The Transformation of the Soviet Union’s International Position:

During Great Patriotic War – many aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship were softened as the regime sought to mobilise the patriotism of the people. After victory was achieved, however, Stalin turned back to repression, authoritarianism and paranoia. In these years of ‘High Stalinism’, the cult of personality reached even greater heights. Both the ruler’s ad the ruled lived in a climate of fear until the death of Stalin in March 1953.

Dictatorship and totalitarianism:

High Stalinism was the culmination of Stalin’s regime, lasting from 1945 to 1953. It was the most extreme expression of Stalinism.

Key Features:

Unchallenged leadership by Stalin

An extreme form of dictatorship

Stalin as the heroic leader of the Great Patriotic War

The Stalin cult portrayed him as god-like & apart from others

A secret police state: renewed terror

Cultural purges in the name of ideological ‘purity’

The Party and its institutions weakened or ignored

Rivalries & plots amongst Stalin’s inner circle

Stalin increasingly withdrawn & paranoid

Deep suspicion of any influences from outside the USSR

A lack of policy reform due to stagnation & inertia at the top of the government

During the war – some aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship had been relaxed, for example religion was tolerated and churches were reopened. But after the war, Stalin’s dictatorship became even stronger than before.

The Party was side-lined; there were no Party congress between 1939 and 1952. The Politburo and Central Committee did only what Stalin ordered.

The Red Army and its heroes were downgraded, so they would not challenge Stalin. For example, in 1946 war hero Marshal Zhukov was sent to faraway Odessa to a lower-level command.

Stalin’s inner circle were kept divided by Stalin’s schemes and their own rivalries. For example, Malenkov and Beria plotted against Zhdanov and engineered his downfall in 1948.

Terror was renewed to ensure people gave their absolute obedience to the state – totalitarianism.

Renewed terror:

Stalin enforced the USSR’s isolation from the non-socialist world. This was partly for security reasons as the Cold War intensified, but also for fear of Soviets losing their ideological commitment, for example if they saw how much better people lived in other countries.

Around 15% of 1.8 mil returned prisoners of war were sent to the gulags.

Any contact with foreigners could get a person denounced and arrested. A 1947 law outlawed marriage to foreigners.

Foreign travel by Soviet citizens was tightly controlled. Few were allowed to leave the USSR.

The sense of terror was pervasive, and tens of thousands of Soviet citizens continued to be arrested during Stalin’s last years, sometimes for no more than a careless few word. In total, around 12 million wartime survivors were sent to the gulags.

The NKVD under Beria:
After the war, Lavrentii Beria was not only NKVD chief, but also deputy prime minister, a full member of the Politburo, and the head of the USSR’s atomic weapon programme.

The NKVD under Beria was strengthened and reorganised as 2 separate ministries:

The MVD which controlled domestic security and the gulags

The MGB which handled counter-intelligence and espionage

Zhdanovism and the culture purge:
Andrei Zhdanov were appointed to lead cultural. Policy in 1946.

He insisted that Soviet artists and writers followed Party lines: socialist realism, the praise of Stalin and Soviet achievements, and criticism of American commercialism and inequalities.

Those whose work did not embody socialist realism had to publicly apologise in order to continue working.

Zhdanovism began with the purge of 2 literacy works: Zoschenko’s The Adventure of a Monkey and a collection of poems by Anna Akhmatova. The writers were expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers.

In music, Shostakovich and Prokofiev were 2 of the composers criticised for ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’ and ‘anti-socialist tendencies. They were removed from their teaching posts and Prokofiev’s wife was imprisoned.

Western cultural influences were blocked. It was impossible to ger non- communist foreign newspapers, and only a few approved foreign books were translated into Russian.

Soviet scientific development was hampered by Trofim Lysenko’s dominance over the Academy of Sciences; new theories or lines of research were suppressed if they somehow contacted Marxist principles.

Stalin’s cult of personality:

Building on his reputation as the saviour of the USSR, Stalin was portrayed as the world’s greater living genus, equally superior in all areas of philosophy, science, military strategy and economics.

For example, it became customary or all books and articles to start and end with a paragraph acknowledging Stalin’s genius on the subject.

Stalin’s victory in the Great Patriotic War replaced Lenin’s October/ November Revolution as the greatest event of Soviet history.

