It is hard for me to think of popular culture without the inclusion of popular sport. Passionate fandom for our favorite teams is a key component to how many American individuals form their identity. It also has served as an effective platform for political, social, and cultural change. Stalinist Russia was noticeably absent of large scale athletic competition that had taken hold in the 1st world states. The Russian people had not participated in the Olympics since prior to WWI and the subsequent revolutions. Stalin decided to participate in 1952 Summer Olympics taking place in Helsinki.

The decision was a curious one given the Soviet Union’s history. Sporting was deemed useful for health and comradeship, but the professional sports were viewed as a bourgeois practice that catered to elitists and required leisure time that simply did not exist for most working class people. Stalin saw the 1952 Olympics as the scene for ideological warfare where they could display.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soviet involvement in the 55th Olympiad heightened the stakes and certainly elevated the status of the games. The Soviet participants requested that they receive separate lodgings so as to not interact with non-communist nations and to avoid potential defections. The American Press and even President Truman weighed in on the necessity of defeating the Soviets in Helsinki. In what was an extremely competitive Olympics, the USA edged the USSR 76-71 in total medals, and 41-22 in golds.

While not 1st place finishers at the Olympics, the International athletics programs after the passing of Stalin accelerated at an insane pace, developing into one of greatest international sports rivalries in history. The USSR invested massive funds into national programs for athletics which allowed them to train on a full-time basis. These programs challenged and eventually ended the amateurism policies that the Olympics had implemented. Projects like the Luzhniki sports complex highlighted mass investments into the Soviet sporting world.

The Soviet approach to Olympics is part of the trend of removal the cultural “thaw” from Stalinism into a new identity. Urbanization and the spread of mass media allowed for large scale events like the Olympics and the space race to facilitate cultural pride. Non-proletarian figures in the eastern bloc became icons with political influence, such as Vera Caslavska, who used her platform at the Mexico City Olympics to protest Soviet style communism in Czechoslovakia.

The Soviet investment into sports enhanced a cultural component that we take for granted. The highest level of sports in the Stalinist Soviet Union were usually friendly competitions between workers unions (Interestingly, the 2018 Russian Representatives in the UEFA Champions League are Lokomotiv Moscow and CSKA Moscow, which were historically the Moscow railroad union and Red Army club teams). The Soviet presence and success at the Olympic Games was part of this great cultural shift from the brutal Communism of Stalin to a sports culture that more closely resembled western nations.

During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army newspaper “Красная звезда” (Red Star) provided one of the main modes of communication from writers on the war front to those laboring on the home front. As with the other nations engaged in the war, the paper became on of the most effective mediums for developing a narrative for those behind the war effort to rally behind.

 

In 1942,  A Красная звезда  journalist Ilya Ehrenburg wrote an article simply titled “Kill”. This article was intriguing to me due to extreme bluntness with which it is written, considering the credentials that Ehrenburg had as a voice for socialism in western Europe, and his experience as a journalist from the Spanish Civil War. Ehrenburg’s article comes across as a warning of the immorality and the backwardness of Hitler’s forces, going as far as to say that they are not “human beings”, ending with this warning:

“The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to use the most terrible oath. From now on the word German strikes us to the quick. We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day … If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another — there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days, do not count kilometers. Count only the number of Germans killed by you. Kill the German — that is your grandmother’s request. Kill the German — that is your child’s prayer. Kill the German — that is your motherland’s loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through. Kill.”

(Krasnaya Zvezda (No173 [5236]) 24 July 1942)

In 1942, Ehrenburg also gave a speech in Moscow that commanded the same vengeful spirit that was evident in his newspaper article. This speech (In Mass Culture in Soviet Russia pp. 401-405) defends the morality of the Soviet people while aggressively utilizing dehumanizing language against the “Hitlerites”, as he compares the actions of the Nazi’s on the front to those of wolves. The speech invokes the names of Dostoevsky and Chaikovsky of he rants about the cultural desecration and physical destruction of the Soviets at the hands of the German army.

These snippets of anti-Fascist vengefulness and anger that Ehrenburg shows in his wartime works emerge in force when the tides of war eventually shift, and the Soviets take the war to the Nazis. Accounts from the Eastern front show the viciousness that the Soviets leveraged against the Nazis as they made their way to Berlin.

 

The History of the Construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal emerged in 1934 as a collection of personal and historical narratives that create an image of how the construction project to bridge the White and Baltic Seas contributed to the mission of Stalin’s government. The project was led by the Union of Soviet Writers, a collection of accredited Soviet writers whose talents were utilized by the Soviet State. 

Chapter 12 of this book, found in Mass Culture in Soviet Russia (pp.190-201), provides a great example of Socialist Realism, a concept which the writer’s union required its content creators to follow. This chapter follows the development of Abram Isaakovich Rothenburg, who hails from Georgia. Prior to the revolution, Rothenburg struggled to find employment, resorting to thievery to make ends meet. After an initial sentence of six months, he was sentenced to eight years hard labor for dodging the draft, and failing to salute a military officer. His sentence ended with the February Revolution, when he and his cellmates liberated themselves. Nine years later, Rothenburg was caught stealing yet again, but this time he was eventually sentenced to 3 years hard labor, a sentence that took him to construction of the canal. He failed to see the need to work, and ended up in a meeting with “reform instructor “Varlamov”.

This meeting is a turning point for him, as he begins his transformation into the idealized proletarian. There would no longer be a need to steal, since there are no capitalists or property owners. He worked hard, producing 50% more than what was expected of him. He was nominated as a member of the production committee, and was appointed assistant reform supervisor. Rothenburg, once slave of the bourgeois institutions, was now the leader of a proletarian colony of reforming individuals.

These sorts of stories are emblematic of Socialist Realist writing. An individual struggling with his role within the capitalist world, having an epiphany revealing the superior nature of the commune, and becoming a leader in promoting this vision for the world.  Proletarian protagonists like Rothenburg are useful as icons for those who have doubt about the new government to look up to. The writing ignores the general nature of the work and the casualties of the canal project (more info here), but this writing creates an image for what the average Soviet should aspire to be.

The Bolshevik Revolution was  a period of upheaval for the Russian government, and this contention for power and ideology translated into a variety of popular art forms. While Futurism and Avant Garde artwork of the pre-revolution highlighted the optimism that many for the future of a modernized Russia, the Revolution  saw some art utilized in a manner that would mobilize the proletariat that would hopefully progress the worker’s revolution.

A good example of this is Solemn Promise, illustrated by satirical journalist and cartoonist Dmitry Moor, was published in 1919.The artwork is captured  alongside the  oath of commitment to the Red Army:

The imagery utilized by Moor is extremely simple and practical. There is an obvious central object within the image, with limited extraneous elements that would distract from the message of unity of all the workers under the Communists. Very little room for interpretation in this work.

The transcript from the original poster can be found on pp. 14-15 of Mass Culture in Soviet Russia:

1. I, son of the laboring people, citizen of the Soviet Republic, assume the title of warrior in the Worker-Peasant Army.

2. Before the laboring classes of Russia and the entire world, I accept the obligation to carry this title with honor, to study the art of war conscientiously, and to guard national and military property from spoil and plunder as if it were the apple of my eye.

3. I accept the obligation to observe revolutionary discipline and unquestioningly carry out all orders of my commanders, who have been invested with their rank by the power of the Worker-Peasant government.

4. I accept the obligation to restrain myself and my comrades from all conduct that might debase the dignity of citizens of the Soviet Republic, and to direct all my thoughts and actions to the great cause of liberating the laboring masses.

5. I accept the obligation to answer every summons of the Worker-Peasant government to defend the Soviet Republic from all danger and the threats of all enemies, and to spare neither my strength nor my very life in the battle for the Russian Soviet Republic, for the cause of socialism and the brotherhood of peoples.

6. If I should with malicious intent go back on this my solemn vow, then let my fate be universal contempt and let the righteous hand of Revolutionary law chastise me.

This oath would hold similar form with slight modifications through Stalin’s rule until at least the outbreak of WWII in Europe.

I find that one of the oath’s intriguing aspects is its self-designation as being a “solemn” statement of allegiance. It reads as if someone joining the  Worker-Peasant army  would not be an immediate beneficiary of the new regime, but would become a martyr for the  empowered working classes of the future . While a bold and ambitious statement, it was probably effective due to the hope that it provided a recently oppressed and war ravaged working party.

Also notable is that the subject is swearing allegiance directly to the laboring people, and not the Worker-Peasant government. This contrasts greatly with German and Italian Fascist statements of allegiance, which are directed towards the leaders of the Fascist Regime, and the American Pledge of Allegiance that is directly toward an inanimate flag (and thusly, “to the republic for which it stands”). This is an authentic communist belief, but this concept could potentially leaves the worker-peasant government extremely vulnerable and unstable if the workers become unhappy with their leadership.

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton