by Jan Plamper
Figure 2.20. Stalin on the “Holiday of the Red Army.” The caption describes him as “Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR and Generalissimo of the Soviet Union.” Pravda, 2.3 February 1947, 1.
The decree was signed “The Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Generalissimo of the Soviet Union J. STALIN.”118 Often on this day Pravda featured a picture of Stalin on the tribune of the Lenin Mausoleum taking the salute at a parade of soldiers and heavy military equipment on Red Square. Frequently he was joined by Voroshilov. The message on this day was one of Soviet military might, of preparedness to fend off any outside attack, and of Stalin’s embodiment of the Soviet Army. This was a new role he had assumed during World War II. Before then Stalin embodied the state only, and Voroshilov the Red Army, which in turn protected Stalin. But with the war, Stalin had assumed this new double role, embodying both state and army, thus superseding whoever was commissar of war.
In March, Stalin might only make an appearance on the eighth, International Women’s Day. But this was not one of the regular “Stalin holidays,” and he rarely appeared on this day. In 1947 the Women’s Day issue of Pravda was pictureless altogether. April was a month without a major holiday, but in late April began the preparation for International Workers’ Day on 1 May, with articles like “On the Eve of the Great Holiday.” Readers encountered ritualized self-commitments to higher plan targets or greetings, both addressed to Stalin personally, by Yakut reindeer herders, Estonian collective farmers, and Abkhaz lemon growers. May Day was the second holiest of all Soviet celebrations. The festivities always included a military parade on Red Square followed by a civilian. Stalin presided over both of these ceremonies, and stood with other leaders on the tribune of the Lenin Mausoleum. (The tribune was in fact much lower than one might assume based on the Pravda pictures, and hence guaranteed less elevation of the leaders than the media representations portrayed.) Not surprisingly, the 1 May 1947 issue of Pravda did not include any Stalin pictures. To be sure, page one (and all other pages, for that matter) were full of references to Stalin, including a decree by the Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Nikolai Bulganin, who had succeeded Stalin in this function on 3 March 1947. Bulganin ordered a twenty-gun salute on the occasion of 1 May and closed with almost the same slogans as Stalin on 23 February—with one difference: the last slogan now read, “Long live the Great Stalin!”119 One day later Stalin made his appearance in the customary photograph of the leaders on the tribune of the mausoleum. On this 2 May 1947, our imaginary Pravda reader would have looked at a front-page with the usual paratextual matter occupying the masthead—the Pravda title on the left and a prolix slogan on the right.120 It said: “The Soviet people celebrated 1 May with enormous enthusiasm. The May First holiday was a powerful demonstration of the love and dedication of the Soviet people to the Socialist motherland, the Bolshevik Party, the great teacher and leader Stalin.” The masthead was separated from the rest of the front page by a thick black line. Right below that was a full-size photograph, which occupied at least two-sevenths of the page and showed the leading Party luminaries on the tribune of the Lenin Mausoleum (Fig. 2.21). The space of the photograph was organized in a pyramid shape; Stalin occupied the central place on the tribune, which formed the broad base for the stepped-back roof of the mausoleum. From the viewpoint of the onlooker, to Stalin’s left were two Party magnates in plainclothes, M. F. Shkiriatov and Molotov, and further left a number of high-ranking, uniformed, and highly decorated military generals, including marshals Ivan Konev and Aleksandr Vasilevsky. Immediately to Stalin’s right was Budyonny in uniform with medals, and further right a series of Party leaders in civilian clothes: Beria, Malenkov, Shvernik, Voznesensky, Mikoian, Kosygin, Kuznetsov, and Popov (in that order). Everyone looked toward the right, obviously at the parade, while Budyonny and (slightly backgrounded) Shkiriatov looked downward and to the left respectively. Stalin alone gazed straight ahead into the camera—making eye contact with our imaginary reader. The caption below the picture listed the names of the leaders strictly in order of position from left to right. This too was a departure from the early to late 1930s, when the media were still busy establishing Stalin as alpha in the collective imagination and would often mention him ahead of others, regardless of his position in the photo. Page two of Pravda had photographs of the parade, with huge Lenin and Stalin posters (separated only by a banner with slogans) peering from the Red Square façade of the department store GUM. In one photograph the view of the parade included airplanes flying above, and sometimes in earlier and later years the airplanes would form the letters “S-T-A-L-I-N.”121 Page three had a photograph of a motley crowd of laughing and joyous people on Red Square, with a Stalin poster, Stalin slogans on banners, and a small girl on a soldier’s shoulder smiling and waving up to an invisible person—Stalin, needless to say—on the tribune of the Lenin Mausoleum. Often more pictures followed May Day, showing, for example in 1940, the leaders (Molotov, Mikoian, Kalinin, Andreev, Stalin, Kaganovich, Beria, and Shvernik, listed in that order in the caption) striding on their way from the Kremlin on foot to the parade, with Stalin taking care of the Soviet Union’s “elder,” Kalinin, who walked with a cane.122
Figure 2.21. Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership on the tribune of the Lenin Mausoleum at the May Day parade on Red Square. Pravda, 2 May 1947, 1.
Shortly after 1 May followed the Day of the Bolshevik Press (5 May), a secondtier festivity. This day was important to newspapers and media professionals. Invariably Pravda featured—usually on its first page—a reproduction of a 1938 drawing by Pavel Vasiliev of Lenin, Stalin, and Molotov at the newspaper’s editorial office in July 1917. Here we see Stalin in the foreground, sitting in side view in his simple army coat with thick, black hair and holding papers, obviously from an article for Pravda. To his right, at the table we see a three-quarter view of Lenin in a three-piece suit, holding a pencil in his hand and speaking to Stalin. In the background we see in frontal perspective a more lightly penciled and bespectacled Molotov, pensively gazing into the distance, a look that is underlined by his hand at his chin in thinker’s pose. The table also has an inkstand and in the background we see a telegraph. The message is clear: Stalin formulates, adds to, and executes what Lenin thinks; Molotov’s function is that of a prop at best.
Next in the calendar, on 9 May, came Victory Day, which lost its holiday status from 1948 to 1965, a fact that many historians have seen as a sign that the regime deemed it too unruly and too “from below.”123 In Pravda, however, this day in later years became one of the most important, as highly significant as the Day of the October Revolution and May Day. In 1947, Victory Day had yet to achieve this level, but it was well on its way. The front page featured a large, high-quality photograph of Stalin in three-quarter perspective (Fig. 2.22). It showed the magisterial generalissimo on two-thirds of the right-hand half of the page. Stalin’s hair was gray, his moustache almost Wilhelmine (the whiskers pointed less upward than those of Wilhelm II), his gaze heavy, introverted, and suspicious. He wore a gray generalissimo’s parade uniform with epaulettes, the pointed collar decorated with an extra rectangular ornament and large buttons. On his jacket was a single medal, the Gold Star Hammer and Sickle Hero of Socialist Labor medal, a pentagram with a hammer and sickle in the center. Stalin also wore his marshal’s hat with cord and Soviet Star button, with his hands behind his back.124 The caption in modernist typeface beneath the picture read simply: “Joseph Vissarionovich STALIN.” To his left there was another decree by Bulganin ordering a thirty-gun salute—ten more than on any other holiday our Pravda reader would have encountered so far in 1947—on the occasion of “the holiday of the victory over fascist Germany.” Later May Day and Victory Day would often be lumped together as the “May holidays” (maiskie prazdniki).
Figure 2.22. Stalin on Victory Day. Pravda, 9 May 1947, 1.
June would have passed with no major holiday and only one picture of Stalin, this time sitting in the last row of the presidium of the S
upreme Soviet of the RSFSR during its session on 21 June. To be sure, on 7 June there started to appear masses of pictures of the annual Stalin Prize winners—but never Stalin himself. This was to change in late July. One day after the All-Union Physical Culture Day on 20 July the front page used a photograph of the Party leadership in the “government box,” as the caption explained, of Moscow’s Dynamo Stadium.125 This was a curious photograph, for it looks as if it was one of the— several and abortive—attempts to build up a successor to Stalin in the sphere of symbolic politics.126 Stalin appeared at the far left of the Party functionaries, shown in nondescript fashion. Two of his magnates stood out. Malenkov, who occupied the central place, wore clothing retouched to look white, and gazed left into the distance, usually Stalin’s pose. Bulganin, at far right, was also dressed in retouched white and also gazed left into the distance. Further down the front page, in the right corner, was a large photograph of a foreground Stalin in side view, as if about to lift up a small girl with braids onto the tribune. Behind Stalin was Molotov receiving flowers from a small blond boy (Fig. 2.23). As from the start of the Stalin cult, Stalin continued to be shown with girls—when he was shown with children at all. More than boys, girls marked the distance to the leader: the further away from him by virtue of their gender and age, the more they heightened Stalin’s elevation above the people. But one thing had changed: in 1947 the children shown with the leaders were no longer from the ethnic minorities. Rather they were quintessentially Russian—a girl with braids and a blond boy, both dressed in white. This change testifies to the wartime shift towards “Soviet patriotism,” a catch phrase many historians interpret as thinly veiled Russocentric nationalism.127 As our imaginary reader leafed through the newspaper there would have been more encounters with Stalin on pages two and three, shown on large posters in the stadium during the parade of white-dressed athletes. The Physical Culture parade was a showcase of Soviet parade symmetry.
Figure 2.23. Stalin with ethnic Russian, nonminority children at the All-Union Physical Culture Day at Moscow’s Dynamo Stadium. Pravda, 21 July 1947, 1.
The next canonical day in the festive calendar followed soon after, on 27 July, the Day of the Soviet Navy. On this day, another second-tier holiday like the Day of the Soviet Army on 23 February, Pravda carried another decree by Bulganin, ordering twenty-gun salutes by “warships in Leningrad, Kronstadt, Tallin, Baltiisk, Sevastopol, Odessa, Poliarny, Baku, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Port Arthur, in the Soviet Gavan and in Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka . . . Long live the Soviet Navy! . . . Long live our leader, the Great Stalin!”128 A day later the newspaper featured a photograph of something like a Black Sea parade on water, of Soviet sailors (massovy zvezdnyi zaplyv moriakov, in the words of the caption beneath the picture) swimming close to their warships with posters and banners montaged in, one depicting Stalin in his generalissimo’s uniform, entwined laurel branches adorning the bottom of the picture, and further below a banner with the slogan “Honor to the Great Stalin!”129
Within two weeks, on 3 August, came a third second-tier military holiday, the Day of the Soviet Air Force. All three military holidays were second to the most sacred holidays, May First and the Day of the October Revolution. And within these second-tier military holidays, the Day of the Soviet Air Force was eclipsed by the Day of the Soviet Army but more important than the Day of the Soviet Navy. Second-tier holidays were not fixed to a specific date and could be moved to weekends in order to avoid a loss of labor productivity.130 Often Pravda did not show Stalin on the holiday itself (instead printing another Bulganin decree ordering a twenty-gun salute), but carried his picture on the following day. Here our imaginary reader would have seen the Party leaders on the tribune-like balcony of the Tushino airfield in a photograph that occupied the entire upper third of the page right below the masthead. Stalin again was not particularly marked. He was shown slightly off-center between Voroshilov and Bulganin in a gray uniform, with at least four leaders in white uniforms: Kaganovich, I. S. Yumashev, I. S. Konev, and K. A. Vershinin. The lead article beneath the photograph, however, was oriented entirely towards Stalin. After a long buildup it described the scene. At three o’clock in the airfield’s “government box appears Comrade J. V. Stalin” and his lieutenants. “Comrade Stalin!—the words spread through the rows. Hundreds of thousands of people greet the great leader of the Soviet people with extraordinary enthusiasm. Their stormy applause expresses the love and gratitude of the workers for the organizer of all the victories of the Soviet people, for the wise teacher, the leader and friend, the founder of the mighty Soviet air force. With the name of Stalin the entire country built its air fleet. With the name of Stalin the Soviet pilots mercilessly smashed the enemy in the air and on the ground. With the name of Stalin the glorious aviators yesterday began the splendid show of their mastery.”131 Page two then showed a photograph of a stunned crowd watching a group of airplanes forming both a Soviet star and the letters “S-T-A-L-I-N” (Fig. 2.24).
September, an uneventful month without a major holiday, began as Pravda readers returned home from their dachas where they had spent the summer months, and sent their children back to school on the first of the month. During some years—in 1946, for instance—the 8 September issue featured a stock image of Stalin as a military leader on the occasion of the Day of Tankmen. In 1947 there was the extraordinary event of Moscow’s eight hundredth anniversary, and in this connection, several pictures of Stalin made their way onto the pages of Pravda on 7 and 8 September.
