USSR Control of The People

Decree in November 1917 banned all non-socialist newpapers - by early 20s all non bolshevik papers were elimated - printing press nationalised - all editors and jounalists were emplotees of the government and party members - approval form glavit was needed for every article

Daily newspapers included Pravda and Izvestiya - cehicles of propaganda 0 guiding pricniple was pariinost or party mindedness - papers were cheap to buy and widely available -  Pravada had a circulation of 10.7 million in 1983 and Trud the trade union paper had 13.5 million - Incuded production figures meeting or exceeding targets - included topic like searches for gold and socialist triumps

Prohibited topics were reported late such as plane crahses and natural disasters - things were often not explain - nunclear waste storage tank rexploded resulted in at least 200 fataliites and 70,000 people being exposed to dangerous levels of radition - soviet public only became aware when map readers noticed that 30 small communites had dissapeared from the map- took 2 years to evacute unsafe areas

Local newspapers were more likelt to pubish critical articles but you could never criticise party leaders

1917 - Radio recent development - easier for the Bolsheviks to control - The Spoken Newspaper of Russian Telegraph Agency - featured news and propganda and very little music - Installed large speakers in public places, factories and clubs - Control of radio communication was centralised through the Commissariat for Posts and Telegraph - enabled the governemtn to get its message across to the 65% of the population who were illiterate - highly effective in reasurring the soviet population that hope was not lost during WW2

Most new apartment blocks were wired for radio reception and only had acess to government stations - until 1964 there was only one soviet radio ration - Under Brezhnev the range was extended to three inding radio Maiak which palyed foreign music and was popular with the soveit youth

Government tried to restrict acess to foreignstations by mass producing cheap radios with a limited reception range - also had to rely on jamming foreign broadcasts and threatened to arrest those that listened to stations such as the Staion of America or the BBC - threats rarely sucessed

By 1950 television was a key method of control, the USSR had 10,00 sets - by 1958 this number had risen to 3 million - Mass production fo televisions in the 60s made them within price for msot people - by the early 80s most of the rural population had acess to televisions

Government stations had news, documentaries about the achievements of socialism and cultural programms - Children programmes were provided and feature films - Life in soviet union presented as joyous whereas life under cpaitalism was rife with crime, homelessness and violence.By 1985 there were two television challens with greater emphsis on light enterainment

In the 70s, soviet singer Eduard Khil became a noted and popular celebrity.

Broadcast of local prgramming in the different regions of the USSR, often in local langauges made it easier to control and imposed the russian culture on national minorites

Attempted to highlight links between stalin and Lenin - Lenin's closest colleague, a hero of the civil war and saviour of revolution - Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad - 'Stalin is the Lenin of today' widely used - Comissioned images dispalying him as the all-present all knwoing leaeder - The big hero - Paitings of the achievements of the 5 year plans - Stalin posing at the Ryon hydro-electric complex in 1935 - Pictures of stalin with children were common - Posters of stalin in militart during WWII - Stalina s man of the people - His family home in Georgia became a shrine - Hagiography - Stalin gathered titles and honours like Brilliant Genius of Huamnity and Gardner of Human Hapiness - Poets were used to add the quantity of material in praise of Stalin like Song of Stalin by Izakvosky - Records of Stalin's speeches were produced and distrubted - Stateus of stalin were erected in most cities and town - statues gave stalin the stature of Tsar Alexander the III - Films featuring Stalin were also used to highlight his role in historical events - Actor Mikhali Giovani made a career out of playing Stalin - By the late 40s government officals could not recgonise Stalin in person - By 1953 many towns had been renamed after Stalin - prisoners in the gulag wept when they heard of his death

Condemned Stalin's use of a cult of personality in his secret speech of 1956 - called a secret speech because he did not tell anyone he was going to do it - Pushed forward his policy of de-stalinisation

His own cult of personality allowed him to be seen as the most importatn party leader and allowed his to outrank other party members like Malenkov - he visted soviet citizens more than stalin did - visits to peasants on collective farmers - Khrushchev's publicity increased when he appointed his son in law as ediot of Ivestiya

Made use of radio, cinema and tevelvision for self publicity - described as having an egotistical and erratic personality

Cult of personality undermined from whne he visited the USA and did not have control of the media there

Utalisied after 1964 as he emerged as first among equals in the power struggles after Khrushchev;s removal

