High Stalinism 1945-53

By the end of the war the USSR had grown larger with the annexation of new territory as promised by the Nazi-Soviet pact. Soviet participation in the wartime summit meeting broke its outcast status of pre-1939 and made it one of the arbiters of post war Europe. Its role in victory and new military success gave the USSR a new ascendancy.

Following the end of the great patriotic war the USSR received the lands whih had been granted to it. Within the next 4 years it was to establish a series of Soviet satellite states in poland, czechoslovakia, hungary, romania, bulgaria and eastern germany.

Zhdanoschina was a cultural purge in 1946, possibly fearing the result of increased westernisation of the war years, the movement stressed the conformity to socialist ideals and promoted the cult of Stalin. Everything western was condemned as bourgoeois and decadent, all thing Russian were regarded as superior and uplifting. The zhdanovschina began with the purge of two literary journals published in Leningrad, one of which was described as 'poisonous'. The publishers of these works were purged and their authors expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers.

Party Congress which should have met every three years did not meet once between 1939-52 and only six full meetings of the central committee were convened during this time. The Politburo was reduced to an advisory body and awaited instruction on the official line from Stalin or his spokesman, much of the decision making took place in small ad hoc groups between stalin and those within his inner circle.

The NKVD itself was strengthened and reorganised under two seperate ministeries. The MVD controlled domestic security and the gulags, while the MGB took charge of counter intelligence and espinoage. Although the terror was not as great as it had been in the 1930s, tens of thousadns were still arrested annually. In total around 12 million wartime survivors were sent to the labour camps, suffering apalling conditions.

In 1949 Stalin decided to tak a stand againt the 'leningrad party' which had always shown some independence in its views nd action and some of whose members had been promoted tp senior postitions in Moscow during the time of Zhdanov's ascendency. On the basis of false evidence, several leading officials were arrested, including the head of the Gosplan and Voznesensky and economic reformer who held a postition in the Politburo. 

In 1951 a purge was launched in Georgia. directed aginst the followers of Beria, the head of the NKVD. They were accused of collaboration with western powers. Beria was himself of mingrelian ethnicity and although many aspects of the purge seem unclear it was still in progress when Stalin died, it seems likely that the purge was aimed at weakening the authority of Beria.

Stalin had intially favoured the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine at the end of the war, when Isreal turned out to be pro USA he reverted to his former antisemitic stance, fearing that all Jews within the USSR were potential enemies. The director of Jewish theatre in Moscow, Solomon Mikheils was mysteriously killed in a car accident in 1948 almost certainly arranged by the MVD. The Jewish wives of Politburo members Molotov and Kalinin were arrested in 1949 and a new campaign against 'anti-patriotic groups' was launched the same year. 

A letter was written to Stalin accusing 9 doctors of improper care of Zhdanov, two days before his death. Nothing was done at the time but in 1952 Stalin reopened th file and ordered the arrest of the doctors, accusing them of a Zionist conspiracy to murder Zhdanovand other members of the Soviet leadership. Stalin put it about that Jews were using their postitions in the medical profession to harm the USSR. STlain threatened igantiev with execution if he did not obtain confessions, hundreds of doctors were tortured and arrested.

Stalin renamed the Politburo as the presidium in 1952. The presidium and politburo were nominated by Stalin rather than elected. Stalin increased the 11 man politburo to a 25 man presidium just before his death. This was seen as a hint of preparation for another purge.

In 1948 Zhdanov restated his support for the theories of the environmentalist Lysenko whose ideas had been condemned by biologists before the war.

A dacha was a second home in the country, often used by Russians in the summer. Eventhough Stalin had not visited a peasant villiage of Kolshov in 25 years and spent most of his time in his later years at his dacha or black sea home he was portaryed as a man of the people.

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Stalin died in March 1053 and left a nation politically demoralised. There were hysterical public displays of grief and crowds queued to see his embalmed body which was laid in state in the Hall of Columns within the Party Congress Hall in Moscow next to Lenins. 

• The war had destroyed 70% of Russia's industrial capacity and severley reduced the workforce
• Lend lease came to an abrupt end in 1947 after Stalin refused to allow territories under Soviet influence to receive US Marchall Aid.
• five year plan (46-50) aimed to catch up with the USA, rebuild heavy industry and transport and to revive the Ukraine
• The USSR became second to the US in industrial capacity, production doubled and the urban workforce increased from 67 to 77 million
• Societ agriculture had been left in a desperate state 
• The 1945 harvest produced less than 60% of the prewar harvest and 1946 saw the worst drough experienced since 1891.
• Two thirds of the agricultural labour force had gone
• The state procured 70% of the 1946 harvest leavinf the peasants with very little 
• Rationing ended in 1947
• Almost half of output came from private plots

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