Everyday Stalinism: 1934-1936

1. Everyday Stalinism: 1934-1936 • Group Research Materials: • 1934: Physical Culture • 1934: Birobidzhan • 1936: Childhood under Stalin • 1936: Creation of the Ethnic Republics • 1936: Abolition of Legal Abortion • 1936: Stalin Constitution http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1936children&Year=1936&navi=byYear

2. Name: __________________ Everyday Stalinism

4. 1934: Physical Culture • Subject essay: James von Geldern • Physical culture, the hygiene and discipline of the bodies of socialist citizens, was an object of paramount concern to Soviet authorities. Although it was indisputable that socialist physical culture would be different from the capitalist variety, there was a continuous debate about its nature that began in 1920 and received its final solution only in 1934. Pre-revolutionary sports clubs had been accessible only to the privileged social classes, and had carried ideologies alien to the Bolsheviks. The Sokols, or Hawks, had promoted Slavic national identities, while the YMCA pursued the ideal of muscular Christianity. Both were closed down by the Bolsheviks. In their place, the Soviet state promoted organizations that encouraged physical hygiene while eschewing the unhealthy competition that embodied the spirit of capitalism. Calisthenics, eurythmics, workplace exercise, track and field were alloted much of the meager state funding. • The role of the state in the regimentation of the body was a striking feature of the 1930s. That generation was healthier than any other before, and their healthy bodies stood as a metaphor for their healthy minds, unsullied by the psychoses and depravities that plagued their western peers. Physical culture, the disciplining and training of the socialist body, home to the socialist mind, was the popular movement of the decade. No longer was individual accomplishment deemed unsocialist. Just as the workplace produced hero workers such as AlekseiStakhanov, a growing network of elite sports clubs trained outstanding athletes who brought glory to the socialist homeland. Their anthem, The Sportsman's March (from the 1935 movie Goalkeeper), sang of their vitality and uncomplicated joy. This healthy generation valued its collective bonds. Togetherness and discipline did not mark for them a lack of individuality, but signaled a healthy sense of self based in community. Every year young physical-culturalists from all over the Soviet Union would march through Red Square on May Day and salute their leaders, saluting themselves as they did and declaring their allegiance. • Although the totalitarian tilt of Soviet society was evident in physical culture, other developments that took place under the same slogan undermined the grim social discipline. Spectator sports boomed in the mid-1930s, focused above all on the competitive international sport of soccer. Teams sponsored by factories and state organizations commanded the throbbing hearts of mostly male fans, who watched their heroes from the seats of large new stadiums, and whose wild antics suggested anything but disciplined socialist bodies. Fan favorites included Dinamo, sponsored by the NKVD, Lokomotiv, sponsored by the Ministry of Transportation, Torpedo (AMO automobile factory), Central Army Sports Club, and the beloved Spartak Club, sponsored by the meat packers and forever fighting the uphill battle against hated and better-funded Dinamo. Led by the magnificent Starostin brothers (Nikolai, Andrei, Petr and Aleksandr), they won the USSR Cup (introduced in 1936) twice before the war. Eventually the success of the Starostins ran afoul of Dinamo's main fan, NKVD chief Lavrentii Beria, who had them sent to the labor camps on trumped-up charges in 1942. • http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1934fizkultura&Year=1934&navi=byYear

5. Long Live Soviet Physical Culture! (1934) Work, build, and don't complain! . . . (1933)Work, build, and don't complain!We've been shown our path in life.You might or might not be an athlete,But you're obliged to be a physical culturalist.

6. An Ardent Greeting! (1939)An ardent greeting to the glorious male and female athletes of the Soviet country!" The Soviet ideal: patriotic and athletic young men and women. For the Proletarian Park of Culture and Rest (1933)For the Proletarian Park of Culture and Rest! For the Socialist Forge of Health!

7. http://englishrussia.com/2013/08/10/physical-culture-in-the-ussr/http://englishrussia.com/2013/08/10/physical-culture-in-the-ussr/

8. Keys, Barbara. “Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s.” Journal of Contemporary History. 38. no. 3 (2003): 413-434. 10.2307/3180645 (accessed April 7, 2013). The emphasis on disengagement from mainstream western sport underwent a dramatic transformation beginning in 1930, as the main aim of Soviet inter- national sports contacts shifted from revolutionary agitation within an independent sports system to results-oriented competition within the western sports system. Frustrated by the weakness of the communist sports movement and impressed with the growing power of mainstream sport, the regime came to see western international sport as a useful means of reaching large numbers of foreign workers and of impressing foreign governments with Soviet strength. The Sportintern, cut off from contacts with socialist clubs as a result of a disastrous policy of confrontation, moved to increase its influence in Europe by devoting more attention to the large numbers of workers in non- workers’ organizations. By 1933, the Physical Culture Council was debating whether to offer general sanction to competitions between Soviet athletes and athletes from non-workers’ clubs. Official hostility toward the western model of competitive, achievement- oriented sport was reversed.