Less of a method of securing power and more of a substitute for power

Popular leader - reluctant to use his pwoer to bring about change

Symbols of power without having to exercise it

content with trappings of pwoer and endless medalls

Soviet joke about brezhnevv having to expand his chest to accomidate more medals

awarded at least 100 medals including the Lenin prize of literature for his memoirs

Exaggerated his role in WWII

Used to draw a connection between him and Stalin

Useful for one person to be the focus - inspired unity and loyalty

Provided a human face for socialism - many russians could not read or write and the cult of personality gave them a human connection to socialism

Provided a figurehead that the population oculd identify with

Cult of Personality made use of traditional russian attitudes - were used to expressing their identity through their loyalty to the country - calls back to the time of the tsar

Filled a gap that rseutled from the restrictions of religious worship - Stalinist propganda and Art had religious imagery

Christianity's emphasis on the rights of the individual contrasted socialism - marxist believe religion to be 'opium of the masses' - concern that the pwoer and influence fo the Russian Orthodox church was an instument of social control that posed a threat- 1918 decree on freedom of conscience seperated the orthodox church from the state and made it lose its privileged status - church deprived of its land without compensation - publicatiosn were outlawed and all religious education outside of the home was banned - large number of churches were destroyed or convered - government closed all monasteries by the end of 1918 - head of the orthodox church Patriarch Tikhon was put under house arrest- During the famine of the civil war attacks on the church increased and valuable objects were siezed to help pay for food - priests were deprived of the vote and denied rationed and were victims of the red terror - 28 bishops and more than 1,000 priests were killed - In1929, league of militant godless was established - propaganda campaign against religion - launched events to disprove the existence of God included taking pesants for plane rides to show that heaven wasn't real - Religious rituals were attacked - Replace baptisms with OctoBerings - new names like Revolyutisya and Ninel were enocuraged - By the end of 1930 4/5ths of all village churches were no longer operating or destroyed- Surveys of the pesantry in hte mid 20s showed the at 55% weres still active christians

Religious repression alongside collectivisation

Churches were closed

Priests were labled as kulaks

Further attacks during the great purge - by 1939 only 12/163 bishops weres till at liberty

Policy changed after the german invasion of the USSR in 1941 - Russian Orthodox church supported the war effort adn this promopted changes between church and state -

Stalin took a more liberal appraoch - patriarchate wa\s re-established - some churches reopened and new seminareis were set up to train priests

Religion played an important role in sustaining morale during WWII

Active repression similar to that of Stalin pre-WWII

In 1958-59 Khrushchev launched a harsh anti-religious campaign that contrinued until his removal from office in 1964

Thr role of priest was limited to one of spirutal advice only

Parish councils were placed under the control of Party officals who often took actions to dismiss priests on the grounds that they were no longer needed

10,000 of the existing churches were closed

surviving priests were often harassed by the secret police

Baptista nd Jewish people also suffered from severe restrictions on their right to worship

Active persecutation of the Church declined after Khrushcev's removal from office

Did not want to damage relations with the west - had thwarted attemtps to conduct foreign policy

Government used the council of religous affairs to monitor religious services and clergy were classified according to loyalty and socialism

expected to stick to formal church services and support soviet polices and social policy where the church could provide facilities

in 1976, a group of orthodox priests set up the christian committee for the defence of believers' rights to draw attention to human rights issues - Father Yakunin was setenced to give years imprisonment for anti-soviet propaganda in 1979

Evangelical activies of preaching to gain converts were restricted - prayer meetings were broken up and members dismissed from their Jobs

Whilist the majority of the population were members of the russian orthodox church, other religions had a significant influence

The central asian regions had a sizeable muslim community - harder for bolsheviks to control as it was a different way of life that was far more intergrated into its community - fears that it would lead to more nationalism

Religious endowments of land were prohibited making the upkeep of mosques more difficult - Most mosques were closed down - Sharia courts were phased out- Mullahs were removed as a part of the collectivisation process - forced to admit to being decievers of the people- Campaign against the veiling of woman was launched on international women's day in 1927 - cast off their veils and threw them onto a bonfire - Ramadan fasting was condemed as interfering with work disipline- Polygamy was prohibited

Lead to a serious of violent revolts in 1928 and 1929 - Chechens of Southern Russia - crushed through the use of soviet armed forced - underground brotherhoods known as atriqat to continue fight for islamic rights

