Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (44 page)

^{11
V. O. Pechatnov, ‘The Big Three After World War II: New Documents on Soviet}
thinking about Post War Relations with the United States and Great Britain’,
Cold War
International History Project, Working Paper 13 (1995), 1–25.

^12
Ogon¨ek
, 02.1946: 7, pp. 6–7.

^13
Pravda
, 24.04.46, p. 1; 02.10.46, p. 1.

^14
Pravda
, 09.05.46, p. 4; 12.01.47, p. 4.

^15
Ogon¨ek
, 03.1946: 12, p. 33;
Pravda
, 31.07.46, p. 4.

^16
Pravda
, 30.01.46, p. 6; 26.05.46, p. 4.

^17
Pravda
, 14.03.46, p. 1.

^18
Pravda
, 23.03.46, p. 1; 25.09.46, p. 1; 21.12.46, p. 1.

Panics, Peace, and Pacifism 1945–53
131

USSR, were also cited with approval.
^{19
Meanwhile Molotov stressed the}
ongoing successes of the various peace congresses and his hopes for future collaboration.
^{20
When the leaders of the allied states arrived in}
Moscow for the March 1947 Council of Foreign Ministers, the Soviet press printed and reprinted images of warm greetings offered by friend- ly, smiling Soviet dignitaries.
²¹

Official Soviet Identity continued to present the USSR as a Great
Power amongst a fractious, but fundamentally operable, great power community. The tone had cooled since the highpoint of alliance enthu- siasm in 1941–2 but it remained broadly positive. Relations were warm enough for
Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga,
the USSR’s international publish- ing house, to suggest the publication of a collection of commemorative stamps depicting Stalin and Roosevelt. The idea was not declared ‘inappropriate’ until February 1947.
^{22
Their policies might be awry}
on occasion, but the Anglo-Americans remained fundamentally similar Great Powers well into 1947.

The announcement of the Truman Doctrine, that the USA would
fight to contain communist expansion, during the March 1947 Council of Foreign Ministers was hailed by
Pravda
as a ‘turning-point in US

foreign policy’.
^{23
It also precipitated another shift within the language}
of Official Soviet Identity. The Soviet press responded by turning its fire on Anglo-American foreign policy and in particular the Marshall Plan,

which was denounced as ‘dollar expansionism’.
^{24
Britain and America’s}
policy of dividing Germany in half and forming a separate bloc in Western Europe also came in for heavy criticism. Such a path could

not serve the cause of peace.
^{25
Official Soviet Identity was increasingly}
defined in distinction from, rather than by similarity with, the former

wartime Allies. The first criticisms of the Western powers also appeared
on the Soviet stage in mid 1947, led by Simonov’s play
The Russian
Question. However, one of the key narratives of
The Russian Question
was that American society contained both reactionary and progressive forces.

In September 1947 the language of shared progressive tendencies was
finally abandoned. Zhdanov’s speech at the foundation of the Comin- form discarded talk of progress and refocused attention on Soviet

^19
Ogon¨ek
, 07.1946: 27, p. 34.
^20
Ogon¨ek
, 01.1947: 1, p. 2.

^21
Ogon¨ek
, 03-04.1947: 11–14.
^{22
RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 539, ll. 8–9.}

^23
Pravda
, 15.03.47, p. 1.
^24
Pravda
, 16.06.47, p. 4.

^25
Pravda
, 08.05.47, p. 4; 29.07.47, p. 3.

132
Being Soviet

exceptionalism. He stated that there were two camps within the inter-
national community: the People’s Democracies and colonial peoples headed by the USSR and the capitalist imperialist camp headed by the USA.
^{26
Molotov reiterated the point in November, speaking of}
the need to ‘unite all the anti-imperialist and democratic forces of the people into one mighty camp cemented by common vital interests against the imperialist and anti-democratic camp’.
²⁷

However, right up until the moment at which the narrative of
cooperation was abandoned, the Soviet press continued to speak, on occasion, in positive terms about relations amongst the Great Powers. Official Soviet Identity was twofold between March and September 1947. It criticized Anglo-American imperialism whilst simultaneously describing them as Great Powers who shared concrete interests with the

USSR.
Ogon¨ek
declared that, despite the difficulties, ‘significant prog- ress’ had been made at the Moscow Council of Foreign Ministers.
^{28
Meanwhile Stalin reiterated in May 1947 that ‘of course’ the Great}

