The
Transformative
State
The Intersection of Early
Soviet Ideology and Culture
Introduction
Outline
 Introduction
 Marxism
and the Russian Conundrum
 Ideology and the public sphere
 The intersection of ideology, policy, and
lived experience
 Conclusion
Marxism and the Russian Conundrum
 Marxism:
Historical determinism -Capitalism would produce a proletariat
which would eventually unite to
overthrow capitalism and establish a
socialist system
 The conundrum: Russia had not
experienced Marx’s full-fledged
capitalism yet. The “proletariat” was
relatively small; most Russians were
peasants.
Leninist ideology
 Argued
for the role of
the party to lead the
revolution (the
vanguard party)
 Required consciousnessraising
 Espoused the
dictatorship of the
proletariat
The Soviet view on public
culture
“Soviet authorities were never ashamed of
their monopoly on culture. They considered
the policy progressive. Culture was a
weapon of class struggle, available to
acquaint people with the socialist program.
Allowing the enemy access to mass media
would have seemed criminally stupid, and
neglecting propaganda a disservice to the
people.”
James von Geldern, Mass Culture in Soviet Russia
Transmission
Mechanisms
 The
press
 Film
 Campaigns
(agitation
trains)
 The public trial
 The education system
Communication strategies
 Broadcasting
the preferred message
(newspapers, film, art, public trials)
 Censoring unwanted messages (Glavlit)


Bolsheviks established the Revolutionary
Tribunal of the Press in January 1918
Replaced by the Chief Administration of
Literary and Publishing Affairs (Glavlit) in
June 1922
Mass media
 Even
with the advent of radio, newspapers
remained the dominant medium in the
USSR.
 The newspapers Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia
(News) were two of the primary party
organs and reached an elite audience.
 Other papers such as The Workers’
Newspaper, Working Moscow, and The
Peasant Newspaper were aimed at the less
politically literate masses.
Sample radio excerpt (1925)
A closer look
“Comrade workers, peasants, and everyone else listening to this
radio-newspaper in near and distant cities and villages of our Union.
You are sitting by your radio receivers and loudspeakers and listening
to Moscow. You want to know how Moscow is celebrating the eighth
anniversary of the October Revolution. We won’t be transmitting all of
today’s speeches, because they were already broadcast from Red
Square and you’ve heard them. But we will tell you how Moscow is
abuzz and enjoying itself today….
Decorations in the Red Presnya and Rogozho-Simonovsky districts
were particularly beautiful. The Red Presnya Raikom [district party
committee] was the center of the district festival. The Raikom building
is drowning in greenery and posters. The letters USSR are aflame on
both sides of the building. The slogans proclaim: Every Soviet, every
Ispolkom [Executive/ state administrative committee], every judicial
institution must be the faithful guardian of revolutionary legality. ‘May
the union of workers and peasants grow and expand, may its roots in
Communist Party leadership grow stronger.’”
“Heard in Moscow,” Radio-Newspaper Correspondence Report, No. 285, November 7, 1925
Using Pravda to send political messages
“The general line.” The flags read, “Lenin, industrialization,
complete collectivization, socialist competition, shock work”
and “Exceed the industrial financial plan.”
Film



Useful for targeting
illiterate populations (only
2/5 of the adult
population could read in
1920)
The Bolsheviks established
a subsection for movies in
the Extramural Education
Department of the
Commissariat of
Education in January
1918, headed by Lenin’s
wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia.
On August 27, 1919, the
Soviets nationalized the
film industry.
“…for us the most important
of all arts is the cinema.”
Lenin, 1922
Agitki


An agitka was a short
propaganda film
A sample agitka plot:
The Frightened Burzhui
“As a result of the
Revolution, a capitalist
loses his appetite and
becomes an insomniac.
Then he is ordered to
appear in a work
battalion. Honest labor
cures him immediately.”
(Kenez, p. 32)
Agitational trains and ships



Carried news reels
and propaganda
films into the
countryside
People saw the
country’s leaders
for the first time
These trains and
ships were
equipped with
their own printing
machines and film
screening
equipment
Products for mass consumption
 Songs
 Children’s
stories
 Pop fiction
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/webexhibits/sovietchildrensbooks/images/asas-02653-001-002_thumb.jpg
Socialist Realism

“Socialist realism is the basic method of Soviet
literature and literary criticism. It demands of
the artist the truthful, historically concrete
representation of reality in its revolutionary
development. Moreover, the truthfulness and
historical concreteness of the artistic
representation of reality must be linked with
the task of ideological transformation and
education of workers in the spirit of socialism.”
First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, 1934
Socialist realist art
 In
practice, socialist
realism extolled the
virtues of labor, whether
in industry or agriculture.
Bolshevik Harvest
Socialist realism, cont.

