USSR Control of the People

- Newspapers:

• Decree 1917 - non-Socialist papers banned, early 20s - non-Bolshevik papers banned
• Printing press nationalised
• Gaulit (censorship) needed for all publications
• Partiinost (party-mindedness) - socialist acheivements
• Cheap to buy and widely available

- Magazines:

• Sex, crime and religion off-limits

- Radio: 

• 1921 - programmes begin to be broadcast by the Spoken Newspaper of the Russian Telegraph Agency, giving news and propaganda
• 65% illiterate pop.
• Apartment blocks wired for only government stations
• Only one station until 1964 - 3 stations under Brezhnev with Radio Maiak playing foreign music popular with kids

- Television:

• Often broadcast in local languages
• Show Soviet life as a lot better than corrupt capitalist life
• Key method in 50s in getting across messages - 10K sets 1950 to 3 mill sets 1958
• Mix of docs, socialist acheivements, news and childrena dn cultural progs.

- Results: 

• Heavy censorship
• Government rely on output to distract from reality
• 1980s - tech. like video reocrders allow easy sharing amongst public
• Rise in computers makes restriction much harder

- Russian Orthodox Church:

• Churches destroyed
• Replace baptisms with 'Octoberings'
• 1929 - League of Militant Godless
• 1923 - 28 bishops and 1000+ priests killed
• Attacks increase during famine 1921-22
• 1918 - Decree of Freedom of Conscience - seperates church from state and religious ed. banned
• Mid-20s - 55% peasants still Christian

- Islam:

• Most mosques closed 
• Unveilings encouraged
• Polygamy prohibited
• Prohibit religious endowment of land
• Sharia courts phased out
• Ramadam condemned 

- Stalin:

• Churches closed and village priests deported as kulaks
• Church increases war morale so some churches re-opened and new seminaries
• Great Purge 1936-39 - 1939 - only 12% churches still at liberty

- Khrushchev: 

• 1958-64 - Anti-religious campaign
• Limits role of priests and councils under party control - 10K churches closed and priests harrassed by s.police

- Brezhnev:

• Council of Religious Affairs
• Slows persecution as it damages foreign policy
• Preachings disrupted and believers fired from jobs

Results: Massive decline in religious influence with only 25% still believing in God by the 80s

- Lenin:

• Develops after death with endless images in newspapers, statues and cinemas
• Body in mausoleum in Red Square
• Disapproved of personality cults

- Stalin:

• Loyalty to Lenin's legacy 
• 1925 - Tsaritsyn becomes Stalingrad
• Posters show him as a 'man of the people' and a father figure for Mother Russia
• 'Happy' family life shown
• Statues in cities and towns 
• Films exaggerate his role in events

- Khrushchev:

• Helped him to become more invloved with citizens and made sure he was photographed
• Reflected his egotistical personality but was never on the scale of Stalin

- Brezhnev:

• Gave him symbols of power without having to exercise it
• Awarded himself at least 100 medals - Lenin Prize for Literature
• Series of strokes and heart attacks meant he needed the cult to give an impression of leadership

- Cheka (1917) - GPU (1922) - OGPU (1923) - NKVD (1934)

- Red Terror 1921 - 200K opponents shot

- Yagoda (1934-36):

• Oversaw expansion of Gulag
• 1933 - Oversaw White Sea Canal project
• Eventually shot for incompetence and lack of enthusiasm in 1938

-Yezhov (1936-38): 

• Yezhovschina - NKVD purges their own membership
• Plain-clothed officers for surveillance and torture
• 1937 - 231 prisoners process a day in Troika courts
• Rise in Gulag inmates - quotas and awards for executions 
• Stalin dismisses Yezhov in 1938 for excessive purging and demoralising the war effort

- Beria: 

• 1940 - assassination of Trotsky
• Only holds public trials with solid evidence
• Food rations improved in Gulags - growth from 2 billion roubles 1937 to 4.5 billion 1940

- WW2:

• Deportation (Crimean Tartars, Volga Germans and Checkens)
• 1943 - Special Departments to root out traitors and deserters - SMERSH 'death to spies' murders +4000 Polish officers 1943
• Order 270 - all surrendered Soviets treated as traitors and sent to detention camps

