Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (53 page)

Cold War Official Soviet Identity embraced the civilization of the
communist world. The musical and intellectual contributions of the USSR’s little brothers were widely celebrated, whilst they thanked the Soviet Union for its wisdom and guidance. However, the most impor- tant factor within Soviet identity as a civilization in this period was the capitalist West, and in particular America. As Britain’s global power waned, American music, films, science, and culture played a growing role within Soviet self-identification. The new official line, that such things were the degenerate proceeds of a degenerate society, was dramatized via

^{1
GARF f. R9501, op. 7, d. 31, ll. 33–4.}

168
Being Soviet

a series of ideological campaigns that began in late 1946. These cam-
paigns have largely been examined in terms of their impact on domestic politics. However, they also played a significant role in the creation of a new version of what it meant to be Soviet in relation to the outside world. As this new identity began to take shape, the Soviet regime moved relatively quickly to cut off contacts between the citizens of the USSR and their former wartime Allies. At least in the Arctic ports, interper- sonal relations had already begun to wane during wartime. The process accelerated after May 1945 and by mid 1947 an unexpected visit by some British diplomats to Suzdal and Vladimir, outside Moscow, precipitated a panic amongst local administrators and a flurry of anxious report writing.
^{2
In late 1947 the decisive step was taken when it became}
an offence to give information to foreigners, making the work of overseas newsmen extremely difficult.
^{3
The members of a Soviet chess}
team that visited Britain in September 1947 were not even allowed to speak to their relatives who lived in the UK without a commissar present.
^{4
Those who had had wartime relationships with foreign citizens}
also fell under suspicion; a number of women from Arkhangel’sk and Murmansk were sent to the Gulag. A popular prison song from the early 1950s related the tale of a Russian girl and an English sailor learning to say ‘I love you’ in each others’ languages.
^{5
Diplomats who had worked}
in the wartime USSR were shocked when they returned in the late 1940s to discover the ‘complete severance of any kind of ordinary

human relations between Russians and foreigners’.
⁶

This severance was reinforced by a widespread attack on the nature of
capitalist civilization. America, in particular, was criticized for its eco- nomic and racial exploitation, sham democracy, soullessness, and lack of freedom. As a consequence the artistic and scientific products of this dark civilization ceased to be appropriate for use inside the USSR. Music, film, science, and personal style became some of the key sites at which the official version of Soviet identity was articulated. Many individuals, particularly within the scientific and cultural intelligentsia, embraced this new language of Sovietness. For some it provided a means to further their own interests, for others it resonated with their anti-

^{2
GARF f. 6991, op. 2, d. 60, ll. 26–60.}

^3
Werth,
Russia: The Post-War Years
(New York, 1971), 344–9.

^{4
GARF f. 7576, op. 2, d. 351, ll. 76–80.}

^{5
Poleznaia Gazeta}
(Severodvinsk) 13.07.2001.

^6
Figes,
The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia
(London, 2007), 492.

Subversive Styles? 1945–53
169

western sentiments. On the other hand, some Soviet young people
intentionally adopted an ‘American’ lifestyle in order to mark them- selves out from their peers. America and Americanness acquired a series of powerful overtones in the last years of Stalin’s life that continued to shape what it meant to be Soviet until the fall of the USSR.

THE COLD WAR ATTACK ON CAPITALIST LIFE

During World War II the Soviet press held its fire for the first time on
the evils of Anglo-American civilization. Britain and America were progressive and democratic powers first and capitalist states second. During the early post-war months, this narrative was largely sustained. It was not until the spring of 1946 that
Pravda
published its first, relatively small, post-war article about the activities of the Ku-Klux- Klan and
Ogon¨ek
began to cautiously criticize social inequality in

Britain.
^{7
The attack on capitalist civilization grew steadily more strident}

but the head-on assault was not launched until the diplomatic identity
of the USSR shifted decisively in the summer of 1947. From that point on, the culture and living conditions of the capitalist West, and America in particular, became daily targets for the Soviet propaganda machine. The language of this anti-American campaign relied heavily on the historical precedents established by Gorky, Mayakovsky, and Blok in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each of these authors had visited America and returned to warn their audience of its soulless and exploitative nature.
^{8
These conclusions were mirrored in the}
famous travelogue of Ilf and Petrov, two satirists from the 1930s, who described the America they visited as technologically advanced but culturally backwards.
^{9
Nonetheless these criticisms were slight in com-}
parison to the assault on American civilization that developed in the late 1940s. Soviet cartoons depicted American presidents, generals, and capitalists as either overweight, cigar-chomping gangsters or grotesque, subhuman animals.
^{10
Meanwhile the Soviet stage and screen were}

^7
Ogon¨ek
, 03.1946: 10–11, pp. 30–2; Fateev,
Obraz vraga v sovetskoi propagande:
1945–54 (Moscow, 1999), 29–45.

