Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (43 page)

The challenge for the Soviet state was that some aspects of the
wartime interaction between Anglo-American culture and its citizens could not be easily controlled. Films and music could be censored. Physical goods were more tricky and real live foreign sailors were deeply problematic. Many Soviet citizens performed as they should or even ‘thought Bolshevik’, shunning the wartime visitors to Arctic Russia and embracing the official rhetoric about their cowardice and moral decrep- itude. However, many others engaged with them and deployed the ‘tactic’ of
bricolage
in order to tread carefully along the boundaries of legitimate behaviour. Most of these people were not ‘resisting’ Soviet power: their actions reveal a careful intent to remain inside the ‘habitat’ of Soviet life. Unfortunately many of them fell victim to the rapid shift in the categories of Soviet and un-Soviet behaviour that occurred once the war was over.

^{213
B. Fieseler, ‘Il’f’s and Petrov’s “Amerika”, 1935/36’, paper presented at}
Perceiving and Imagining ‘the Other’: The Soviet Union and the USA in the 20th Century
(Moscow, 2008).

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PART III

BEING SOVIET IN THE POST-WAR YEARS

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4

Panics, Peace, and Pacifism: Official Soviet Diplomatic Identity in the late-Stalin years 1945–531

On 9 May 1945 British, American, and Soviet forces celebrated their
shared victory over fascism with rounds of mutual hugging, back-slapping, and congratulation in central Germany. However, by the end of 1947 diplomatic relations between the Grand Alliance partners had degenerated to the point where it seemed possible that they might soon turn their guns against one another. The final two chapters of this book focus on the place of Britain and America within the diplomatic and cultural identity of the Soviet Union between 1945 and Stalin’s death. Sovietness, in an interna- tional context, was by no means exclusively associated with the Anglo- Saxon powers after 1945. The Soviet ‘liberation’ of Eastern Europe and later protection of the oppressed people’s of the Far East were also important features of official self-definition. However, the shift from complex allies to implacable enemies made Britain, and in particular America, the most significant benchmarks for Sovietness in this period.

Official Soviet Identity during the war had emphasized that the
USSR was playing the leading role in the global struggle to defeat fascism. However, it had also stressed that cooperation with the pro- gressive and democratic Anglo-Saxon powers could and would extend beyond the end of the war. That identity, at the heart of the cooperating Grand Alliance, remained largely intact until the summer of 1947. The Soviet press did not deny that there were differences of opinion amongst the Great Powers but it continued to emphasize the possibilities for fruitful collaboration. Historians have pinpointed the outbreak of the

^{1
This chapter has been published in two fuller articles: Johnston, ‘Subversive Tales?’,}
and T. P. Johnston, ‘Peace or Pacifism? The Soviet “Struggle for Peace in all the World” 1948–54’,
Slavonic and East European Review
, 86.2 (2008), 259–82.

128
Being Soviet

Cold War on the occasion of Stalin’s February 1946 speech to the
electors of Moscow, the failure of the Council of Foreign Ministers in April 1947, or the June 1947 discussions surrounding the Marshall Plan.
^{2
The vital moment in the evolution of the official press has also}
been identified in February 1946 or the winter of 1946–7.
^3
However,
many of these assessments reflect a post-hoc knowledge that the Cold War was coming. The diplomatic identity of the USSR remained largely rooted in great power collaboration until September 1947.

This narrative of great power collaboration had failed to convince
many Soviet citizens in wartime. Rumours circulated widely within the word-of-mouth network that the Allies were pressurizing the regime into concessions in religious, national, and economic policy. Suspicion of Britain and America did not evaporate but instead deepened after May 1945. The early post-war months were a particularly fertile period for war rumours and war panics that spread throughout the USSR. This fear of invasion contributed greatly to the success of the new version of Soviet- ness that emerged once great power collaboration had been abandoned. Official Soviet Identity in the early Cold War stressed the USSR’s role as a benefactor to the world’s oppressed and the defender of world peace. The narrative of peace was a highly successful feature of the Official Soviet Identity that endured, in some form, until the collapse of the USSR. The Soviet ‘Struggle for Peace in all the World’ was largely perceived as an empty rhetorical exercise by contemporary outside observers.
^{4
More recently a number of authors have briefly touched}
upon the Soviet Peace Campaigns, but this chapter represents the first thorough evaluation of their impact inside the USSR.
^{5
The Peace}

^{2
A. Resis, ‘Stalin, The Politburo and the Onset of the Cold War’,}
The Carl Beck
Papers in Russian and Eastern European Studies, 107 (1998), 16–26; Werth,
Russia: The
Post-War Years (New York, 1971), viii; G. Roberts, ‘Moscow and the Marshall Plan: Politics, Ideology and the Onset of the Cold War, 1947’, in C. Reed ed.,
The Stalin
Years: A Reader (Basingstoke, 2003), 170–89; Danilov and Pyzhikov,
Rozhdenie sverx-
derzhavy: SSSR v pervye poslevoennye gody (Moscow, 2001), 45.

^{3
A. Dallin, ‘America Through Soviet Eyes’,}
Public Opinion Quarterly,
11.1 (1947),

26–39; Brooks,
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold
War (Princeton, 2000), 207–8.