Powers could continue to work together. Even the Marshall Plan was
greeted with guarded positivity, until it became clear that the cost of participation would be economic sovereignty.
^{29
In 1947 50 per cent of}
Soviet foreign policy reportage continued to describe good relations with foreign countries.
^{30
Only once the talks surrounding Marshall Aid}
had collapsed, were American and British leaders themselves the target of direct attacks. The period from March to September 1947 was a time of ‘partial ideology’: the USSR continued to derive some of its status from membership of the elite group of Great Powers whilst increasingly asserting its difference from them.
^{31
After September the definition of}
what it meant to be Soviet in diplomatic terms changed. The USSR became a mighty superpower, isolated from the other Great Powers and enjoying the support of its client states. However, the Soviet press had clung tenaciously to the idea of Great Power cooperation long after many in the Western capitals had concluded that conflict was inevitable. Only when all other options had failed, did the USSR decisively abandon its identity as a shared steward of the global order and embrace a new identity as a superpower in a divided world.

^26
Pravda
, 22.10.47, pp. 2–3.
^27
Pravda
, 07.11.47, pp. 1–2.

^28
Ogon¨ek
, 05.1947: 18, p. 9.
^29
Pravda
, 21.06.47, p. 3; 29.06.47, p. 4.

^30
Brooks,
Thank You,
207.

^31
Fateev,
Obraz vraga, starshego serzhanta
(Belgorod, 2000), 33–4, 55.

Panics, Peace, and Pacifism 1945–53
133

Rumours and panics

The notion that the USSR was a mighty and authoritative state, that
derived its authority in part from its association with the other Great Powers, clearly shaped the thinking of at least some Soviet citizens in the early post-war period. Vasili Ermolenko wrote a highly irritated diary entry after Churchill’s March 1946 speech, denouncing him for ‘calling for the organization of a new crusade against the USSR’. Churchill’s attempts would fail because ‘after the victorious conclusion of the Great Patriotic War the authority of the USSR has grown in the world as never before’.
³²

However, the Official Soviet Identity of the USSR as an authorita-
tive global power at the heart of a community of Great Powers failed to convince significant sections of the Soviet population. Rumours of a new war against the Allies broke out repeatedly across the USSR in the months following the Nazi capitulation. There are thousands of references to invasion stories in the Secret Police, state prosecution files, letters, memoirs, and interview transcripts relating to this period. The fragility of the Grand Alliance was a source of speculation even before peace had been declared in Europe. I.Iu.P. was prosecuted for telling his friends in December 1943 that ‘the Allies want to do as they did in the Civil War—to conclude a peace with Germany and attack the USSR’.
^{33
In May 1945 a Komsomol Instructor lamented}
the complete failure to ‘explain the question about the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Allies’ following a lecture tour in Ukraine and Belarus.
³⁴

Confusion about the Grand Alliance and suspicion of the Allies’
motives resulted in repeated outbreaks of war rumours in the first post-war months. In late May 1945, within weeks of the war ending, Dimitrovka
kolkhoz
, in Crimea, broke out into uproar in response to a fresh wave of war rumours. A local
kolkhoznik
had read an article in the newspaper
Red Crimea
about the exiled Polish government in London. He concluded, on the basis of the article, that Britain was at war with the Soviet Union and began urgently warning his friends and colleagues. Rumours about the conflict spread rapidly throughout the collective farm community, before passing to the nearby village of Kishlav. In the

^{32
Mem. Ermolenko,}
Voennyi dnevnik,
248–50.

^{33
Proc. GARF f. R3131, op. 31a, d. 15112, l. 24.}

^{34
Inf. RGASPI M f. 1, op. 32, d. 304, l. 14.}

134
Being Soviet

ensuing panic,
kolkhozniki
refused to go to work, convinced that a new and bloody conflict had broken out. Only once
oblast’
agitator Oshepkova had explained, in detail, the relationship between Britain and the USSR, were the villagers convinced that a new war had not broken out and order was restored.
³⁵

Stories of invasion only intensified in the early post-war months.
Secret police
svodki
cited a huge number of rumours to this effect, such as the comments of a worker in Kirovgrad who declared in November 1945 that he doubted the vote for the Supreme Soviet in February would go ahead ‘since all the states are armed for an invasion of the USSR’.
^{36
S.P.I. was prosecuted for having explained to his work col-}
leagues in March 1946 that an invasion of the USSR was now immi- nent; B.I.B suffered the same fate for spreading this story in early

1947.
^{37
Frederick Barghoorn, a member of the US Embassy staff,}
recalled meeting a woman at the station in Leningrad in March 1947: