High Stalinism
Dictatorship and Totalitarianism
● Stalin’s dictatorship seemed unchallengeable
● The USSR was now the world’s second superpower
● During the war, persecution had been relaxed
○ Persecution of religion slacked, for example
● Any liberal tendencies had been blocked after the end of the war
● High Stalinism was a more extreme version of the terror of the 1930s
● Stalin was aging (70 years old in 1949), and he suffered a stroke in 1946
● No Party congresses were held between 1939 and 1952
● The Politburo was reduced to an advisory body
● Inertia was a key feature of High Stalinism, the politburo became full of “yes-men”,
who would agree with Stalin and not question ideology, similar to the Brezhnevian
Stagnation
Renewed Terror
● Stalin enforced isolation from the West
● POWs were treated extremely harshly
● February 1947 - marriages to foreigners outlawed.
● An extreme police state was established
● Lavrentii Beria ran the NKVD, and was a sadistic psychopath (upon his downfall he
was convicted of multiple rapes and murders)
● 12 million were sent to camps (nearly 7% of the population)
● Zhdanov censored all culture, the period was known as the Zhdanovshchina
● Only Socialist Realism was permitted as an art form
● Anti-semitism grew - Jewish and Zionist newspapers were suppressed, the Holocaust
was sidelined as a “fascist crime” with no mention of Jewish deaths.
Stalin’s Cult of Personality
● Stalin’s cult of personality was raised to new heights after 1945
● He was the hero of plays and songs
● On his 70th Birthday, a portrait of him was projected into the air above Red Square
● Many cities were named after him; Stalingrad, Stalino, Stalinsk, and the capital of
the Kyrgyz Soviet Republic was renamed from Dushanbe to Stalinabad
● There were plans to rename Moscow to Stalinodar
The Leningrad Affair, The Doctors’ Plot
and more Purges
● The Leningrad affair
○ Leningrad and Moscow had a great rivalry
○ Zhdanov’s power base was in Leningrad
○ Stalin resented Leningrad’s pride at surviving the siege from 1941 to 1944
○ The Leningrad party was purged in 1949
○ All were executed by October 1950
● Purges
○ The Leningrad affair was the first major purge since 1938, despite Leningrad
never being a major threat
○ The next purge in 1951 was the Mingrelian Case. It targeted the Georgian
party for alleged Western collaboration
○ Stalin was an initial supporter of Israel, but then reverted to anti-semitism
upon deciding Israel was an American puppet. He feared any Jewish control
of the USSR, and this was reinforced when Israeli ambassador and future
president Golda Meir visited in 1948, and she was adored by Soviet Jews.
● The Doctor’s plot
○ Lydia Timashuk was a female doctor who wrote to Stalin blaming Zhdanov’s
death on sloppy doctors in 1948.
○ Stalin did nothing at the time but used it as an excuse in 1952 to arrest
doctors for being part of a “Zionist conspiracy”
○ Stalin was a fierce Anti-Zionist, and claimed his Jewish doctors were on the
payroll of the USA and Israel, and were using their position to harm the
USSR
○ High-ranking Jews mysteriously “disappeared” or would die in “accidents”