Lenin established Cheka under leadership of Felix Dzezhinsky - during civil war could act with minimal interference from legal bodies - act quickly - attempted assassination of Lenin by Fanya Kaplin in August 1918 prompted a wave of arrests - Red terror of 1921 and 9122 0 up to 200,000 oppponents were shot - Post civil war - more independent - less interference from other state institutions - only took orders from the party

Stalin's programme of rapid industrialisation under the 5YPs had identified the kulaks and peasants who oppossed collectivisation

Politicial opponents increased after show trials of Zioniev and Kamenev in 1936 - Purges of the right of the Party such as Bukahrin, members of the Red army were accused of working with foreign countries

Arrests were done in the middle of the night to disorient the accused - subjected to torture until the confessed - Leonid Zakovsky produceda handbook on torture methods - a public confession would save the victims family - not always kept - naming associates in plots would also promise safety for family

Became head in 1934 - rapid expansion of gulags - labour camps had been used under lenin - in 1930 they were expanded and turned into a force labour camp to suppotr industrialisation

Deal with opponents without interference of regular courts - emphasis changed from ideology to economic considersations - pool of labour - many died due to hostile enviroment

oversaw the completation of the White Sea Canal - 141 mile canal used up to 180,000 labourers - digging by hand - 10,000 people died

Great Purg started under Yagoda - got rid of party members who had links with trotsky

Blamed for not protecting Kirov

Stalin annoted by his excessive flattery - Beria's appointment was viewed with some relief by the general population - seen as an uncle like figure - indiscriminate arrests are ineffective and a waste of man power 0 more convential police procedure - public trials only held if there was solid evidence - survelliance continued but only led to arrests when evidence was found - oversaw the murder of Trotsky

Focus on productivity of the gulag - make the gulag a profitable part of the soviet economy - food rations for inmates were improve - get maximum work out of prisonsers - using technical skills of inmates for specialist tasks - 1,000 scientists were put to work on various projects like military hardware - Andrei Tupolev and Sergei Korolev plated an important part in the space race

Early release from camps were cancelled so that prisoners' expertise could be used - grwoth in gulag economic activity from 2 billion roubles to 4.5 billtion roubles between 1937 and 1940 - by the early 50's it was a major contributor to the soviet ecnomy - over one third of the country's gold and a lot of its timber and coal was produced through the Gulag

Enthusiasm for personally torturing suspects - Nicknamed the bloody dwarf - Tortured suspects himself - attended polibruo meetings covered in blood - Stalin worried that heavy use of Terro was demoralising the population - mainly responsible for the purges

Sped up the process of arrests, trials and imprisonment - Regional troikas which were made of three people processed and dealt with cases - In September 1937, The Karelian Troika processed 231 prisoners a day

Yezhov considered the gulag to be underused - required camps to meet high quotas of executions - NVKD officers were often awarded medals and then executed themselves

Surveillance of the general public increased - plain clothes police officers were used - informants from the general public - number of detectives quadrupled - extra staff specifically employed to tortrue suspects - opponents included anyone who did not show sufficient commitment to the revolutionary cause - Members of the NKVD were purged

In 1941 - given powers of supervision of the Red Army responsibility for moitoring any disloyalty - given control over the process of deportations of national minorities who's loyalty was questionable - Crimean Tartars, Volga Germans and Chechens - Forcible removeable to designated areas were harsh

In 1943 0 red army had started to overrun areas previously captured by Germans - Special departments to root out traitors, deserters and cowards - anyone that was suspected of co-operating with Germands were shot or deported - One department called SMERSH dealt with suspected spies, involved in the murder of more than 4,000 polish officers at Katyn in 1943

Soviet troops who had escaped German capture were considered suspect - Order 270 treated all soviet troops who had surrendered to the Germans as traitors - returning prisoners of war were automatically held in detention camps

Beria launched a fresh wave of purges to gain Stalin's favour - Target was the Leningrad branch of the party- in 1949 over 20,000 members were imprisoned or exiled -

Mingrelian Affair of 1951 involved a purge of the party in Georgia - targed people who were of the Mingrelian ethnicity (Beria was one too)

in 1953, there was evidence that Stalin was planning naother purge before he died

A group of docters were arrested and accussed of trying to assassinate Stalin - The Doctor's Plot - meant there were no good doctors to held him when he died