9. 1934: Birobidzhan • Subject essay: James von Geldern • Elevated in May 1934 to the status of Jewish Autonomous Region (oblast), Birobidzhan, situated in Siberia on the border with China, was the Soviet answer to the question of a Jewish homeland. Earlier attempts to settle the Soviet Jews on dedicated land in the Ukraine, and later in Crimea, had yielded partial success, most of all in turning "unproductive" Jews into productive tillers of land. The new understanding of nationality that arose in the 1930s sought more distinct tokens of identity. A 1932 law mandated the notorious "entry no. 5" in all internal passports, identifying the single nationality of all citizens. In many ways progressive, the new policy encouraged territorial expression for national identities. Minorities had the right to their own culture, their own music, their own dances, and their own governing autonomy, all within the framework of Soviet citizenship. The "Jewish question" was complicated only slightly by the choice of a region where Jews had never lived, and a language that few wished to speak any more. • Founded in 1928, twenty years before the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, Soviet Birobidzhan faced many of the issues that Israel would later confront. Not all of them yielded wise choices. The secular language of Yiddish, rather than the religious language Hebrew became official, satisfying neither religious folk, nor the non-religious, most of whom chose the path of assimilation through Russian. A Jewish homeland on land with no Jewish history, no identity, and none of the historical draw that Israel would soon exert, practically guaranteed a minimal migration; the Jewish population of Birobidzhan in fact never reached more than 14,000 people, nor surpassed more than one-fifth of the regional population. Still there were glimmers of a national culture, including a Yiddish-language newspaper Birobidzhanershtern (the Birobidzhan Star), and a Yiddish theater. David Bergelson's novel Birobidzhaner, published 1939, depicts the hardy pioneers who drain the swamps and transform the harsh taiga wilderness into socialist territory. A 1936 film, Seekers of Happiness, chronicled the migration of a family of Polish Jews to Birobidzhan's Red Field kolkhoz, implicitly scolding Jewish who refused to change with history. • The decision to incorporate Birobidzhan had emanated from the Kremlin, yet it should not be dismissed as a Stalinist fantasy or conspiracy, without noting its appeal to some Jews. Yiddish was still a living language in 1928, as opposed to the dead language Hebrew; and secular life was the stronger draw for most Jews. Life in a place that welcomed Jews, contrasted to an increasingly anti-semitic Europe, or a Palestine populated by hostile Arabs and run by British imperialists, seemed attractive. Finally, life as farmers held a tremendous, if ironic appeal to many Jews, who had been confined to city life for centuries, and who felt that the right to plow the land would give Jews as a full a national existence as the peoples around them. Israeli kibbutzes would one day give them that, but the bleak and barren land of Birobidzhan did not. Still, the romance of a new homeland was compelling, and in the suffering needed to make the land arable, Soviet Jewish citizens found a heroic myth analogous to those of Magnitogorsk and nearby Komsomolsk-na-Amur. The myth, however, did not survive the late 1930s, when the same purges that swept much of Soviet society struck at the heart of Birobidzhan as well.

11. Decision of the Central Executive Committee (1933)This poster applauds the decision of the CEC to establish by late 1933 a Jewish Autonomous Region with the borders of Birobidzhan. The text states that Birobidzhan is one of the components of Leninist nationality policy. Birobidzhan Lottery Ticket (1929)One of the ways that the state funded constructions projects in Birobidzhan (and elsewhere) was through lotteries. The style of the ticket and the head wear of the young man are signs of the time.

12. Travel Document (1939)Document authorizing travel to and settlement in the Jewish Autonomous Republic., 1939. The document states that the settler enjoys all rights and privileges provided by law. School Then and Now (1928) This Soviet propaganda poster shows that the kheder, the one-room Jewish primary school, produces a slavish attitude and leads to undesirable consequences such as religious observance and practice, enmity among peoples, and petty commerce. In contrast, the Soviet school prepares healthy people, capable of building a socialist society in which agricultural labor, factory work, and amity among peoples are primary objectives. The Yiddish reads: ""The old school produced slaves; the Soviet school prepares healthy, skilled workers who are builders of the socialist order. The kheder (left) leads to the shop, synagogue and hatred between peoples. The Soviet school (right) leads to the factory, land, and unity between peoples.

13. Collective farmers from the Frayveg (Free Way) kolkhoz in Larindorf, Crimea, on their way to an election meeting in 1938. Collective farms in the Crimea attracted more Jewish settlers than Birobidzhan, but plans to settle Jews in the Crimea were stopped after protests from the local population. Sculpture of Jewish violinist at the Theatre Square in Birobidzhan, Jewish Autonomous Region, Russia Rolling logs on a raft in Birobidzhan. Photographs from Birobidzhan usually gave a heroic image of the life of settlers. Settler with Newspaper (1935)This image comes from an album produced by authorities of the Jewish Autonomous Republic for an outside audience that included potential settlers.

14. 1936: Childhood under Stalin • Subject essay: James von Geldern • Children of the 1930s could rightly be called the first Soviet generation, whose formative years passed under the socialist system. The generation showed all the virtues and vices of the society it hailed from, and suffered all its ups and downs. Young volunteers brought industry to the vastness of Siberia and collectivized the countryside, often at the point of a gun. They were the most educated generation of Russians ever, the most literate, perhaps the most militant as well. The generation of the 1930s felt itself healthier than any before, immune to the psychoses and depravities that capitalist inequity had once produced. Togetherness and discipline did not mark for them a lack of individuality, it signified a healthy sense of self based in community. • This generation of great sins was also a generation of great accomplishments. It built the industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the open lands of the Urals, and would later overcome terrific hardship to defeat Hitler in the Great Patriotic War. Burdened with parents too old to be trusted by the party, these children sometimes suffered when their parents suffered. Yet if the Bolsheviks doubted or even wrote off vast sectors of the population - older people, women, peasants - as beyond the light of socialist reason, children were always thought malleable and saveable. Young people were provided educational and recreational opportunities that improved their lives and forged their socialist consciousness, and many responding with unquestioning loyalty to party, state and leader. They remembered a decade of peace and contentedness, later shattered by a foreign invader. The slogan "Thanks to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood" rang without irony for children who were cared for, believed in the society that cared for them, and accepted its structures of authority. • Even in these grim times children managed to preserve their sense of fun, and to find places to hide from the watchful eye of their elders. The standards of their guardians were rigorous, but they were also difficult to enforce. Grim though they could seem in theory, many a classroom or orphanage was in practice a Tom Sawyer paradise. • Magnitogorsk = The celebrated "socialist city of steel," Magnitogorsk was founded in 1929 and built around what would become the world's largest steel plant. • http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1936children&Year=1936&navi=byYear

15. Youth in New Moscow (1936) Socialist Realist Painting: Stalin and Members of the Politburo in the midst of Children in Gorky Park (1931) Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our Happy Childhood (1936)

16. Young Octobrists: "Children of October." An organization that has prepared Soviet schoolchildren ages 6 – 9 for membership in the Young Pioneerers. Established in 1923 Young Pioneers: All-Union Lenin Pioneer Organization, established in 1922), ages 9 to 14 Young Pioneer Oath: “I, (last name, first name), joining the ranks of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization, in the presence of my comrades solemnly promise: to love and cherish my Motherland passionately, to live as the great Lenin bade us, as the Communist Party teaches us, and as required by the laws of the Young Pioneers of the Soviet Union.” • Young Pioneer rules of 1986: - is a young communism builder, labors for the welfare of the Motherland and prepares to become its defender. - is an active fighter for peace, a friend to the Young Pioneers and workers' children of all countries. - follows the communist’s example, prepares to become a Komsomol member and leads the Little Octobrists. - upholds the honor of the organization and strengthens its authority by deeds and actions. - is a reliable comrade, respects one’s elders, looks after younger people and always acts according to conscience. Long Live Young Pioneers! (1939)Long Live Young Pioneers -- the worthy replacements for the Leninist-Stalinist Komsomol Komsomol: All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth, 14-28 yr olds Moto: “Always be Ready!” Two Young Pioneers (1932)

