Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (48 page)

Panics, Peace, and Pacifism 1945–53
147

result, in late 1950 Stalin could engage in an obscure discussion about
linguistics, whilst Truman, the leader of the ‘Free World’, spoke about bombing Asian villages.
⁹⁴

The accelerated ‘Struggle for Peace’ and the Korean War also stimu-
lated the emergence of a renewed focus on the Soviet Union as a ‘patron state’. Particularly after 1947, the Soviet press took great pride in contrasting Soviet support to post-war Eastern Europe with American ‘enslavement’ via the Marshall Plan.
^{95
Eastern European governments}
played their part by routinely thanking the Red Army for their libera- tion from fascist occupation.
^{96
The Chinese Revolution and the Korean}
War shifted the focus of Soviet benefaction to Asia. There was a wave of interest in all things eastern at the end of the 1940s. Lectures and newspaper articles dwelt at length on the sufferings of capitalist subjects in the Asian colonies and the joyful life of the People’s Republics of China and Korea.
^{97
China received greatest attention and was the}
recipient of greatest benefaction in this period. The song ‘Moscow- Beijing’, penned in the last years of Stalin’s rule, exemplified the extent to which the Chinese were the greatest amongst the USSR’s little brothers:

A Russian and a Chinese are brothers forever
The unity of peoples and races is strengthening

.. .

Moscow-Beijing, Moscow-Beijing,
The peoples are advancing,

For the bright labour, for the lasting peace,
Under the banner of freedom.
⁹⁸

Despite the seemingly egalitarian tone of the song, Soviet benefaction
came at the cost of permanent performance of thanks to the mighty USSR. Speaking at the first All Union Congress of Supporters of Peace, the writer Ibragimov described how the peoples of the East had hope because the Soviet Union gave them a vision of the future.
^99
Pravda

^{94
J. Brooks. ‘When the Cold War Did not End: The Soviet Peace Offensive of 1953}
and the American Response’,
Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Kennan
Institute Occasional Papers Series, 278 (2000), 5–6.

^95
Ogon¨ek
, 08.1948: 32, pp. 6–8.

^96
Ogon¨ek
, 05.1949: 21, p. 12.

^97
Pravda,
07.09.49, p. 3;
Ogon¨ek
11.1949: 45, pp. 3–7.

^{98
Cited in: A. Lukin,}
The Bear Watches the Dragon: Russia’s Perceptions of China and the
Evolution of Russian-Chinese Relations Since the Eighteenth Century (London, 2003), 118.

^{99
GARF f. R9539, op. 1, d. 5, l. 4.}

148
Being Soviet

Fig. 4.2
‘The People of the world don’t want a repeat of the calamity of war.’

I. Gaif (1949). A brave worker rebuffs Uncle Sam’s attempts to bribe him with
eggs in order to involve him in a conflict. In the background French workers demonstrate on behalf of the USSR.

informed its readership that the paper received thousands of letters every
day, from around the globe, ‘And in every letter there is an expression of warm gratitude to the Soviet Union’.
^{100
This orgy of thanks reached its}
peak during the celebration of Stalin’s seventieth birthday in December 1950 when entire newspaper editions were devoted to the gratitude that humanity was pouring out on the great global leader.
^{101
At least}
one recent work argues that the roots of the Sino-Soviet split lay in Moscow’s insistence that the Chinese continuously express their thanks to the USSR.
¹⁰²

By the late 1940s, the USSR was an independent global power with
global interests. The Peace Campaigns were the lens through which Soviet citizens were to imbibe this new superpower self-consciousness. The enlightening impulse within the Soviet posture as a patron of the peoples of Asia shared some similarities with pre-Revolutionary

^100
Pravda
, 17.10.48, p. 4.
^101
Ogon¨ek
, 12.1949: 51.

^{102
S. N. Goncharov, J. W. Lewis and X. Litai, eds.,}
Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao
and the Korean War (Stanford, 1993), 203–18.

Panics, Peace, and Pacifism 1945–53
149

‘imperial’ discourse. However, it was articulated in explicitly anti-
imperial terms and is best understood in the specific context of a decol- onizing Cold War world, rather than by recourse to nineteenth-century Russian messianism. It was a specifically Soviet, twentieth-century, glob- ally ambitious phenomenon rather than simply a reworking of Russian
nineteenth-century nationalism.
^{103
The image of the USSR as a patron}
state was an inclusive identity that was accessible to all Soviet citizens. Ukrainians, Belarussians, and Turkmen were all patrons of the oppressed peoples of Vietnam and Korea. Soviet superpower identity developed further in the later 1950s with the acceleration of the arms race and decolonization. Nonetheless, the language of peace, moral authority, and patronage remained at the heart of what it meant to be Soviet until the Gorbachev era. The late-Stalinist Peace Campaigns played a vital role in the formation of this new Official Soviet Identity that was conscious of its greatness and global in its ambition.