Personally signed many death warrants - often added comments of those arrested (added more names) - gave NKVD quoas to meet - officers expected to put down their own names to meet the quotas - use of terror was an essential part of Stalin's other policies like collectivisation - argue that the expansion of terorr in the 30s was to get more slave labour to ensure that targets were met - the death of Kirov was used to start the great purge of the party - many aspects of the terror reflected Stalin's parnoid personality

Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria were all powerful in their own regard - all had sadistic tendencies - owned positions of pwoer to Stalin - None of them had much impact on the targets of the terror - all 3 added names to the list of people who stoood in their way - had large power over the gulags

Andropov head of the KGB under Khrushchev and Brezhnev  - Intellectuals - Andrei Sakharov - reading of reoign research papers and using foreign equipment - wrote a letter to Brezhnev in 1970 - Political dissidents - groups established to monitor the soviet union application of the UN declaration on Human rights and the Helsinki Accords of 1975 - Nationalists - Ukraines developing thier own culture - Religious dissidents 0 Baptists and Catholics - Refuseniks (soviet jews who had been died emigration to Isreal) - Illegall self published materials known as Samizdat became popular - most well known being the 'chronicle of current events'

Houses were searched and anything that could be used to spread material was confiscared - being labelled as a dissident would cause discrimination at work, failure to gain a place at uni and continued surveillance and harssment. 10,000 political priosners by the mid 70s- New criminal code in 1960 abolished night time interrogations which limited the powers of the KGB - Article 70 provided the KGB power to deal with anything 'anti-soviet agitation and propaganda' - Trial of Sinyavsky and Danieltwo dissident writes - dissidents sent to pyschartric hospitals to get around the helskiny accords - discredited dissidents in the eyes of the soviet public - paitents were held until they were cured ' treated with electric shocks and drug - sent to internal exile - increasingly concerned with ineternational reputation - dissidents were never a coherent group - no demonstrations

Andropov leader 1982-95 - Soviet Ambassador to Hungrary during the Hunagiran Uprisign of 1956 - Monitoring of dissident groups increased - methods became more sophisticated as a result of new technology - discontetn based on economic concerned - deliver a reasonable standard of living - communist government in Poland had faced serious unrest in 80-81 sparked by a raise in food prises - 'we'll make enough sausages and then we won't have any dissidents'

Andropov used secret police to clamp down on alcholism and absenteeism in the workplace - spot checks on ffactories to record attendence- upset many female workers who had to juggle a full time job and queuing for food - economic stagnation

Andropov visted factories to talk to workers - humourless and lacked charm - restriced by the fact tehy were talking to the ex head of the KGB - appointing new government advisors - Tatyana Zaslavakaya - surrounded himself with more free thinkers - conscious effort to promote a younger more reformist generation in the lower ranks of the party among these being Horbachev

Cultural policy promoted by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky - Poletarian Culture - Art for a social and political purpose - Constructivists aiming to create a new socialist culture - collective of the workesrs as a class not individualism - workers and peasnats encouraged to produce own culture - Magazine SMithy was established contained poems about machines and factories - Festivals based on socialist values and extra food rations were used as an ancentive - anniversary of the revolution was celebrated by a re-enactment of the storming of the winter palace using over 8,000 people

Prolekult was a direct challenge to hgih culture but by the earlt 20s the government was conerned at the variety of viewpoints and the threat it could pose

Reaction to WWI - Sweeping awat the old world

Influence of modernism - Emphasis on abstract art - fururism

Mayakovsky produced slogans and posters for the government

Malevick and Kandinsky examples of Fellow travellers who produced a lot of experiemtnal work in the early 20s

Avante Garde movement in theatre through Meyerhold who produced the pageant Mystery Bouffe in 1918 - a fantasy based on the workers defeating their exploiters

Cinema - Eisenstein - Strike and Battleshop Pokemhin - Experimetnal use of imagery - cinema as a tool for promoting political messages -

Too sophisticated for the auidence - Not useful for impacting the general public

Get rid of old bourgeois elements of society - assualt on traditional writes and artists - fellow travellers were replaced by artists whose loyalty to socialism was not questioned

Komsomol ( Youth Organisation of the Communist Party) encouraged to root out and attack bourgeois elements - theatre productions of suspect plays were booed - Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) made increasing bitter attacks on the Fellow Travellers - perferred works that stressed the achievements of the workers 'the cult of the lttle man'

