Cultural Features of Stalinist Russia

• Used arts and popular culture to root out all bourgeois culture and construct a new Soviet culture which reinforced socialism and the ideas of the party and Stalin while introducing the new idea of Socialist Realism

• Writers who were part of the RAPP- later known as Union of Soviet Writers in 1932 had to make sure their works promoted the ideas of the proletariat and the Govt.
• Any writers who refused to do this would have their works banned and not published as they were deemed for being too bourgeois
• Stalin described writers as the "engineers of the human soul" in that it was there job to promote proletariat culture and literature

• State press and newspapers within the Soviet Union were all controlled to carry less information
• Often told what to put in newspapers and so had a narrower range of views
• They would include articles that promoted the industrial proletariat such as quoting over-exaggerated FYP figures
• In essence the state press became a propaganda tool for the Soviet Union

• By 1930s film also became heavily controlled by Stalin
• Between 136-37 68 films were withdrawn in mid-production and 30 that were released were replaced with ones that would produce a record pf Soviet history from 1917 onwards and promote socialism by focussing on workers and their lives such a s movies like Battleship Potemkin and October

Paintings 

• Abstract art was to be abandoned in favour of socialist realism- images of the workers and peasants together, working for socialism
• Paintings had to be constantly updated to reflect upon these values and remove anyone who purged

Architecture

• "Stalinist baroque" was used which used gargantuanism such as Moscow University and the Moscow Underground
• All buildings promoted the ideas of socialism and giant statues of Stalin were also built- cult of personality