Joseph Stalin's cult of personality
Joseph Stalin's cult of personality became a prominent part of Soviet culture in December 1929, after a lavish celebration for Stalin's 50th birthday.[1] For the rest of Stalin's rule, the Soviet press presented Stalin as an all-powerful, all-knowing leader, and Stalin's name and image became omnipresent.
Stalin's image in propaganda and the mass media
The Soviet press worked to portray Stalin as a caring father figure, with the Soviet populace as his "children".[2] Interactions between Stalin and children became a key element of the personality cult. Stalin often engaged in publicized gift giving exchanges with Soviet children from a range of different ethnic backgrounds. Beginning in 1935, the phrase, "Thank You Dear Comrade Stalin for a Happy Childhood!" appeared above doorways at nurseries, orphanages, and schools; children also chanted this slogan at festivals.[3]
The image of Stalin as a father was one way in which Soviet propagandists aimed to incorporate traditional religious symbols and language into the cult of personality: the title of "father" now first and foremost belonged to Stalin, as opposed to the Russian Orthodox priests. The cult of personality also adopted the Christian traditions of procession and devotion to icons through the use of Stalinist parades and effigies. By reapplying various aspects of religion to the cult of personality, the press hoped to shift devotion away from the Church and towards Stalin.[4]
Initially, the press also aimed to demonstrate a direct link between Stalin and the common people; newspapers often published collective letters from farm or industrial workers praising the leader,[5] as well as accounts and poems about meeting Stalin. However, these sorts of accounts declined after World War II; Stalin drew back from public life, and the press instead began to focus on remote contact (i.e. accounts of receiving a telegram from Stalin or seeing the leader from afar).[6]
Another prominent part of Stalin's image in the mass media was his close association with Lenin. The Soviet press maintained that Stalin had been Lenin's constant companion while the latter was alive, and that as such, Stalin closely followed Lenin's teachings and could continue the Bolshevik legacy after Lenin's death.[7] Stalin publicly defended Lenin's infallibility with a fierce loyalty; in doing so, Stalin implied that his own leadership was similarly faultless, as he was a faithful follower of Leninism.[8] Before 1932, most Soviet propaganda posters showed Lenin and Stalin together.[9] However, eventually the two figures merged in the Soviet press; Stalin became the embodiment of Lenin. Initially, the press attributed any and all success within the Soviet Union to the wise leadership of both Lenin and Stalin, but eventually Stalin alone became the professed cause of Soviet well-being.[10]
Other displays of devotion
Stalin became the focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings and film that exhibited fawning devotion. An example was A. V. Avidenko's "Hymn to Stalin":
Thank you, Stalin. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Stalin two days ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Stalin, our inspired leader ... Everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be : Stalin ...[11]
Numerous pictures and statues of Stalin adorned public places. Statues of Stalin depicted him at a height and build approximating the very tall Tsar Alexander III, but photographic evidence suggests he was between 5 ft 5 in and 5 ft 6 in (165–168 cm). Stalin-themed art appeared privately, as well: starting in the early 1930s, many private homes included "Stalin rooms" dedicated to the leader and featuring his portrait.[12]
The advent of the cult also led to a renaming craze: numerous towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader. The Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were also named in his honor, and he accepted several grandiloquent titles (e.g., "Coryphaeus of Science", "Father of Nations", "Brilliant Genius of Humanity", "Great Architect of Communism", "Gardener of Human Happiness", and others).
The cult reached new levels during World War II, with Stalin's name included in the new Soviet national anthem.