Kateav's novel time toward in 1932 was an example of this - recounted a record breaking shift at Magnitogorsk steelworks - tied in with the 5 year plans

RAPP encouraged cultural activies in factories such as reading and drama groups

RAPP closed in 1932 - Union of Soviet Writers police socialist relaism - Zoshcenko confroemd but others refused to work under the restrictions and emigration - 'genre of silence'

Art - presented images of the worker and peasant working for socialism - infused with the cult of personality - statues of stalin started to appear  - Literature - emphasis away from the little man to heros of the paty - high literature developed through Sholohov and Gorky - much in common with traditional folk stories - heors of russian history, war stories and detective novels where a police agent thwarted evil capitalised - party controlled what was published- Music - Stalin walked out of a performance of Shostakovich's opera Lacy Macbeck of Mstensk - Popular music was military songs - government concern of decadent associations with jazz led to the banning of the saxophone in the 40s- Architeture - Stalinist baroque - edding cake architecture - callsical lines - moscow university and moscow metro system - elaborate murals and chandeliers- Film - Achievements of the revolution - revolution as a mass movements - more people died in the making of the film than the actual events - during WWII Cinema was used to promote patriotism - Alexander Nevsky was a popular film

Destalinisation - allowed works to be published that had previously been banned that were anti-stalinist - works by Isaac Babel a writer who had been shot during the purges were published - Younger poets were allowed to publish more experimental poetry - Jazz music made a reappearence - One Day in the Life of Ivan Densovich by Solzhenitsyn which recounted experience of the gulags was allowed to be published

Writers began to explore new themes such as spirutal concerns, bleakness of rural life, divorce, adultery and alcohol abuse - science fiction novels often contained messages that were critques of society - high and low brow literature criticised

noncomfority impact on youth culture - youth became influenced by western music - pop and rock and roll - stilyagi influenced by wester fashioned - from 1955 mustic was broadcasted into the USSR by the radio station Voice of America

Underground venues of Alexander Galich were spead to a wider auidence through tape recorders.

narrow the boundaries of what was acceptable - artists prefered it - more certainty over what was permissable - continued to focus on progaganda

By the 1970s soviet culture had become more conservative - The deverenschiki school of village prose highlighted the values of a simple rual life- Romanticised and featured a longing of a lost owrld of the past - Russian nationalism grew - Russites

Increasing influence of popular music - Soviet youth continued to be drawn to the west - Vysotsky emerged as an influential guitar poet - songs of delinquency - Growing alienation of young people from soviet society - Control excerised over record production and radio airtime but was undermined by the development of the casette recorder which was widely aviable

Limits of Khrushchev's cultural

Treatment of Paternak over his novel Doctor Zhicago - epic story of the russian civil war - contained criticisms of the revolution - debate over wether or not it should be published - extemely positive reception - Pasternak was awarded the 1958 nobel prize for literature - khrushchev refused to allowe pasternak to travel to sweden to recieve his prize - international embarrassment for the soviet government

Abstract art was another area where non-conformity was not encouraged - artists were berrated in front of the cameras - no action was taken against the artists

Kosmol groups were emploted to patrol the streets and dance halls to report on young people - 1961 government held a conference on what dances were permsisable

Cultural policy reflected his personality - erratic

Trial of Joesph Brodsky 1964 - read poets at secret gatherings - not licensed as a poet under the Writers Union - accused of Parasitism - Trial as a way to deter other independent artists - sent to 5 years of hard labour - detailed court records were kept and smuggled abroad - fellow writers campaigned for his release which was granted after 2 years and then he was expelled from the soviet union

Trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel 1966 - written short novels that depicted soviet life as harsh and surreal - written under psuedonyms - arrested for anti-soviet propaganda under artcle 70 - Their arrest resulted in a demonstration of over 200 students from Sinyavsk's insitute and an open letter of support signed by 63 leadering intellectuals - harsh setences to deter others

awards and privleges were given to those who served the intersets of the state - employment could be withdrwan from dissidents - Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers Union in 1969 and expelled from the soviet union in 1974 for his book The Gulag Archipelago

A group of unoffical artist put on an open air exhibition of their own work - propaganda campaign launched against them - non conformity was not popular among the common people