Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (5 page)

Official Soviet Identity was ‘official’ in the sense that it was actively
promoted by the Stalin-era government. It was propounded in govern- ment-sponsored newspapers such as
Pravda
(the newspaper of the Central Committee) and
Ogon¨ek
(a weekly journal containing a large number of photographs). Other influential outlets included
Krasnaia Zvezda
(the highly popular newspaper of the Red Army), and those after the war to
Krokodil
(a satirical journal). Official Soviet Identity was also communicated through plays, films, and other popular media, as well as lectures and speeches that were commissioned by the Agitprop section of the Central Committee. The Soviet mass media did not always sing in one harmonious voice. However, on the topic of Soviet identity it tended to have a very closely defined and coherent picture. The outside world mattered profoundly in this period and Soviet newsmen, artists, and musicians were extremely adept at conforming to the official line that emanated from the centre. What emerges from this body of sources is the official version of Soviet identity between 1939 and 1953. It was not necessarily opposed to vernacular or popular identities: the two could and did shape one another. Nonetheless it was official in the sense that it was the version of Soviet identity that was being promoted by the Stalin-era government.
³⁶

This book evaluates that rhetoric of Sovietness through the critical
tools provided by the literature concerning identity. The historiography of identity has flourished in recent years, drawing on insights from anthropology and sociology.
^{37
However, the Soviet vision of the}

^{34
For a discussion of worker identities in the pre-war USSR see: Kotkin,}
Magnetic Mountain
, 492–500; L. H. Siegelbaum and R. G. Suny, eds.,
Making Workers Soviet:
Power, Class and Identity (Ithaca, 1994).

^35
Colley,
Britons
, 6.

^{36
For the value of this distinction in the 19th century see: A. Anderson,}
Imagined Communities,
2nd edn (London, 1991), 83–101; J. M. MacKenzie
, Propaganda and
Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984), 4–7.

^{37
L. E. Said,}
Orientalism
(London, 1985); E. Hobsbawm,
Nations and Nationalism

since 1780
(Cambridge, 1990); Anderson,
Imagined Communities
. For a brief list of those who have examined ‘identity’ in a Russo-Soviet context, see Iu. S. Borisov, A. V. Golubev,

1. M. Kudoiukina, and V. A. Nevozhin, eds.,
   Rossiia i Zapad: Formirovanie vneshne-
   

Introduction
xxvii

outside world has largely been assessed in terms of the respective roles of
Marxist-Leninism, Russian nationalism, or
realpolitik
within foreign policy thinking. This approach has spawned a series of compound and sometimes confusing terms such as: ‘the revolutionary imperial para- digm’; ‘multiethnic imperialism and socialist messianism’; ‘the hostile isolationist tendency’; or ‘a commingling Soviet Socialism and Russian nationalism’.
^{38
This book takes a different approach, focusing on the}
roles of status, hierarchy, and patronage within Official Soviet Identity. Marxism and nationalism mattered in the later Stalin years but a more anthropological approach offers a fresh perspective on the Soviet experience.

Soviet identity was constructed in relation to a number of different
states in this era. Chapter 1 evaluates the place of Germany, the Western powers, and the newly acquired borderlands within the Soviet imagina- tion. From Chapter 2 (1941) onwards the focus is on the place of Britain, America, and later China within official rhetoric. Between 1939 and 1953 Britain and America were first antagonists, then uncer- tain allies, and later clear enemies of the USSR. As a result they provided some of the most complex and interesting arenas for the articulation of Official Soviet Identity. As case studies, they offer a valuable starting point for any broader discussion of what it meant to be Soviet in this era.

Official Soviet Identity was expressed in two different spheres in this
period. The first of these, the diplomatic identity of the USSR, concerned the political and military posture of the USSR within the international community. Foreign relations were always at the heart of the Bolshevik political imagination.
^{39
In 1917 the USSR became a}
socialist enclave surrounded by capitalist predators. However, there was always another, more positive aspect to Soviet diplomatic identity.

politicheskikh stereotipov v soznanii Rosiiskogo obshchestva pervoi polovini XX Veka
(Moscow, 1998); E. Kingston-Mann,
In Search of the True West: Culture, Economics and the Problems
of Russian Development (Princeton, 1999); I. B. Neumann,
Russia and the Idea of Europe:
A Study in Identity and International Relations (London, 1996); A. M. Ball
, Imagining
America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia (Oxford, 2003); Y. Slezkine,
Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North
(Ithaca, 1994).

^{38
V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov,}
Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to
Khrushchev (Cambridge Mass., 1996), 4; G. Hosking,
Russia and the Russians: From
Earliest Times to 2001 (London, 2002), 521; D. English,
Russia and the Idea of the West:
Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (New York, 2000), 8–9; V. Dunham,
In Stalin’s Time: Middle Class Values in Soviet Fiction
(Cambridge, 1976), 84.

^{39
J. Jacobson,}
When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics
(Berkeley, 1994), 7.

xxviii
Being Soviet

At successive disarmament conferences in the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet
representatives adopted the guise of peace-loving defenders of interna- tional security.
^{40
Following the rise of Hitler in 1933, the USSR also}
postured itself as the leader of a progressive, Europe-wide anti-Hitler coalition that was embodied in the Popular Front.
^{41
Despite the turn}
inwards that took place during and after the Purges, Soviet diplomatic identity in 1939 still combined the dual notions of foreign threat with the idea of the USSR as a morally righteous actor on the world stage.

The second aspect of Official Soviet Identity in this period concerned
the relationship between Soviet and non-Soviet civilization. The artistic and scientific achievements of the West are a long-standing reference point for Russian and Soviet identity formation.
^{42
In the}
nineteenth century the debate over the nature of Western civilization crystallized around the ‘Westernizers’, who sought to ape the West, and the ‘Slavophiles’, who argued that Russia must find a distinctive and spiritually whole road to the future.
^{43
In the years following the Octo-}
ber Revolution, Soviet authors were consistent in their condemnation of the economic inequalities of Western capitalist society.
^{44
Writers such}
as Gorky excoriated the ruthless nature of the capitalist monopolies and drew attention to the ever-present threat of capitalist economic crisis.
^{45
Soviet citizens were informed that workers in the West suffered injustice}
and deprivation on a scale that was inconceivable in the USSR. In the 1930s the famous satirists, Ilf and Petrov, published a popular travel- ogue about their journey to the USA that also stressed the deep-seated inequalities of American life.
⁴⁶

^{40
I. K. Kobliakov,}
USSR: For Peace Against Aggression 1933–1941
(Moscow, 1976).

^41
Kotkin,
Magnetic Mountain
, 229–30.

^{42
G. Belaia, ‘Sick Ideas of a Sick Society: The “West-East” Theme in Soviet and}
E
^{´
migre
´
Criticism’, in. A. McMillin,}
Under Eastern Eyes: The West as Reflected in Recent
Russian E
^{´
migr
´
e Writing}
(London, 1991), 1. See also: C. Avins,
Border Crossings: The West

and Russian Identity in Soviet Literature 1917–1934
(London, 1983), 2.

^{43
Kingston-Mann}
In Search of the True West
, 112–17; H. Rogger, ‘America in the Russian Mind—or Russian Discoveries of America’,
Pacific Historical Review,
47.1 (1978), 27–51.

^{44
H. Rogger, ‘How the Soviets See Us’, in M. Garrison and A. Gleason eds.,}
Shared

Destiny: Fifty Years of Soviet American Relations
(Boston, 1985)
,
120.

^{45
H. Rogger, ‘America Enters the 20th Century: The View from Russia,’ in}

I. Qverbach, A. Hillgruber, and G. Schramm, eds.,
Felder und Vorfelder Russicher
Geschichte: Studein zu Ehren von Peter Scheibert (Rambach, 1985), 161–4;

F. C. Barghoorn,
The Soviet Image of the United States: A Study in Distortion
(New York, 1950), 20–2.

^{46
I. Ilf and E. Petrov, trans., G. Malamuth,}
Little Golden America: Two famous Soviet

Humourists Survey the United States
(London, 1944).

Introduction
xxix

However, this unanimity concerning the evils of capitalist exploita-
tion did not extend to the cultural and technological products of Western society. In the utopian atmosphere of the Revolution, educa- tionalists such as Stanislav Shatsky and playwrights such as Platon Kerzhentsev were allowed to draw upon ideas they had gathered from overseas and put them to the test in the USSR.
^{47
These early post-}
Revolutionary years were the high point of Soviet internationalism, when foreign research and innovations were most welcome in the USSR. Nonetheless, official attitudes towards foreign civilization did not decline in a steady and linear manner. As new entertainment media such as radio and cinema became increasingly prominent, the attitude of the Soviet government towards capitalist culture wandered uncer- tainly between the ‘Slavophile’ and ‘Westernizer’ poles within nine- teenth-century thinking.

The fate of capitalist cinema reflects that uncertain journey. Of the
films screened in the early 1920s in the USSR, 87 per cent were from overseas.
^{48
Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and Mary Pickford were}
major stars in the Soviet Union.
^{49
However, the ‘Cultural Revolution’ of}
the late 1920s and early 1930s saw a shift away from foreign-produced entertainment.
^{50
By 1932 there was not a single overseas film showing in}
the USSR, and only a small number were shown between then and

1939.
^{51
Domestic fare dominated the screen in the 1930s including}
such light-hearted homemade hits as
The Happy Go Lucky Guys
.
⁵²