Rewriting of early Soviet history
Stalin and his glorifiers rewrote Soviet history to provide the leader a more significant role in the October Revolution of 1917 and early days of Bolshevik power. To this end, Stalin supported the concealment of historical documents, claiming that these documents told an incomplete and misleading story. Instead, Stalin presented himself as the leading authority in Party history and philosophy.[13]
Illusion of unanimous support
The cult of personality primarily existed among the Soviet masses; there was no explicit manifestation of the cult among the members of the Politburo and other high-ranking Party officials. However, Stalin had a notoriously low tolerance for dissent within the Party; as such, the fear of backlash from Stalin made Party officials hesitant to honestly expressing their viewpoints, especially during the Stalinist show trials of 1937 and 1938. This atmosphere of fear and self-censorship created the illusion of undisputed government support for Stalin, and this perceived support further fueled the cult for the Soviet populace.[14]
Stalin's opinion on the cult
The degree to which Stalin himself relished the cult surrounding him is debatable. Like Lenin, Stalin acted modestly and unassumingly in public. In the 1930s, he made several speeches that diminished the importance of individual leaders and disparaged the cult forming around him, claiming that such a cult was un-Bolshevik; instead, he emphasized the importance of broader social forces. Stalin claimed that the only reason Lenin could acceptably be adored as a leader was because Lenin understood these social forces, and therefore knew how to most effectively channel the desires of the Soviet people. Stalin's public actions seemed to support his professed disdain of the cult: Stalin often edited reports of Kremlin receptions, cutting applause and praise aimed at him and adding applause for other Soviets leaders.[15] Additionally, in 1936, Stalin passed a ban on renaming places after him.[16]
Privately, Stalin claimed that he had tried to stop the pervasive level of frenzied devotion, but that everyone assumed he was acting out of false modesty. He admitted that he understood the cult of personality was a necessary evil among the simpler section of the Soviet population, who were used to worshipping a tsar, but feared that for the intelligentsia, this attention on the individual would take the focus away from Party ideas.[17] Artyom Sergeev, Stalin’s adopted son, recalled a fight between Stalin and his biological son Vasily. After Stalin found out that Vasily had used his famous last name to escape punishment for one of his drunken debauches, Stalin screamed at him. “‘But I’m a Stalin too,’ retorted Vasily. ‘No, you’re not,’ said Stalin. ‘You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you, not even me!’” To some degree, Stalin accepted the Soviet people's dedication to him as an embodiment of the Party, but he discouraged all interest in his private and family life, and divulged only limited personal information.[18] The Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen reports a sarcastic toast proposed by Stalin at a New Year Party in 1935 in which he said, "Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."[19]
End of the cult and de-Stalinization
In his 1956 "Secret Speech" to the Twentieth Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev famously denounced Stalin's cult of personality, saying, "It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god."[20]
References
- ^ Graeme Gill, "The Soviet Leader Cult: Reflections on the Structure of Leadership in the Soviet Union", British Journal of Political Science 10 (1980): 167.
- ^ Gill, "The Soviet Leader Cult", 171.
- ^ Catriona Kelly, "Riding the Magic Carpet: Children and the Leader Cult in the Stalin Era", The Slavic and East European Journal 49 (2005): 206–207.
- ^ Victoria E. Bonnell, The Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 165.
- ^ Benno Ennker, "The Stalin Cult, Bolshevik Rule and Kremlin Interactions in the 1930s", in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorship: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. Balázs Apor et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 85.
- ^ Kelly, "Riding the Magic Carpet", 208.
- ^ Gill, "The Soviet Leader Cult", 168.
- ^ Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power: the Revolution From Above, 1929–1941 (New York: Norton, 1990), 154.
- ^ Bonnell, The Iconography of Power, 158.
- ^ Gill, "The Soviet Leader Cult", 169.
- ^ Avidenko, A. O. Halsall, Paul (ed.). "Hymn to Stalin". Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Fordham University, 1997. Retrieved September 02, 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Catriona Kelly, "Riding the Magic Carpet", 202.
- ^ Tucker, Stalin in Power, 155.
- ^ Ennker, "The Stalin Cult", 88.
- ^ Sarah Davies, "Stalin and the Making of the Leader Cult in the 1930s", in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorship: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. Balázs Apor et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 30–31.
- ^ Davies, "Making of the Leader Cult", 41.
- ^ Davies, "Making of the Leader Cult", 37–38.
- ^ Davies, "Making of the Leader Cult", 41.
- ^ Arvo Tuominen, The Bells of the Kremlin, ed. Piltti Heiskanen, trans. Lily Leino (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983), 162.
- ^ Lilya Kaganovsky, How the Soviet Man Was Unmade (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 146.