Socialist realism also contributed to the cult of
personality around Stalin and, to a lesser extent,
Lenin.
Typical socialist realist plots
 In
film, socialist realism generally consisted
of a plot in which a “in the process of
fulfilling a task, the hero, under the
tutelage of the seasoned Party worker,
acquires an increased understanding of
himself, the world around him, the tasks of
building communism, task struggle, and
the need for vigilance.” (Kenez, p. 144.)
Socialist realist ballet
The Football Player
“…in which the
inevitable tractor, a
coal shaft and a
derrick were parts of
the stage setting, and
which featured in its
program a harvest
dance, a coal dance,
and an oil dance….”
Picture of contemporary ballet dancer David
Hallberg performing the “Socialist Realist tractor
ballet” The Bright Stream in 2011
Socialist realist literature
The Literary Gazette was a newspaper
directed at writers. It urged utilitarianism in
literature and the portrayal of class enemies
like kulaks or entrepreneurs as individuals
lacking and redeeming qualities.
The public trial
 The
trial of the
Socialist
Revolutionaries

Foreshadowed
the Great Purge
of 1937-1939
Ideology through interaction
 Interaction





with Soviet policies
Collectivization
Industrialization
Time management/productivity policies
Family policy
Women’s issues
Collectivization



Forced the peasant population into stateowned or collectively-owned farms
Abolished private ownership of cattle,
equipment, seed, etc.
Met with staunch opposition from the
peasantry, who, rather than bringing their
livestock to the collective, slaughtered them
in protest (Hindus estimates that half of the
country’s pigs were killed and one fourth of
the cattle)
Objections to collectivization


“The very word kolkhoz inflamed her to fury. She
shuddered at the idea of mixing with other folk in
her everyday work and of being told by others
what she should and what she should not do.”
As one peasant argued with a kolkhoznik, “Give us
the same privileges that you are enjoying, good
land, machinery, credits, stock, and see if we
don’t even go one better than you….When a man
has his own things he will work his head off to get
results, but when everything is pooled as it is in a
kolkhoz, he says to himself – ‘I’ll do as little as I can,
for I’ll get as much as the other fellow anyway.’”
Media and culture meet policy
Swell the Harvest
Hey Fyodor and Malania,
And Avdotia and Pakhom,
Let’s strike up a merry song
About the sowing season.
Hey you, Vanya, best stretch out
That accordion past your ears.
Why should you be sowing from
Your grandpa’s basket in these years.
Take a gander in the barn –
Ain’t it mighty nifty
How that newfangled machine
Sorts the grain so swiftly
Hey you, basket, blow away,
Like some measly weevil,
Cuz we got ourselves a drill
A fancy city seed-drill.
It ain’t nothing like you are -It’ll dance a pretty dance,
Each seed drops out where it should,
Not a single one askance
Everyday experience of
collectivization



Long lines and shortages (the USSR was exporting
foodstuffs like caviar, butter, eggs, cheese, and
jam to make money to purchase steel and iron
and other industrial products abroad)
Food rations were allotted by class; people
classified as “proletariat” received considerably
more than the “non-proletariat”
Meanwhile, mass media praised collectivization as
a success and the mechanization of agriculture –
tractor production was constantly upheld by
Soviet leaders as a sign of Soviet progress
Attitudes toward people who oppose Soviet
objectives: The example of industrialization
and the Five Year Plan
“The five year plan in four – this was the new
slogan and the new ambition, and from
hundreds of posters and banners floating from
buildings, plastered on corner posts, staring from
street cars, stuck onto automobiles, the words
flashed their imperious message. Anybody who
questioned the wisdom or the possibility of
packing a generation of industrial development
into four years…was an opportunist, a defeatist,
a deviator, a traitor, a blackguard, a counterrevolutionary – anything but a true soldier of the
Revolution and of the one and only cause.”
Maurice Hindus, Red Bread
Standardization and
Productivity
 The
Soviets targeted religious holidays in
particular in order to make people more
productive. One scholar estimates that
people in the Tver region had 100 free
days a year, when Sundays and national
and local holidays were factored in.
Manipulating the Calendar
Family and women’s issues
 Marriage:
Under decrees passed within
days of attaining power, the Bolsheviks
changed the law so that women were no
longer forced to adopt their husband’s
family name and making it easier to
divorce.
 Abortion: The Bolsheviks legalized abortion
in 1920 but were concerned by the high
number of abortions that subsequently
took place.
Opposition


Opposition to the regime sometimes surfaced in
anonymous letters to newspapers
Though unpublished, these letters demonstrate
that people were aware of the tension between
Soviet propaganda and reality.
“‘So this is the glorious epoch,’ wrote one anonymous writer
in 1936. But ‘for me the following thing remains
incomprehensible… We have a colossal army of convicts,
tens of millions of them, who are overflowing the jails, the
camps, and the [labor] colonies…In the majority of cases
the accusation against them is completely brazen, crass and
based entirely on lies…’”
“From utopia to ideology”
Over time, ideology “within the party
underwent fundamental changes; its content
was drained; only the hollow forms of the
terminology remained.”
About ideology



“Ideology is the language
of politics in the USSR.”
“Ideology is…an exercise in
salesmanship or public
relations. It seeks to
persuade the Soviet citizens
that theirs is the best of all
possible societies.”
Meyer proposes a law: “The
intensity of the
indoctrination and the
rigidity of the official dogma
are inversely proportional to
the credibility of the
doctrine.”
Conclusion


Soviet leaders sought to permeate the public
sphere with Leninist ideology in order to rouse
the proletariat and peasants to class
consciousness and to establish legitimacy for
their government. This would be a particularly
strong emphasis of Stalinist propaganda (e.g.
the slogan “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for a
happy childhood!”).
The rhetoric of ideology was prevalent
through the Gorbachev period; adherence to
the beliefs underlying that ideology, however,
was significantly weakened.