Soviet Post-War Policies

The war’s end raised an important, if unspoken, set of questions. How would the Soviet post-war political leadership govern a large, multinational state and economically reconstruct it? How would it integrate the Western Ukrainian and Western Belarusian territories annexed from Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, not to mention Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, into the USSR? How would it fuse the various pre-war institutions and political cultures in these areas into a coherent, workable Soviet whole? In what ways would the party maintain ideological purity and focus after the most devastating war in human history? These questions would prove difficult to answer.

For most Soviet citizens, the end of the “Great Fatherland War” inspired hope for the future. Many assumed that the authorities would reward their horrible sacrifices of the 1930s and 1940s, especially the brutalities of collectivization, the famine, and the war. Many looked forward to a less repressive and ideologically driven post-war regime.⁴⁴ But Andrei Zhdanov, the head of the Communist Party’s ideology section, sought to redirect this anticipation. He led the party’s post-war assault on all alleged deviations from socialist realism in the arts, literature, and cinema. Zhdanov and his successors sought to strengthen Soviet “civic emotions” (which included love and gratitude to Stalin and to the Soviet state for their “gift” of life and well-being) and public rituals (which involved Stalinist celebrations, political education, demonstrations of patriotism and hatred of the enemy in the workplace and in the streets, and electoral campaigns and election day itself). These party leaders believed that the public’s expression of these emotions and constant participation in these communal rituals served as an indicator of a person’s level of integration into the Soviet political system (not necessarily a true reflection of his or her beliefs). Although Soviet citizens found a number of subtle ways to undermine these processes of integration, their public accommodation to them helped shape the post-war Soviet and non-Russian national identities.⁴⁵

Shortly after the war, the authorities also raised everything Soviet and/ or Russian above everything non-Soviet or non-Russian.

Everything “progressive” in the world originated in Russia. These exaggerated claims reflected the ruling elite’s apprehension about the potential attraction of foreign, especially Western, ideas and living standards to the millions of Soviet citizens, especially Ostarbeiters, POWs, and soldiers, who had encountered them in Europe. According to the Moscow writer Konstantin Simonov, “The contrast between the standard of living in Europe and among us, a contrast which millions of military people encountered, was an emotional and psychological shock.”⁴⁶ Even in relatively poor countries of East Central Europe, such as Romania and Poland, the ordinary person lived better than most in the Soviet Union. Zhdanov and his colleagues had to neutralize the psychological impact of these mass experiences before they undermined the Soviet political order. The end of the war would not bring an ideological demobilization or a permanent reconciliation with the United States and Great Britain. In the international realm, the class struggle would continue under new conditions and with new alliances. In the domestic realm, the class struggle reappeared in the newly annexed Soviet territories in the west.

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Source: Liber G.O.. Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954. University of Toronto Press,2016. — 453 p.. 2016

Soviet Post-War Policies

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