^4
Barghoorn,
The Soviet Image of the United States: A Study in Distortion
(New York,

1950), 248–50. The success of the Peace Campaigns in Western Europe and America
received more attention: D. H. McLachlan, ‘The Partisans of Peace’,
International Affairs,
27.1 (1951), 10–17; R. Liberman,
The Strangest Dream: Communism, Antic-
ommunism and the U.S. Peace Movement, 1945–1963 (New York, 2000).

^{5
On the rhetoric of the campaigns see: Brooks,}
Thank You,
224–5; Fateev,
Obraz

vraga v sovetskoi propagande: 1945–54
(Moscow, 1999), 125–7. On responses, see

Panics, Peace, and Pacifism 1945–53
129

Campaigns generated great enthusiasm amongst their participants.
However, these enthusiastic participants often transformed the cam- paigns, via the ‘tactic’ of reappropriation, from a robust struggle for Soviet might into a platform for the articulation of personal grief.

FROM ALLIES TO ENEMIES: BRITAIN AND AMERICA, MAY 1945–SEPTEMBER 1947

The diplomatic identity of the USSR remained as a member of a
collaborative, peace-loving community of Great Powers until the summer of 1947. In the first flush of victory
Ogon¨ek
carried pictures of American Embassy Staff and Soviet citizens celebrating together in Moscow, and
Pravda
declared that the ‘cooperation of the great powers’ would be

the foundation of the post-war peace.
^{6
Over the coming months, the}
Potsdam Conference, opening of the United Nations, and Nuremburg

Trials were all held up as evidence of the continued fruitfulness of the
wartime alliance.
^{7
This Great Power cooperation reinforced the prestige}
and honour of the Soviet state by association. As Molotov explained in November 1945, the ‘joint struggle of the democratic countries’ had bolstered the ‘international prestige of the USSR’.
^{8
Soviet honour shifted}
from the battlefield to the conference table, but it remained in association with the other freedom-loving progressive powers.

Great power relations were not without some difficulties in this earliest
post-war period. However, any negative commentary was directed at foreign newspapers such as
The Times, The Economist
, and
Le Monde
, or against nebulous and largely defeated ‘reactionary forces’.
^9
As
Ogon¨ek
explained, ‘Reaction has suffered a defeat in Europe’, the people were looking to the ‘three great powers’ to lead them into a progressive future.
^{10
This language of post-war collaboration reflected the expectations}

Zubkova,
Poslevoennoe Sovetskoe Obshchestvo: Politcka i Povsednevnost’ 1945–53

(Moscow, 2000), 130–5; S. Yekelchyk, ‘The Civic Duty to Hate: Stalinist Citizenship
as Political Practice and Civic Emotion (Kiev, 1943–53)’,
Kritika
, 7.3 (2006), 529–56. See also Gould-Davies’ very brief discussion: N. Gould-Davies, ‘Pacifist Blowback?’
Cold War International History Project Bulletin,
11 (1998), 267–8.

^6
Ogon¨ek
, 05.1945: 20–1, p. 7;
Pravda
, 22.07.45, p. 4.

^7
Ogon¨ek
, 07.1945: 28, p. 30; 08.1945: 31, p. 1;
Pravda
, 19.10.45, pp. 1–3.

^8
Pravda
, 07.11.45, pp. 1–2.

^9
Pravda
, 05.08.45, p. 4; 19.08.45, p. 4; 18.11.45, p. 4; 25.11.45, p. 4.

^10
Ogon¨ek
, 07.1945: 30, p. 1.

130
Being Soviet

amongst the Soviet leadership that they would enjoy a period of fruitful
post-war cooperation with their wartime Allies.
^{11
Post-war diplomatic}
Official Soviet Identity was as a mighty power amongst the leading states in the world.

The first moment of serious disagreement amongst the Allies came in
early 1946 when the USSR came under pressure from Britain and America to remove its troops from Iran. The Iran Crisis precipitated a qualitative shift in tone that was reinforced by Stalin’s February 1946 speech to the Moscow electors. Stalin explained that the war had broken out ‘as an inevitable result of . . . modern monopoly capitalism’.
^12
With-
in less than a month Churchill replied with his famous warning about an ‘Iron Curtain’ descending across Europe. Over the course of 1946 a number of subtle shifts took place. The American and British govern- ments were no longer heralded in the May Day or Revolutionary declarations of the Central Committee.
^{13
The Soviet press also began}
to grumble about the Allies’ failure to disarm and deindustrialize Western Germany and reacted angrily to the unification of the British and American occupation zones in January 1947.
^{14
The growing global}
network of American military bases and the British engagements in Greece and Indonesia also came in for tentative criticism.
¹⁵

However, despite these criticisms of Anglo-American policy, Official
Soviet Identity remained in association with, rather than distinction from, the other Great Powers. The Soviet press’ main objection during the Iran Crisis was that the issue had been dragged before the UN Security Council, and not resolved by ‘common-sense’ discussion amongst the USSR, Britain, and the USA.
^{16
Stalin’s criticism of}
Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech focused on the fact that it might ‘sow the seeds of dissention amongst the allied states’.
^17
The
vozhd’
also offered a series of high-profile interviews during which he affirmed that he ‘did not believe in the danger of a new war’.
^{18
The comments}
of figures such as J. B. Priestley, who praised British friendship with the