The world that Zhdanov built

About the book of Tatyana Shishkova "Extra -Speed"

The book of Tatyana Shishkova “Non -Speed” is dedicated to the post -war Soviet cultural policy associated with the name of Andrei Zhdanov. About how persecution and repression in the field of culture of the late 1940s and early 1950s were caused by a change in the position of the USSR in the world arena and the beginning of the Cold War, read the review of Konstantin Mitroshenkov.

Starting from February 24, 2022, we were all in the face of the advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values ​​of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editorial office of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that the world remains in the world and fiction.

Tatyana Shishkova. Extraordinary. Soviet post -war policy in the field of culture as a dialogue with the imaginary West. M.: New Literary Review, 2023. Content . Fragment

Among the researchers of Stalinism, the 1930s is most popular-the time when Stalin’s sole power regime was finally established, the intra-party opposition was defeated and large-scale terror was deployed. This is how things are not only in socio-political, but also in cultural history. This decade, although in the shadow of the avant-garde 1920s, is still perceived as a period of dramatic transformations and large-scale cultural projects. It is in those years that socialist realism was proclaimed by the method of Soviet literature and art, there is a restructuring of literary and artistic organizations (“Association by order”, as one of the researchers described this process) and attempts to re-collect Soviet internationalism in the context of the growing fascist threat-only now under the flag of world culture , and not the proletarian revolution. Against this background, the post -war period seems to be either a continuation of the pre -war (repressions against cultural figures, strengthening isolationist tendencies and turning to the “Russocentrism” ), or even with time, when nothing remarkable happened. “The post-war era has always been in the shadow of much more violent and therefore interesting eras for historians-revolutionary (1920s), the era of terror (1930s) or thaw (1956–1964). The era of late Stalinism was lost among these historical bursts as some historical failure , ”writes Evgeny Dobrenko in the introduction to his first large-scale study “ Late Stalinism: Aesthetics of Politics ” . In his opinion, historians who adhere to this approach lose their attention that it was precisely in 1945-1953 that the “final crystallization of the Soviet nation” and “its ideological parameters were cast”: “During these years, a lot of modernized conservatism and nostalgic patriarchalism, anti-Americanism and a jealous attitude to the era of the 1930s were settled. The achievements of the West, isolationism, xenophobia and aggressive-expansionist international agenda-all that the Soviet Union did not know before the war . "

Dobrenko, a two -volume book of light three years ago, became one of the first comprehensive studies of the culture of late Stalinism. The book of Tatyana Shishkova continues and develops this trend, considering the post -war cultural policy in the context of dialogue with the “imaginary West”. It is generally accepted that in the late 1940s the iron curtain finally fell, which separated the USSR from the capitalist world. Shishkova as a whole agrees with such an interpretation, but notes that it was after the end of the Second World War that the Soviet leadership was more concerned than ever by the international image of the country. The victory over Nazism demonstrated the power of the socialist system to the whole world, which made serious adjustments to the positioning of the USSR. If in the 1930s it was first about the construction of socialism in a single country, and then about its protection, now the expansion was on the agenda: “The new mission of the state has become the advance of Soviet socialism as the most progressive social system ... If earlier the Soviet project was more focused on itself, now it has turned outside. This required a radical reconstruction of socialist -realistic discourse: its main task was the presentation of the country's new world to the outside world . ” Dobrenko in the Late Stalinism also notes that only after the war, "the abroad entered Soviet culture through the main ideological campaigns of late Stalinism - the struggle for peace, Soviet superiority, the fight against stunted worship and cosmopolitanism . " However, he mainly speaks of the image of the West, produced by the Soviet cultural industry for domestic consumption, while Shishkova is focused on the external dimension of this process. Her argument is as follows. In the pre -war period, Soviet culture mainly pursued mobilization and educational goals, affecting the inhabitants of the USSR, but after the war, mobilization was replaced by “representation: it was no longer necessary to build socialism and protect it - it was now necessary to show it, so that it turned out to be understandable to the non -involved [that is, foreign] audience . ” In other words, the culture was to become a window, but not a “great experiment”, which was written by historian Michael David-Fox in a book on cultural diplomacy of the 1920-1930s, and a successfully completed project-at least this was seen by the leadership of the USSR.