‘STRUGGLING FOR PEACE’ OR PACIFISM? POPULAR PARTICIPATION IN THE PEACE CAMPAIGNS

An unusually successful campaign

In the eyes of those who propagated it, the ‘Struggle for Peace’ was a
highly successful political campaign. This was particularly the case in relation to the petition campaigns after 1950. Participation was impres- sively high in numerical terms. The 1950 campaign in Arkhangel’sk and Kiev
oblasts
collected 98 per cent and 99 per cent of the signatures of local residents, a turnout as high as that for recent elections.
^{104
Local commis-}
sions spoke of reopening disused
agitpunkts
and mobilizing fresh agitators

who had never spoken in public before.
^{105
About 14,000 (20 per cent) of}
the 70,000 agitators in Stalin
oblast’
who participated in the Stockholm campaign were speaking in public for the first time.
¹⁰⁶

Soviet agitators also reported that the signature-gathering campaigns
were high on quality. The level of popular engagement surpassed even the normal enthusiasm for global news. One agitator noted that, ‘There

^{103
P. J. S. Duncan,}
Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Holy Revolution, Communism
and After (London, 2000).

^{104
Inf. GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 2, d. 1150 ll. 91; TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 24, d. 1107, l. 57.}

^{105
Inf. GARF f. R9539, op. 1, d. 58, l. 16.}

^{106
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 88, d. 959, l. 68.}

150
Being Soviet

has not been in the last few years such a great activisation of the
collective farmers of Ustvaenskii
raion
as there have been at the meet- ings’ associated with the Stockholm Declaration’.
^{107
When no agitator}
visited Number 16, Bratskii Pereulok, Vinitsa, in the first few days of

the 1950 campaign, the housewives of the residence went to the chair-
man of the local Soviet and demanded to sign the Declaration.
^{108
Report writers also occasionally commented that labour discipline had}
increased after meetings to popularize the campaign.
^{109
Very few people}
refused to sign the Declaration. A small number of individuals did not participate in the campaign on religious grounds, or because they had heard a rumour that the signature campaigns were covert attempts to force people to join a collective farm or pay more taxes.
^110
However,
such incidents were rare. The agitators and administrators who carried out the campaigns were pleasantly surprised at what they regarded as the unusually enthusiastic response to the ‘Struggle for Peace’.
¹¹¹

Evidence of the campaigns’ success can also be found beyond the
reports of potentially self-congratulatory, agitators. Soviet citizens wrote in great numbers to the Committee in Defence of Peace and to
Pravda

to express their support for the movement.
^{112
Housewives and factory}
workers sent in money for the campaign budget. Retired Captain P. V. Navak from Khar’kov expressed his enthusiasm by stating that, ‘I as a

sincere son of the Motherland, in recognition of the defence of peace
under the Stockholm Declaration, declare my desire to return in the ranks of the Soviet army for the defence of our Socialist Motherland from the Anglo-American aggressors.’
^{113
P. I. Sapezhko, from Saratov,}
offered a poem he had written in support of peace.
^{114
Young people}
wrote in to complain that they were excluded from the campaign. A group of Pioneers from Ordzhonikidze village in Moscow
oblast’
wrote that, ‘We pioneers are very disappointed that our age does not allow us to sign under the declaration’. They sent in a ‘list of the little strugglers for peace’.
^{115
Even prisoners wrote requesting the right to add their}

^{107
Inf. GAOPDiFAO f. 8627, op. 1, d. 77, l. 70.}

^{108
Inf. TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 24, d. 316, l. 12.}

^{109
Inf. GARF f. R9539, op. 1, d. 58, l. 29; d. 105, ll. 12–14.}

^{110
Inf. TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 24, d. 18, ll. 77, 81; RGASPI f.17, op. 88, d. 959, ll. 5,}

6, 70, 80.

^{111
Inf. See, for example, GARF f. R9539, op. 1, d. 58, l. 2.}

^{112
Inf. GARF f. R9539, op. 1, d. 58, ll. 18, 83; RGASPI f. 17, op. 132, d. 117, l. 40.}

^{113
Let. GARF f. R9539, op. 1, d. 58, ll, 2, 20.}

^{114
Sv. RGASPI f. 17, op. 132, d. 117, ll. 34–5.}

^{115
Let. GARF f. R9539, op. 1, d. 58, ll. 22–42.}