The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

Оглавление

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION. Theme 1. THE STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY: MAIN CHARACTERISTICS AND TRENDS

Theme 2. RUSSIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY: ITS SELF-IMAGE, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, AND CONTRADICTIONS OF ITS DEVELOPMENT

Theme 3. FESTIVAL OF THE OPPRESSED OR SOCIAL DISEASE? THE NATURE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS

Theme 4. EMERGENCY MEASURES AND THE «EXTREME EMERGENCY REGIME» IN THE SOVIET REPUBLIC AND OTHER STATE FORMATIONS ON THE TERRITORY OF RUSSIA, 1918‒1920

Theme 5. FROM «WAR COMMUNISM» TO THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY: CONTRADICTIONS OF THE NEP

Theme 6. NEP DOWNSIZING AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE POLICY OF EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES INTO A PERMANENT SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

Theme 7. THE 1930S: CRISES, REFORMS, REPRESSIONS

Theme 8. THE HIERARCHY OF THE GREAT TERROR

Theme 9. ILLUSIONS AND AWAKENING OF THE GENERATION OF 1930S

Theme 10. THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR 1941‒1945: MAIN EVENTS AND POPULAR MOOD IN THE UNOCCUPIED SOVIET UNION

Theme 11. THE PEOPLE AND PROBLEMS OF THE POST-WAR ERA

Theme 12. THE KHRUSHCHEV’S THAW AND ITS REVERSE SIDE

Theme 13. SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES: FROM REFORMS TO STAGNATION

Theme 14. THE 1980S: THE SPACE OF POWER AND A SEARCH FOR NEW WAYS OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS

Theme 15. AUGUST PUTSCH OF 1991 AND THE TERMIDOR OF YELTSIN

CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA. WITH WHAT DOES RUSSIA ENTER THE NEW MILLENNIUM?. Theme 16. THE REALM OF POWER UNDER VLADIMIR PUTIN

Theme 17. REFORMS AND THE HIERARCHY OF NATIONAL PROJECTS

Theme 18. LOCATING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD OF 1917 IN RUSSIAN HISTORICAL MEMORY

Theme 19. THE GREAT VICTORY OF 1945 IN HISTORICAL MEMORY

Theme 20. TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIAN UTOPIAS: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE AS IMAGINED BY THE STATE AND DESIRED BY THE INTELLIGENTSIA

MAIN EVENTS, DATES AND GLOSSARY

SELECTED BIOGRAPHIES

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Theme 19.
THE GREAT VICTORY OF 1945 IN HISTORICAL MEMORY

The perception of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, as with the revolutions of 1917, has always depended on shifts in the dominant state of mind in the state and society and on the means to control such perception.

The Victory provided Russia with a powerful burst of energy. The thought that everything would improve was compensation for the grief and losses. The immense international authority achieved by the country in the war years also contributed to the process. The Victory objectively strengthened the potential for social consensus rather than conflict. But it was also possible that a different view of the situation might arise among those who fought in the foreign campaigns of 1944 and 1945, and who saw life in non-Soviet countries. This generation had to be shown its place. Any reflections on the causes and costs of the war were quickly encased in the plaster of Bolshevik dogma.

Official propaganda quickly erased the differences between the two periods of the war, and there were no hints of the numerous cases of treason, inexperience, and cowardice in 1941. Discussions of collaborationism and deportation were forbidden. The face of the Victory was Stalin’s face. It was not by chance that every May 9, from 1946 to 1950, the newspaper «Pravda» printed Stalin’s huge picture.

«Drunk with victory, presumptuous,» the writer Fedor Abramov wrote, thinking about the reasons for the regime’s authority after the war. «We have decided that our system is ideal…and were not only reluctant to improve it but, on the contrary, began to dogmatize it.» Submission to military commanders was substituted with submission to those who before the Victory had been kept in the shadows on Stalin’s order. The new ideological campaign acquired aggressive forms disguised as the so called fight against cosmopolitism and adulation of the West.

The authorities did not realize that people often recall hidden and shadowy memories. «The suffering of memory» emerged not because of the suffering itself, but because of the impossibility of explaining it. We should not forget Stalin’s appeal (at a meeting with the voters of the Stalin district of Moscow) to expose the victors to criticism and scrutiny, both for the sake of the business at hand and in order to prevent the victors from being presumptuous and to keep them humble. Involvement in the Victory did not give the right to extraordinary status. This statement was transmitted to all the «levels» of Soviet society. Moreover, the «victors» at the top were treated much more severely than those beneath them. Post-war repression, targeted at top military personnel, showed who the Master and Architect of the Victory really was.

Prior to 1953, perceptions of the Victory were paradoxical. Its official glorification existed side by side with its devaluation. The «realm of memory» appeared to be frozen, awaiting the arrival of a new political regime.

The 10th anniversary of the victory was not just the first jubilee, but also the first experience of a purposeful transformation of the realm of memory for new ideological needs. The most acute task was the large scale discrediting of Stalin and, consequently, of the mythology connected with his name. Deep differences between the prewar and postwar leader’s images practically made the year 1945 the framework that defined the Stalinist system. That is why Stalin’s de-sacralization must have inevitably signified the de-sacralization of the Victory.

On the May 9, 1953, two months after Stalin’s death, the words «Victory Day» and «Victory» could not be found in the newspaper headlines and were mentioned only in the Defense Minister’s traditional decree. And the anniversary in May, 1955, when there was less than a year left before the 20th Party Congress, became a dress rehearsal for the «coup» that had already by prepared by Khrushchev: the denunciation of Stalin, accompanied by the retention of the ideological foundations of his rule.

In this situation the memory of the Victory, which was strongly associated with the image of Stalin, was to a certain degree sanitized. The realm of memory was limited to those topics which were either only indirectly connected with Stalin, or were not connected with him at all.

From this point of view the scenario of the first Jubilee seemed to be the most appropriate. The main ritual was the solemn congress of the party and the country’s top leadership in the Bolshoi theatre on May 8. During this congress for the first time after Stalin’s death new accents were set in the official interpretation of the Victory.

First of all, the main speaker was not someone from the top but merely one of the military functionaries — first deputy defense minister and the commander-in-chief of the Land troops Ivan Konev. He was quite popular and was not much involved in Stalin’s mythology of victory as the then defense minister Georgii Zhukov. The report itself was untypical of the rhetoric of the Victory. Only military aspects of the Great Patriotic war and the Victory were mentioned. Thus, the realm of memory was limited to the military side during the celebration.

История Bordyugov G., Devyatov S., Kotelenet E. The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

История Bordyugov G., Devyatov S., Kotelenet E. The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

The XXth Century Political History of Russia presents lecture materials for academics working with undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers of Russian history.<br /> The chapters are an unusual insight into the Russian past, which makes the readers think, analyze and also reconsider some events of the Russian history. It is an exciting blend of stories of the past and future trends, allowing to make forecasts and predictions.

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