Shishkova works in the framework of cultural history, but is not repulsed from texts (books, films, performances, and so on), but from the historical context. In her opinion, the obsession of the Soviet leaders of the country's image was largely dictated by an active anti -Soviet campaign, which unfolded in the Western media in 1945-1946. After the Fulton speech of Churchill, considered the conditional onset of the Cold War, the former allies in the anti -Hitler coalition entered a protracted confrontation. In an effort to weaken the enemy, the USA, Great Britain and other countries began to disseminate information (most often truthful, Shishkova notes) about the crimes of Soviet troops in the occupied German territories. Western propaganda played on old stamps about non -multural Bolsheviks and “barbarians from the east”. Accordingly, the priority of Soviet propaganda was the broadcast of a favorable image of the country. Numerous articles telling about the achievements of the USSR were sent to foreign publications, but the culture was the most effective tool for “soft power”. In Berlin, the Soviet ensembles performed in Berlin's war and feature films were demonstrated, and the occupation authorities paid special attention to the restoration of cultural monuments and contacts with the German intelligentsia.

Soviet culture was admired by many foreign observers, but “this admiration was not directly related to the propaganda of the superiority of the Soviet system. This increased confidence in [culture], but at the same time made it a more complex tool for propaganda. The task was to supply the extension of the culture with political content, forcing it to cause not just admiration, but admiration for the Soviet system and the Soviet government . ” The increased attention to the propaganda role of culture proves Shishkov, led to tightening control over it. It is in this context that the researcher considers the repressive measures of the Zhdanov period: the ban on the second part of the film “Ivan the Terrible” of Eisenstein, the grass of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, the resolution of the Great Friendship opera Vano Muradeli and so on. To better understand Shishkova’s argument, we turn to the analysis of post -war persecutions on Zoshchenko.

The reason for the attacks on the writer was the publication in 1946 of the humorous story “The Adventures of the Monkey” in the Leningrad magazine “Zvezda”. At first, Stalin criticized the story, calling it a “empty joke” and a “bazaar booth joke”, and then Zhdanov, who opened the anti -Soviet subtext of the work, entered into business. From his explanations it was followed, the author “deliberately depicts Soviet people with loafers and freaks, stupid and primitive people, that, looking at the eyes of the monkey, he wants to show the meaninglessness of the Soviet order and present the monkey as a more reasonable creature . ” Since the 1920s, Zoshchenko had a reputation as an unreliable “fellow traveler”, but he still managed to find his niche in Soviet literature and prove himself as a satirist, denouncing the vices of bourgeois and other unconscious citizens. However, by the end of the 1940s, the attitude to satire in the USSR has changed dramatically: now only the capitalist world could be the object of criticism, but not the country-the winner of fascism. As Shishkova notes, the Satire genre fell into disgrace, including because of the fears of the Soviet leadership that such works can be used by Western propaganda as evidence of the insolvency of the socialist project. In the conditions of a representative turning, which is traced by the researcher, writers needed to emphasize Soviet achievements, and not to seek ridiculous in the surrounding reality. Thus, the study of Zoshchenko, like all similar campaigns, was designed to simultaneously determine the contours of the new cultural policy and cut off everything that there was now no place in Soviet culture.

One of the accusations against Zoshchenko said that he "lagged behind life." This “lag” consisted in the fact that for several decades the writer continued to compose satirical stories, while in Soviet life there were fewer and fewer phenomena that it was appropriate to laugh at. In the 1920s, the satire was acceptable because Soviet society was still considered completely freed from pre-revolutionary remnants. But by the end of the 1940s, after Stalin’s statements about the completion of the construction of socialism and the victory in the war, such relics, according to the official doctrine, simply did not remain. Shishkova believes that in the post -war period in the culture, not only there was a transition from mobilization to the representative regime, but also changed the temporal prospect. If earlier Soviet literature and art were to notice the signs of the future in the present (the same “reality in its revolutionary development” according to Zhdanov’s formula), now she had to portray utopia, which had already become a reality: “In order to present the greatness of the USSR, it was necessary to make out the future, but a certain alternative present. This transferred socialist realism to a new level, in a sense challenged him . ” Indeed, as Andrei Sinyavsky also noted in the late 1950s, for socialist realism, “the concept of a goal that is an all-encompassing ideal, towards which steadily and revolutionarily develops truthfully depicted reality is critical . ” When this goal was declared achieved, the temporal structure collapsed, and the socialist narrative began to slip - hence the very “conflict” of the works of the late Nestalinsky period, which was indicated by many critics.