17. 1936: Creation of the Ethnic Republics • Subject essay: Lewis Siegelbaum • On December 5, 1936 in connection with the proclamation of the new "Stalin" Constitution, the Kazakh and Kirghiz ASSRs were elevated in status to fully-fledged union republics. With the simultaneous sub-division of the Transcaucasian Federation into the three union republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, this brought the total number of union republics to eleven. These administrative changes along ethno-territorial lines represented the fruits of the Soviet nationality policy of korenizatsiia, and specifically, the training of a sufficient number of indigenous cadres to reliably promote the party's line of "national in form, socialist in content." Many indices pointed in the direction of cultural modernization. Literacy rates rose dramatically. For example, in Tajikistan the proportion of literate people between the ages of nine and 49 increased from just four percent in 1926 to nearly 83 percent by the end of the 1930s. Each of the republics nationalized long-dead writers, dispatched singing and dancing ensembles to tour the USSR, and otherwise exhibited the trappings of national cultures. • But not all was well in Central Asia. Collectivization had had a particularly devastating effect in Kazakhstan where flocks of sheep and goats, lacking fodder, suffered huge losses, and the predominantly pastoral Kazakhs faced either starvation or flight across the Chinese border. Little wonder that their numbers showed a decline of 20 percent between the censuses of 1926 and 1939. Elsewhere, the expansion of cotton cultivation was often at the expense of food crops and human consumption. The crackdown on religious practices that had begun in the late 1920s continued, and thousands of Muslim clerics fled to Afghanistan and Iran, accompanied by their families and disciples. • Politically, though the situation in Central Asia seemed stable in 1936. In Uzbekistan, power was shared between FaizullaKhodzhaev (1898-1938), a native of Bukhara and a former Jadadist who served as Chairman of the Uzbek Council of People's Commissars, and the First Secretary of the Uzbek party organization, AkmalIkramov (1898-1938). But stability -- particularly when it involved employing the nomenklatura system to strengthen clan ties -- was anathema to Stalin. Both Khodzhaev and Ikramov were removed from office in 1937, and wound up in 1938 as defendants in the last major show trial of the Great Purges. Tens of thousands of other party and state officials throughout Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian republics were also victims of the purges, which opened up opportunities for a new crop of Communists to assume office and favor their fellow clan members. • http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1936ethnic&Year=1936&navi=byYear

18. Peoples of the Soviet Union - to the Heights of World CultureAn Uzbek girl plays the violin, embodying the heights of western culture, while the shade of Beethoven looks on. Fiftieth Anniversary of Tajikistan (1982)50 years of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic and the Communist Party of Tajikistan." This poster shows a man holding land with the decree on nationalization of land behind him and a woman holding a wreath of grain and flowers in front of the Tajik Republic flag. Long Live the Fraternal Union and Great Friendship of the Peoples of the USSR! Representatives of the national republics of the Soviet Union in national dress. Each holds a red banner greeting the great Stalin in their national language. The Lenin mausoleum is visible in the far left background, and airplanes flying in the sky.

19. National Cultures Blossoming in the USSRImages show Stalin with a multi-national group, cultural activities of different Soviet national groups, nationalities receiving education, various nationalities marching arm in arm under a banner calling for the brotherhood of nationalities in the Soviet Union.

21. 1936: Abolition of Legal Abortion • Subject essay: Lewis Siegelbaum • On May 26, 1936 the draft of a law "On the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood" was published in Soviet newspapers with an appeal for public discussion of its contents. The draft included measures aimed at "combating light-minded attitudes towards the family and family obligations," tightening restrictions on divorce, and increasing the prestige of mothers of many children. Expressing trends in official attitudes towards these issues that reflected a major shift from the more liberal marriage law of 1926 (which itself had replaced even more radical legislation dating from the early 1920s), these measures attracted relatively little controversy. But despite the announcement in the draft that the network of maternity homes and childcare facilities would be enlarged several fold, the range of opinion concerning the prohibition of abortion and the forcefulness with which such opinions were expressed in letters published by the press was quite extraordinary. • The previously existing law "on the Legalization of Abortions" dated from November 1920. While referring to abortion as an "evil" and calling for propaganda to combat it, the law asserted that to protect the health of women abortions would be performed "freely and without any charge in Soviet hospitals." By the mid-1930s, official concerns about a declining birth rate as well as the aim to strengthen the family unit as a bulwark of social stability doomed the old law. To Stalin, giving birth was "a great and honorable duty" which was "not a private affair but one of great social importance." Henceforth, Soviet women would carry the double burden of holding a job in the wage-labor force and working in the home raising children. The draft decree proclaimed that "only under conditions of socialism, where ... woman is an equal member of society ... is it possible seriously to organize the struggle against abortions by prohibitive laws as well as by other means." It permitted abortions only in cases when the continuation of pregnancy threatened the life of the pregnant woman. • Opposition to the proposed legislation came from many quarters but was particularly prominent among young urban women. Their objections typically were not based on a woman's right to control her body but rather on the impossible strains that bearing and raising children would impose on their pursuit of a career, on available living space, and other quotidian concerns. Except for minor changes, however, the draft was approved by the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars and went into effect on June 27, 1936. The number of officially recorded abortions dropped sharply from 1.9 million in 1935 to 570,000 in 1937, but thereafter began to climb, reaching 755,000 in 1939. Despite criminal liability for performing illegal abortions, the actual number was probably a good deal higher. It is also worth noting that according to the People's Commissar of Health, the rate of infant mortality rose from 146 per thousand newborns in 1935 to 162 in 1938. • http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1936abortion&Year=1936&navi=byYear