Stalin was portrayed as a man of the people, who was instinctively in touch with what the average worker was thinking, but the fact he was increasingly isolated and often misled but his own propagandists.

Towns and cities competed for the honour of being named after Stalin; there was even a movement for Moscow to be renamed Stalinodar.

Stalin prizes were launched in the USSR after it was felt that Soviets were being excluded from winning as many Nobel prizes as they deserve.

The Leningrad affair; purges and the Doctors’ Plot:

The Leningrad affair:
Stalin was suspicious of the Party’s base in Leningrad because his rivals often built up a power base there.

Stalin also did not like the way Leningraders glorified their heroic struggle to survive their 872-day siege during the Great Patriotic War. There had been accusations that Stalin could have done more help to the city, such as airdrops of food or large-scale evacuations.

In 1948, Zhdanov appeared to be out of favour with Stalin, when he died of a heart attack in August, Stalin launched a purge of the Leningrad Party.

Leading Party officials, such as Nikolai Vozenski, were arrested, interrogated and executed in 1950. Most of these people had owed their positions to Zhdanov.

By 1950, 2000 Party officials had been dismissed and replaced by pro-Stalin communists.

Purges:

The Leningrad affair was the 1st major Party purge since 1938, more followed increasing the climate of fear.

The next was the ‘Mingrelian Case’. In 1951, targeted at Party officials in Georgia who were mainly from the Mingrelian ethic group.

Bera was a Mingrelian, and the accusations were mainly against followers of Beria. Many were also accused of conspiring with ‘Jewish plotters’

Stalin was using the accusations to contain Bera’s power. The accusations were still being made at the time of Stalin’s death.

The Doctor’s plot:

A doctor called Lydia Timashuk accused the doctors who had treated Zhdanov of contributing to his death in August 1948.

In 1952, Stalin used this complaint as a reason to arrest many Jewish doctors for participating ‘Zionist conspiracy’ to harm the USR on behalf of Iran and its ally, the USA.

Other Jewish people were caught up in the purge, including the Jewish wives of Molotov and Kalinin.

Thousands of ordinary Jewish people were also arrested and deported to the gulag.

Nine senior doctors were condemned to death, but Stalin’s own death saved them from execution

24 – The transformation of the Soviet Union’s international position:

In 1941, the USSR had been hopelessly unprepared for war, in danger of being overrun by the German invasion. By 1945, Stalin presided over a victorious superpower.

Victory in the Second World War enabled Stalin to establish a wide sphere of influence in East Central Europe, but Soviet expansion led to a breakdown in relations with the West the onset of the Cold War. By the time Stalin died in 1953 there were huge pressures for change in the USSR, both in foreign and domestic policies.

The Soviet superpower:

1944 – 45: Advanced by the Red Army into East Central Europe

1945: Summit conferences at Yalta and Potsdam

1947: US Marshall Plan and ‘Truman Doctrine’

1948: Communist coup in Czechoslovakia

Start of the Berlin Blockade

1949: End of the Berlin Blockade

Successful test of the Soviet atom bomb

1953: The death of Stalin

The emergence of a ‘superpower’:

By the end of the Great Patriotic War was the USSR had emerged as a global power. Its status as the world’s only other superpower was confirmed when, in 1949, it successfully tested an atomic bomb.

A military-industrial war machine: 7.5 million well-equipped soldiers

Increased territory: by the end of the war, the USSR controlled the Baltic States and eastern Poland

Satellite states: between 1945 and 1948, the Soviet Union consolidated its dominance over East Germany and the states of East Central Europe

UN Permanent member: the USSR as one of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council

Atomic power: the USSR had developed an atomic bomb by August 1949

Increased territory: By the end of the war, the USSR controlled the Baltic States and eastern Poland

The formation of a Soviet bloc:
By 1948, most o the Eastern European countries had either been absorbed into the USSR or turned into satellite estates governed by parties closely linked to the USSR

In some cases, this involved ‘salami tactics’, in which communist parties joined with socialists and liberals to gain power, but then isolated and eliminated their rivals ‘slice by slice’

Stalin hoped that this buffer zone of satellite states would help to protect the USSR from a future invasion by the West:

Conflict with the USA and the Capitalist West:

The wartime summit conferences reflected the latent disagreement between the USA, Great Britain and the USSR.

At Torkan in 1943, the Allies agreed to demand unconditional surrender from Germany. But there were ideological differences, and Stalin was critical of his Western allies not opening a ‘Second Font’ in the European War, to relive the pressure on the Red Army.

The meeting between Stalin and Churchill in Moscow, late in 1944, was plagued by disagreements over the future of Poland.

The Yalta conference in February 1945 was dominated by conflicting ideas about the pot-war borders of Germany and Poland

The Potsdam conference in February 1945 was dominated by conflicting ideas about the post-war orders of German and Poland.

The Potsdam conference July- August 1945 ended with no final peace agreement. Differences that had been papered over or just delayed, at Yalta became more urgent. By this time, it was clear ow the USSR was asserting political control over the countries it has liberated

The breakdown of East-West relations:

Between 1946 and 1949, tensions hardened into Cold War confrontations. There were 3 main stages to this breakdown.

Stage 1: 1946:
The USA and Brittan were concerned by Soviet expansionism and the USSR’s demand for its right to have a ‘buffer zone’ against future aggression.

This was exacerbated but ‘The Long Telegram’: a report from Moscow by the American diplomat George Kennan in 1946, urging the USA to contain the spread of communism in Europe.

The former British prime minister Winston Churchill gave a speech, in March 1946 warning of an. ‘iron curtain’ dividing Europe, advising that ‘strength’ was needed to deal with the USSR.

Stage 2: 1947-8:
By 1947, Western Europe was plagued by economic decline and political instability, with strong communist parties in Italy and France.

The announcement of the Truman Doctrine in March 1947 committed the USA to a policy of containment.

In June 1947, the Marshall Pan – providing US aid for European economic recovery – received a hostile Soviet response, as Stalin believed it would extend US influence.

Stage 3 1948-49:

After the war, the USSR and the West had disagreed over the control of Berlin

In the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49, Stalin cut off all road and rail links between Berlin and the Western zones of Germany. This hardened the divisions of Germany.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was formed in 1949. The establishment of this Atlantic alliance for the defence of Europe was seen by the USSR as a hostile act.

The first successful test of the Soviet atomic bomb in August 1949, and victory for the communist party in the Chinese Civil War in 1950, and also increased Cold War tensions.

The death of Stalin:

By 1953, Stalin was 73 and in poor health. His inner circle knew that change was necessary for the USSR, but they also knew that change was necessary for the USSR, but they also knew that change was not possible until Stalin died.

Stalin had a massive stroke on 28th February, and died on 5t March

Stalin’s inner circle gathered at his bedside, but delayed calling doctors as many felt under the threat of a new purge; Stalin’s increasingly unpredictable and menacing behaviour in early 1953 suggested a new wave of repression and terror might be on its way if Stalin recovered.

Soviet citizens grieved Stalin’s death. His funeral united the country in mourning

Stalin’s legacy at home and abroad:
No clear successor

Cold War tensions

Long-term underinvestment in agriculture and consumer goods

Psychological damage to survivors of terror

Demographic damage to the USSR from terror and famine

The spread of Stalinism to Europe and Asia

National prestige following victory over Germany

The USSR as a nuclear superpower

The USSR as an industrial power

Problems for Stalin’s successors:

Stalin’s legacy created serious problems for his successors:

Who should take over as leader of the Party:

There was no clear successor & at first there was a return to collective responsibility, until a tense power struggle led to Nikita Khrushchev eventually emerging as the new Soviet leader.

How to tackle the legacy of terror:

Beria was executed, but perhaps as much for what he knew about the other leadership contenders as for his own crimes.

How to ‘de-Stalinise’ the USSR:
Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s ‘crimes and errors’ in his ‘Secret Speech’ in February 1956, and people were released from the gulags – but the gulags themselves did not disappear.

How to improve agriculture:
The state could pay kolkhozes more, but that would either men less money for industry or higher prices for food.

How to centrally plan for consumers:
Meeting consumer needs continued to be complex to plan with a command economy

How to keep people believing in a socialist future:

This was especially difficult for the new Satellite states of the Soviet ‘empire’ with unrest spreading through East Germany, Poland and Hungary.