- Post war:

• 1951 - Mingrelian Affair 
• 1953 - Doctor's Plot - group of doctors accused of plotting to assassinate Stalin

- Beria's removal (June 1953): Gulag dismantled, KGB under Politburo control, and Lubyanka building no longer a prison

- Beria: 

• 1940 - assassination of Trotsky
• Only holds public trials with solid evidence
• Food rations improved in Gulags - growth from 2 billion roubles 1937 to 4.5 billion 1940

- WW2:

• Deportation (Crimean Tartars, Volga Germans and Checkens)
• 1943 - Special Departments to root out traitors and deserters - SMERSH 'death to spies' murders +4000 Polish officers 1943
• Order 270 - all surrendered Soviets treated as traitors and sent to detention camps

- Post war:

• 1951 - Mingrelian Affair 
• 1953 - Doctor's Plot - group of doctors accused of plotting to assassinate Stalin

- Beria's removal (June 1953): Gulag dismantled, KGB under Politburo control, and Lubyanka building no longer a prison

- Intellectuals:

• Nuclear scientist banned from further research for complaining

- Political:

• Hold government accountable for UN Decleration of Human Rights 1948 and Helsinki Accords 1975

- Nationalists:

• Greater status of culture and language
• Freedom from USSR

-Religious: 

• Refuseniks - group of Soviet Jews
• Restrictions on religious practise

- Actions:

• Internal exile
• Intellectuals threatened with expulsion
• Mid-70s - 10K political prisoners
• New Criminal Code 1960 - abolishes night-time interrogation and limits power of KGB
• Some sent to mental hospitals

- Results:

• USSR given bad international reputation
• Helsinki Accords show government violations

- Andropov is General Secretary

- Increased monitoring of dissident groups

- Believes better economy would help

- Surroundes himself with people in touch with pop. discontent 

- Makes conscious effort to promote younger, more reformist future leaders

- 1917 - Lenin wants to keep high-calibre artists/writers on his side. Accomodates to 'Fellow Travellers'

Proletkult:

- Alexander Bogdanov argues for a 'proletarian culture'

- Workers and peasants encouraged to make their own culture

- Direct challenge to higher class art (balllet, opera)

Avant Garde:

- More experimentation

- Theatre led by V. Meyerhold who produces fantasies based on workers defeating exploiters

- Lenin states importance of using cinema for political messages

- Definitely not the answer to moulding people's beliefs

- Sweep away bourgeois attitudes

- Full-scale assault on artists/writers

- Fellow Travellers not accepted. RAPP (Russian ***. of Prol. Writers) attacks Fell. Trav.

- 'Cult of the little man' - acheivements of workers and socialism

- Art:

• Shows success in FYPs and emphasises Stalin's cult of p.
• No more experimentation

- Literature:

• High-brow focuses on heroes from the party
• Low-brow focuses on 'good' socialists defeating 'evil' capitalism

- Music:

• Sax banned in 40s
• Stalin prefers more trad. music and military songs

- Architecture:

• Classical lines and elaborate decoration

- Film: Focuses on patriotism Oct. Rev.

- 1946 - campaign to get rid of 'bourgeois' culture from West

- After WW2, writers/artists have greater freedom

- Allows some banned work to be published

- Younger poets allowed to publish

- Jazz music reappears - Soviet youth influenced by Western music

- Stilyagi - people who follow Western fashion

- 1970s - more conservative

- Sexual themes more risky than political ones

- 'Russites' come close to criticising Soviet Union with nationalism

- Boris Pasternak's 'Doctor Zhivago' banned by Khrushchev

- Khrushchev hates abstract art

- Komosomol patrol streets to report unaccpetable behaviour

- Trial of Joseph Brodksy 1964 - public poetry without a license

- Trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel 1964 - wrote novels depicting USSR life as harsh and surreal

- Andropov - non-official composers permitted to 20% air time

- 1970 - local art gallery director in Novosibirsk sentenced to 8 years for displaying work of dissident artists

- Awards/ priveledges to supporting artists and threat of unemployment to non-conformists

- 1975 - group of unofficial artists put on an open-air exhibition but local hooligans recruited to attack the work

-Most writers prefer to conform, even if it is less intellectually demanding