Transcript
Hello Comrades! Today we are going to continue our discussion of Late Stalinism and the Cold War by looking at some primary documents. Our cat today is Maggie. The context for these documents is the zhdanovshchina. That is a hard word to wrap your head around, so let’s try it together. Zhduh—zhdan—ZHDANov—ZHDANovSHEEna. Now you’re all experts in Russian!
You may notice that the root of this word is the name “Zhdanov,” which we have encountered before. Andrei Zhdanov was a member of the Central Committee, the highest governing body of the Soviet Union, and his particular area of expertise was ideology. You might remember that we read his speech “Soviet Literature—The Richest In Ideas.” He gave that speech at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, and in that speech he defined (however vaguely) the term Socialist Realism. So, as you read the documents for today, I encourage you to think about how they relate to Socialist Realism as a method for creating art.
The word Zhdanovshchina literally means, “the Zhdanov affair.” We use it to talk about the period from 1946-1948, when the Soviet state reasserted its authority over the arts through a series of Central Committee resolutions condemning ideological missteps in four genres: literature, theater, film, and music. We are discussing the Central Committee Resolution on Literature today. The resolutions came from the Central Committee as a whole, similar to how our laws are written by the Congress as a whole. The period itself is named after Zhdanov because of his role as the Central Committee’s point man on ideological issues.
There are several layers of context that can help us make sense of the zhdanovshchina. As you read in chapter 8 of Russia’s Long Twentieth Century, this phenomenon had both internal and external causes. From an internal perspective, we know that during the war, artists experienced greater freedom in their creative expression. Certainly, they were still expected to produce works that conformed to Socialist Realism. But the boundaries of that ambiguous term were broader during wartime than they had been in the 1930s. Many artists hoped that this greater freedom would continue after the war. The zhdanovshchina made it clear in no uncertain terms that that would not be the case. The state was back to monitoring artists and their work as closely as ever. From an external perspective, we must also think of the zhdanovshchina in the context of the Cold War, which was just ramping up in these same years. Concerns about ideological competition on a European and even global scale play an important part in these documents. Last but not least, we can’t forget that the zhdanovshchina existed in the context of Stalinism. The Great Purge ended in 1939, and though some feared that it might start up again after WWII, that did not happen. Still, if you read closely, you may find some of the rhetoric in these documents reminiscent of the fear-mongering and accusatory tone of Stalin’s speeches of the 1930s.
In the end, the zhdanovshchina outlasted Zhdanov himself. Zhdanov died of a heart attack in 1948. His death was subsequently blamed on Jewish doctors during the 1952 Doctors’ Plot scandal. Even without Zhdanov, though, Soviet artistic production ground nearly to a halt. Artists were afraid of the consequences of making a mistake. And these consequences didn’t just affect individuals, because the creative unions, like the Union of Writers, were held responsible for their members’ bad work. Interestingly, this lack of new production actually pushed the state to start showing trophy films captured during WWII, which then fueled the fascination with the West among the stiliagi. For their part, Soviet artists did not get back on track until Stalin’s death in 1953, after which their situation changed significantly. We’ll talk about that more next week.
That’s the background we need to know for these documents. Now let’s get to some discussion questions. We’re going to examine these documents in the order they were written.
Leah’s Discussion Questions
1. Let’s start with Zoshchenko’s “Adventures of a Monkey.” This story is a satire, and as we know from the Central Committee Resolution, it was not appreciated by those in power. In fact, the Resolution accuses this story of “presenting a crass lampoon of Soviet daily life and Soviet people… slanderously presenting Soviet people as primitive, uncultured, stupid, with narrow-minded tastes and morals.” (Central Committee, 1). This raises an obvious question for us: In your analysis does this story actually present Soviet people in such a terrible light? Is it a harsh, cruel, anti-Soviet satire? Or do you read it as more of a playful, teasing satire? Is it aimed at Soviet people in particular, or simply at humanity?
2. There is also a more complicated question that’s worth considering here: Is satire even possible in an authoritarian state like the Stalinist Soviet Union? Or is it inherently dangerous, no matter what Zoshchenko’s intentions were?
3. Now let’s look at the “Resolution on the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad.” These are literary journals—basically, long magazines that publish several short stories in each issue. We don’t see literary journals around much anymore, but before people had TVs, they were quite common around the world, and they had a large readership. So, we might understand why the government was concerned about their content. Make a close reading of the first four paragraphs of this document. What specific criticisms does the Central Committee use to attack this “bad” literature? How do these terms fit into the context of the Cold War? Based on these paragraphs, what are the Soviet Union’s major concerns?
4. Ultimately, this Resolution attacks many players on the Soviet literary scene. But it starts with specific attacks on Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova. Zoshchenko was a satirist and Akhmatova was a poet. Both began their literary careers before the Revolutions of 1917 and chose to stay in the Soviet Union afterward. By 1946, they were both very famous and well-respected literary figures. In what way might these biographical details make them threatening to Stalin? How might it be a useful strategy to attack prominent individuals first, and then broaden out to attack the rest of the literary establishment?
5. After attacking Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, the Central Committee moves on to the editors of the two journals. On the second page, find the sentence, “What is the meaning of the mistakes of the editors of Zvezda and Leningrad?” Make a close reading of the next two paragraphs. What exactly are these editors being accused of? What vision of the proper role of Soviet literature emerges here? How does it compare to what we’ve learned about Socialist Realism? Is this a “back to basics” situation, or have the state’s demands on artists evolved? Why is there so much concern here with educating the youth?
Consider the sentence, “Soviet literature does not and cannot have other interests than the interests of the people, the interests of the state.” (Central committee, 2) What are the implications of this claim? What kind of relationship does it create between artists and the state?
6. This resolution had real consequences. Considered the numbered list of measures to be taken at the end of the document. What message does this send to artists and arts administrators within the Soviet Union? What message does it send to the rest of the world?
7. Finally, let’s turn to Zhdanov’s speech, “The Duty of a Soviet Writer,” which he gave to the Union of Soviet Writers just a week after the Central Committee Resolution was passed. Zhdanov spends a great deal of time in this speech setting up an opposition between the “bourgeois world” and the Soviet Union. Take a close look at exactly what he says about threat posed by the West and how he expects Soviet literature to overcome it. How does Zhdanov’s framing of this opposition help us understand how Soviet officials understood the Cold War in these early days of it? What similarities and differences do you find here to the way Zhdanov spoke about bourgeois literature in his 1934 speech?
8. Zhdanov addresses Socialist Realism specifically in this speech. Consider the paragraph that begins with: “To show these great new qualities of the Soviet people…” Is this the same definition of Socialist Realism than we got in 1934? How is it similar or different? What specific tasks does it present? Think again about Zoshchenko’s “Adventures of a Monkey.” In your analysis, does it violate this definition? Why or why not?
9. Another notable aspect of this speech is Zhdanov’s use of military language. He talks about victory, fighting, the ideological front, and the “active invasion of literature into all aspects of Soviet life” (Zhdanov, web). Why do you think he uses these military metaphors? What purpose do they serve in the larger campaign of the zhdanovshchina?
10. Consider both the “Resolution on the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad” and Zhdanov’s speech “The Duty of a Soviet Writer.” What elements of Stalinist rhetoric do you find in these documents? If you were a Soviet writer, what might such rhetoric signal to you, beyond the immediate fact of the state’s anger at writers?