's death,

there were 2.5 million people in the camps,

penal colonies and prisons and 2.8 million 'banned people' in remote areas.

But these impressive numbers did not deliver economic miracles any longer.

The country needed modernization and for it,

it needed technically literate and creative labor force.

The prisoners could not deliver it.

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