Figure 2.24. A second-tier holiday, the Day of the Soviet Air Force. Pravda, 3 August 1947, z.
If September stood out at all, then it was as prologue to the annual climax of sacredness, the Day of the October Revolution on 7 November, the founding event of the state that Stalin embodied. In 1947 this date was especially special, for it marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Revolution (Fig. 2.25). The front page of Pravda starred a photograph showing Lenin on the left and Stalin on the right. Together they took up half the page. Lenin was shown in nearly frontal view and in his three-piece suit with a tie, while Stalin was in true three-quarter perspective and in his gray generalissimo’s uniform as in his Victory Day photo. His hair and moustache were graying and he radiated confidence, not suspiciousness, as on the military holidays. The eyes of both Lenin and Stalin were directed to the left, that is, back at the founding event of the Revolution, back at utopian point zero, yet at the same time forward into the bright future—the future of communism, a major theme on this day. Lenin was portrayed as the embodiment of the Revolution and the beginning of the eschatological timeline, Stalin as its follower and completer, leading the country from socialism to a new utopian goal, communism. This was the visual and verbal theme of the front page. In the masthead above the photographs we read the slogan for the day: “Long live the thirtieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution! Under the banner of Lenin, under the leadership of Stalin, forward to the victory of communism! “ The spatial arrangement of the photographs reinforces this very theme. Lenin, as always, is at left and thus in the place marked as beginning; Stalin is at his right from the viewpoint of our imaginary reader, the place of ending, of openness. Thus Stalin represents Lenin and at the same time, together with Lenin, the larger entities of, among other things, the Party, the state, and historical agency in a Marxist linear sense.132 Most of the remainder of the paper was taken up by a speech Molotov had given at a “ceremonial meeting of the Moscow Soviet” on the day before. Page two was pictureless, page three showcased the 6 November meeting of the Moscow Soviet with a large photograph on top, showing the presidium in front of an enormous picture with Stalin in the foreground, Lenin in the background, the dates 1917 and 1947 to left and right respectively, and the slogan “Long live the thirtieth anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution!” above the heads of the leaders. In the foreground at far left was Molotov at a rostrum giving his speech; Stalin himself did not belong to the Moscow presidium.
A d
ay later, on 8 November, our reader would have encountered, on the first page, all Bolshevik leaders and a number of high-ranking military officers on the tribune of the Lenin Mausoleum greeting the parade on Red Square, all except Stalin. Molotov had his central place in the middle of the tribune, looking directly at the camera and raising his arm. For the first time in Pravda’s pictorial representations of the Day of the October Revolution on Red Square, our reader would have seen the letters “LENIN” on the granite of the mausoleum below the tribune, and for the first time she would have seen the Kremlin’s Senate Tower in the background right above the roof of the mausoleum—shown perhaps to demonstrate the link with Stalin who had merged with the Kremlin. On the next page, the reader would have found Stalin, although represented indirectly, on the usual poster to the right of Lenin on the Red Square façade of GUM, and in another photograph on a poster above a group of demonstrators. For the rest of November there were only inconspicuous appearances of Stalin in images, most of them connected with elections to local bodies of Soviet power—oblast, city, and district soviets.133
Figure 2.25. Front page on the Day of the October Revolution, holiest of holidays. Pravda, y November 1947, 1.
On 5 December came the last Stalin holiday of the year, the Day of the Stalin Constitution, a day that, as we can see, was intimately tied semantically to an adjectivized Stalin. On this day, year after year, the same photograph appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the page. It showed, as the caption explained, “Comrade J. V. Stalin on the tribune of the extraordinary Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviets, 5 December 1936” (Fig. 2.26). Stalin is seen in nearly, but not quite side view looking rightward, his right hand raised as if to underline a point. This was very unusual, for he was typically static and his hands were never shown gesturing, in deliberate contradistinction to Hitler (see Chapter 3). Stalin’s mouth is slightly open as he speaks, and his eyes gaze into the far distance. His hair is still almost black with only sparse streaks of gray, his uniform simple and prewar, the black moustache still quite Georgian. This picture served as a template for numerous paintings of Stalin. Right beneath the photograph there was a lead article, “Under the Banner of the Stalin Constitution,” ascribing all merit of the constitution to Stalin, who appeared in adjectival form (stalinskaia konstitutsia) in almost every sentence.