22. Children are Happiness for a Soviet Family (1940) Children are our Future (1946)Don't deprive yourself of the joys of Motherhood To Mother for the Next Feeding (1935)

23. Hero Mothers / Mother Heroines • Mother Heroinewas an honorary title for bearing and raising a large family. • The state's intent was not only to honour such large families but also to increase financial assistance to pregnant women, mothers of large families and single mothers, and to promote an increased level of health in mother and child • Established on July 8, 1944 by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet • Including multiple increases in available state pensions for these families or single mothers, was amended 15 times from its original establishment until the last amendment contained in Decree number 20 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of May 7, 1986 • The honorary title "Mother Heroine" was awarded to mothers bearing and raising 10 or more children. • The title was accompanied by the bestowal of the Order "Mother Heroine" and a certificate conferred by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. • It was awarded upon the first birthday of the last child, provided that nine other children (natural or adopted) remained alive. • Children who had perished under heroic, military or other respectful circumstances, including occupational diseases, were also counted. • The award was created simultaneously with the Order of Maternal Glory and the Maternity Medal, intended for women with five to nine children “Children should not die!” Encouraging mothers to attend consulations to learn about mothering Glory to the Mother Hero

24. 1936: Stalin Constitution • Subject essay: Lewis Siegelbaum • Scarcely thirteen years separated the first federal constitution of the USSR, issued shortly after Lenin's death in January 1924, from the version that was adopted by the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets on December 5, 1936 and graced from the moment of its birth with Stalin's name. Both the contents of the fundamental laws that comprised the constitution and the elaborate process by which they were brought into being suggest that the 1936 constitution was designed to consolidate the principles of the new socialist state and present an attractive image for both domestic and international consumption. In the language of the time, it was a reflection of the "new correlation of class forces" that could permit the universal rights previously denied to former exploiters, kulaks, officials of the tsarist regime, and the clergy. All Soviet citizens were now equally protected by the law and entitled to the franchise, the right to hold elective office, and other privileges of Soviet citizenship. • The constitution was the product of a commission appointed by the Seventh All-Union Congress of Soviets in February 1935. Chaired by Stalin, the commission consisted of thirty-one members each of whom participated in one or more of twelve sub-commissions. After a year's work, the constitutional commission came up with a draft which was submitted for national discussion. The official figures on the extent of this discussion are mind-boggling: 623,334 meetings held, over forty-two million people attending them, and 169,739 proposals, comments, and prospective amendments. The impression of a public actively engaged in studying and debating the draft is somewhat belied by reports of people being compelled to attend meetings, as well as of the party's central committee having decided beforehand to approve the draft "in the main." Still, there is no doubt that the discussion of the constitution provided a rare opportunity in the Stalinist era for the citizenry to air its views on matters of both state and personal importance and that many availed themselves of it. The articles that attracted the greatest attention in discussions and proposed amendments concerned the rights of personal property and inheritance, the civic equality accorded to independent farmers, and the proclaimed freedom of conscience that enabled religious believers to stand for public office. Many who commented on these provisions were opposed to them while others proposed amendments inscribing the right to travel abroad, abolishing the death penalty, permitting the establishment of multiple parties, and so forth. • The constitution did not prevent Soviet authorities from carrying out a wide range of arbitrary actions and abuses, including the Great Terror. But it is not insignificant that over succeeding decades most protests against the arbitrariness of political power began by invoking the fundamental laws of the constitution. • http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1936constitution&Year=1936&navi=byYear

25. Stalin Casting his Vote in the 1936 Elections (1936) The Soviet Constitution (1939)The Stalin Constitution is the final result of the struggles and victories of the October Revolution. Long live the constitution of victorious socialism and genuine democratism.

26. Stalin's constitution is the happiness of the Soviet people

27. Miami Daily News Feb. 6, 1944