Another curious plot that Shishkova addresses is the role of Zhdanov in the post -war repressive campaigns. With his name, it is customary to associate the tightening of the ideological regime after the relative liberalization of the war years. However, the researcher believes that Zhdanova is incorrectly considered an ideologist of the post-war course, since all the main decisions were proposed by Stalin: “Zhdanov acted as a performer and organizer under Stalin, but in this capacity he did not show any special ingenuity. He used the old formulations and drew inspiration in old campaigns. ” Nevertheless, Shishkova notes that the role of a functionary did not come down to a purely technical one. Even before the war, Zhdanov played a noticeable role in Soviet cultural policy and, in particular, organized the first congress of Soviet writers. At that time, the culture was simultaneously "the fundamental channel of presentations of the USSR (including at the external level) and the method of political communication . " Shishkova believes that in the post -war period, Zhdanov adhered to the same idea of ​​the political significance of culture. Literary works, films and theatrical productions were considered by him from the point of view of what image of the USSR they form and how they can be used to increase the country's international prestige. Zhdanov died in 1948, after which Malenkov became responsible for cultural policy. According to Shishkova, for Malenkov, the culture "did not represent an independent interest ... But she acted as a good indicator of anti -Soviet sentiments . " The researcher records a new shift: at the turn of the 1940-1950s, the Soviet leadership turned to even more stringent repressions against cultural figures, but began to pay less attention to the regulation of what the “correct” representations of the country of Soviets should be. At the same time, Shishkova is not at all trying to say that Zhdanov was better than Malenkov: on the contrary, she emphasizes that many decisions of this period became a continuation and development of the Zhdanovsky line (for example, the defeat of the Jewish anti -fascist committee was dictated by fears that its members create an unfavorable image of the USSR and pay too much attention to the extermination of Jews during the war years). But Shishkova convincingly demonstrates that, no matter how unlimited the power of Stalin was, much depended on who exactly put his decision into life.

If we talk about the weak sides of the study, it is worth noting that the author is too straightforward contrasting the mobilization and representative functions of culture. In the post -war period, the task of mobilizing the population did not disappear anywhere, only now on the agenda was not the construction of socialism and not the fight against the enemy, but the restoration of the country after a destructive war. The task of “upbringing the population” during this period also did not lose relevance, despite the statements of the Soviet leadership about the achievement of all the main tasks of socialist construction. In one of the heads of Shishkov, the report of Zhdanov in 1946 quotes, in which he reminded that writers should “represent the Soviet people so,“ so that people know what they are today ” . ” The researcher sees here the confirmation of her thesis about the increased role of representation, but then gives another fragment from the same speech that draws a more complex picture. “You are called upon to show our people ,” Zhdanov continued, “ what they should not be, and from this point of view, the truth of the image should be such that everything that is a surplus of yesterday would be scourging that you show what Russian was yesterday, but what is not today . ” Reasoning in the proposed pins, we can say that Zhdanov’s speech just indicates an inextricable connection between the representative and mobilization/educational functions. The literature was supposed to simultaneously demonstrate achievements and expose vices, maintaining the necessary level of consciousness of the population. Zhdanov’s statement also testifies to the hidden anxiety of the Soviet leadership: even if we assume that utopia has already become a reality, there is always a danger of a rollback to the past - otherwise it would not have been necessary to constantly remind people of what they should not be. The book would have won a lot if, instead of strict dichotomy, the researcher proposed a flexible model of relationships between representation and mobilization in post -war culture.

In Late Stalinism, Evgeny Dobrenko claims that “the whole story after Stalinism - a thaw and decolinization, stagnation and restioration, perestroika and Yeltsin market reforms, Putinism - was only a reaction to Stalinism, since their instrument, subject and object of influence was simultaneously the main products of Stalinism - the Soviet state and Soviet nation, whose father he was remained . " Of course, the researcher is somewhat exaggerated, but it is difficult to disagree with the fact that the Stalin period had a huge impact on the entire late Soviet and post -Soviet history, whether it is a symbolic policy (waves of decolinization and restoration) or the arrangement of the institutions of government and management practices. The “extraordicism” offers a new look at the most deaf, according to the expression of the same Dobrenko, the period of Stalin’s reign, but at the same time helps to better understand the present - if only because the policy of the Russian state today is also largely determined by the “dialogue with the imaginary West”, only in other forms and in completely different historical context.