^{8
C. Rougle,}
Three Russians Consider America: America in the Works of Maksim

Gor’kij, Aleksandr Blok, and Vladimir Majakovskij
(Stockholm, 1976).

^{9
Ilf and Petrov,}
Little Golden America: Two Famous Soviet Humourists Survey the
United States (London, 1944).

^10
e.g.,
Ogon¨ek
, 07.1950: 32, p. 19.

170
Being Soviet

flooded with anti-American stories depicting the evils of domestic life
inside the USA.
^{11
The assault on US culture was formalized in a 1949}
Agitprop ‘Plan of Measures for the strengthening of Anti-American propaganda’ but it had been well under way for some months before- hand.
^{12
This depiction of the evils of American civilization reinforced}
how healthy Soviet civilization was. Once the subtle language of wartime alliance had been abandoned, Western civilization, and America in particular, became the embodiment of everything that the USSR was not.

The assault on Western civilization focused in three key areas. The
first of those stressed the economic and racial exploitation of capitalist life. The piteous lives of workers, who were struggling to get by in the post-war period, became a staple of the Soviet press.
^{13
In December}
1948
Krokodil
carried a cartoon entitled ‘Western Europe without change’ depicting the year 1948 passing away, but crisis and unemploy- ment remaining unaltered.
^{14
Meanwhile the mainline Soviet news-}
papers reported at length on racial inequality, lynching, and oppression of African-Americans.
^{15
Capitalist societies’ workers and}
ethnic minorities were not themselves evil. They were the honest victims of the system they lived in.
^{16
The poverty and grind of capitalist workers}
stood in sharp contrast to the constant improvements in living standards

in the USSR. As
Pravda
explained in August 1949, the idea of a wonderful ‘American way of life’ was a myth.
¹⁷

The second major target of Soviet propagandists was capitalist dem-
ocracy. The British Parliament was under the control of a group of aristocrats who took almost no interest in the real issues affecting their nation.
^{18
Washington was in the grip of the capitalist monopolies who}
bought seats in Congress and ran it for their gangsterish interests.
^19
In
April 1951
Ogon¨ek
ran a cartoon depicting the Statue of Liberty being strapped to an electric chair by American rightist forces.
^{20
Democratic}
freedoms had ceased to be a reality in the capitalist West. American

^{11
A. Hanfman, ‘The American Villain on the Soviet Stage’,}
Russian Review
, 10.2 (1951), 131–45.

^{12
RGASPI f. 17, op. 132, d. 228, ll. 48–52.}

^13
Ogon¨ek
, 04.1948: 14, p. 12; 03.1951: 11, p. 12.

^14
Krokodil
, 30.12.1948, p. 3. See also: 30.12.1951, p. 6.

^15
Pravda
, 02.04.49, p. 3;
Krokodil
, 10.04.50, p. 6;
Ogon¨ek
, 09.1950: 39, p. 30.

^{16
On the ‘good America’, embodied by these victims, see}
Ogon¨ek
, 04.1951: 16, p. 19;
Pravda
, 02.01.1948, p. 4.

^17
Pravda
, 18.08.49, p. 4.
^18
Ogon¨ek
, 06.1948: 25, p. 20.

^19
Krokodil
, 20.07.1952, p. 10.
^20
Ogon¨ek
, 04.1951: 16, p. 32.

Subversive Styles? 1945–53
171

Fig. 5.1
‘The way of talent in capitalist countries’; ‘Show talent the way in the socialist countries.’ V. Koretskii, 1948. Struggling artists in the West enjoy none of the opportunities of those in the socialist world.

politics, in particular, were a major target in the plays of the early Cold
War. Simonov’s
Russian Question
was the most successful play of late 1947, ultimately becoming a film in 1948. It told the tale of Harry Smith, a clear example of the ‘good but exploited’ American, who is forced by his newspaper bosses to write stories that suggest the USSR is about to attack America.
^{21
His fate mirrors that of the hero in Lavre-}
nev’s
The Voice of America
who falls foul of the House Committee on Un-American Activities for his refusal to make a speech on the radio denouncing the USSR. Only after the hero is fraudulently imprisoned are his eyes opened to the emptiness of American democracy.
^22
Soviet
citizens, on the other hand, enjoyed the benefits of the most democratic electoral system in the world.
²³