Science, mathematics and technology were also celebrated. Bolsheviks had always dreamed of engineering an entirely new physical environment, and Lenin had minted the slogan: ‘Communism equals electrification plus soviet power.’ Under the NEP, few advances were made either in academic research or in the diffusion of up-to-date technology. But things changed under Stalin, who put the resources of the Soviet state firmly behind such efforts.
The authorities demanded that scientists should produce work that would benefit the economy. The goals included not only electrification but also ‘radiofication’ and ‘tractorization’. Close control was imposed upon research, often with baleful results: many researchers languished in Siberian labour camps. At the same time the fraudulent geneticist Timofei Lysenko, exploiting his access to Stalin, built up a sparkling career; and one particular foreign adventurer is alleged to have been given funds for the rearing of herds of giant rabbits.30 (This was surely the most hare-brained of all Stalinist schemes!) Nevertheless science in general made immense progress in the USSR and acquired world renown. Petr Kapitsa did brilliant work on low-temperature physics and became director of the Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow. Aleksei Bakh was a founding father of biochemistry. The veteran physiologist Ivan Pavlov remained at work through to his death in 1935, and other giants of the period were the physicists Lev Landau and Yevgeni Lifshits. Promising youths such as Andrei Sakharov were being trained by them to serve the country’s interests.
Literature, too, was accorded prestige; but, as with science, Stalin supported activity only insofar as it assisted his ulterior purposes and this naturally affected its quality. Notoriously, he dragooned Maksim Gorki and others to write a eulogistic account entitled ‘Stalin’s White Sea–Baltic Canal’.31 Other participating writers included Mikhail Zoshchenko, Valentin Kataev, Aleksei Tolstoy and Viktor Shklovski. All artistic figures went in fear of their lives. Many of the country’s most glorious poets, novelists, painters, film directors and composers came to an untimely end. Isaak Babel was shot; Osip Mandelshtam perished in the Gulag; Marina Tsvetaeva, whose husband and son were slaughtered by the NKVD, committed suicide. The despairing Mikhail Bulgakov died of nephritis outside prison. Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak lived a living death, not knowing why they had been spared the fate of others.
Just a few works of merit, such as Andrei Platonov’s stories, were published in the late 1930s. Bulgakov’s
Reconditeness in theme or style was forbidden not only in literature but also in music. Stalin wanted melodies that were whistlable, and wonderful composers and Marxist-Leninist sympathizers such as Dmitri Shostakovich fell into disgrace for their atonalities and discords. Stalin’s taste leant in the direction of the less demanding pre-revolutionary Russian classics: he adored Glinka and Chaikovski. Indeed the ballet and the symphony concert were becoming the favourite evening entertainment for the central party elite. Patriotic (nay, chauvinistic!) films such as Sergei Eisenstein’s
The opportunities for cultural self-edification and recreation were widely welcomed; but what most people wanted above all else was an improvement in their material situation. Food shortages had troubled most Soviet citizens since the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan. And things were gradually getting a little better. Bread, meat, sugar were among several staple products no longer rationed from 1934–5. All rationing was abolished in 1936, and material provision improved for most non-arrested people in the late 1930s. Cheap food in work-place cafeterias also made a difference to the average diet. Admittedly consumption per head of the population was still three per cent lower in 1940 than in 1928.33 But the general trend was towards betterment in the late 1930s. The network of free educational and medical establishments was also expanded and people in employment received their work-clothes free of charge. Such changes proved a surer means of ensuring acquiescence than compulsory study of the
Many workers and kolkhozniki were anyway pleased by the repression of peremptory, privileged administrators. Sometimes there was a xenophobic aspect to popular attitudes — and
The survival of old social attitudes was important in enabling Stalin to carry out the Great Terror and to deflect blame from himself. Among Russians there was a centuries-old assumption that, if the policies of the tsar were unfair, the fault lay with his malevolent advisers. Stalin persistently induced people to think that he had their interests at heart. It was necessary, he had declared, ‘to listen carefully to the voice of the masses, to the voice of rank-and-file party members, to the voice of the so-called “little people”, to the voice of simple folk.’36
Nevertheless it is unclear whether his pose won him friends even among the most simple-minded of citizens. Of course, Stalin’s message appealed to the newly-promoted members of the various elites. Of course, too, it was attractive to youngsters who had been schooled to revere him and whose parents were too terrified to say anything even privately against him. But rural hatred of Stalin was visceral.37 He had identified himself so closely with agricultural collectivization that he could not easily disassociate himself from its horrors. And in the towns there were millions of inhabitants who had no reason whatsoever to regard the period of his rule with affection. Religious belief remained a solace for most people. In the USSR census of 1937, fifty-seven per cent of the population disclosed that they were believers — and the real percentage was probably a lot greater in view of the state’s aggressive promotion of atheism.38 All in all, little political acquiescence would have been obtained if people had not been afraid of the NKVD: silent disgruntlement was the norm.
Most adults in the Soviet Union knew all too well how far official rhetoric was at variance with their direct experience. Real wages per person in 1937 were about three fifths of what they had been in 1928.39 The material improvement for the average family since the mid-1930s was mainly the result of more members of each family taking up paid employment.40 People knew they were working much harder for their living. They also retained a keen memory of the military-style collectivization, the famine, the persecution of religion and the bludgeoning of all dissent, near-dissent and imaginary dissent. It is difficult to quantify the degree of hostility to Stalin’s regime. Who but a fool or a saint talked openly about these matters? But the NKVD did not delude itself that the voluntary communion of Stalin, the party and the masses was a reality. Police informers in Voronezh province, for example, indicated that the contents of the 1936 Constitution were widely regarded as not being worth the paper they were printed upon.41
The conclusion must be that the Soviet state was far from its goal of reshaping popular opinion to its liking. But a caveat must be entered here. Interviews with Soviet citizens who fled the USSR in the Second World War showed that support for welfare-state policies, for strong government and for patriotic pride was robust — and this was a sample of persons who had shown their detestation of Stalin by leaving the country.42 Some elements in the regime’s ideology struck a congenial chord while others produced only disharmony. This was not a settled society, far less a ‘civilization’. People knew they lacked the power to get rid of the Societ order. While hoping for change, they made the best of a bad job. Probably most of them ceased to dream of a specific alternative to Stalinism. They tried to be practical in an efford to survive. All the more reason for Stalin to reward the men and
