by Jan Plamper
CHAPTER 2. STALIN’S IMAGE IN TIME
1. The same held true for Izvestia where a drawing by Evgeny Katsman, the newspaper’s preferred artist, was on the front page. See Izvestia, 21 December 1929, 1. Later there even appeared a theoretical justification of the leader cult by K. Popov, “Partiia i rol’ vozhdia,” Partiinoe stroitel’stvo 1, no. 3 (1930): 5–9.
2. James Heizer was first to infer “that the information for all papers was being provided by one office, perhaps in the Kremlin.” Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin, 1929–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1977), 62. After the opening of the archives Benno Ennker was able to actually demonstrate the Politburo’s concerted preparation of these celebrations. See “‘Struggling for Stalin’s Soul’: The Leader Cult and the Balance of Power in Stalin’s Inner Circle,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism—Personenkulte im Stalinismus, ed. Klaus Heller and Jan Plamper (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2004), 163–165.
3. As Heizer has aptly summarized, “It would have been possible for him to have had his name in Pravda daily if he had wished. This low profile was obviously by his own choice. No one could have appeared more modest.” Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin, 1929–1939,” 55.
4. The exceptions, totaling twenty-one missing issues between 1 January 1929 and 31 December 1953, are as follows. 1940: 8 November; 1943: 2 March, 9 March, 16 March, 23 March, 30 March, 6 April, 13 April, 20 April, 27 April, 4 May, 11 May, 16 May, 18 May, 25 May, 1 June, 8 June, 15 June, 23 June, 29 June, 14 September. On these days either the paper did not appear for war-related reasons or I was unable to obtain a copy at the libraries I accessed—the library of the Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte und Landeskunde, Tübingen (which holds a nearly complete run of original hard copies); the library of RGASPI, Moscow (hard copy originals); the Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen (microfilms); German interlibrary loan (microfilms); Doe Library, University of California, Berkeley (microfilms).
5. For a first attempt at a quantitative analysis of references to Stalin in Pravda, see G. Alekseev, “Kolichestvennye parametry kul’ta lichnosti,” SSSR v protivorechiiakh 6 (1982): 5–11.
6. This was the 28 January 1938 publication of the “Muddle Instead of Music” article in Pravda. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, d. 42, l. 6.
7. See Rosalinde Sartorti, Pressefotografie und Industrialisierung in der Sowjetunion: Die Pravda 1925–1933 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981); Julie Kay Mueller, “Staffing Newspapers and Training Journalists in Early Soviet Russia,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 4 (1998): 851–873; Alex Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958); Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
8. Matthew Lenoe, Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 17.
9. See Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 19–20.
10. A 1924 protocol of a Politburo meeting bemoaned that “1. Recently in the local press (in journals and newspapers) information was published that gave away the itineraries from the center, the stops, events (congresses, conferences, demonstrations), place of medical treatment, and the return itineraries of the members of the USSR and RSFSR government as well as the Central Committee of the RKP(b). 2. Some editors sent without the knowledge of the OGPU not only reporters but also photographers who made entire photo shootings of the places which the comrades mentioned in 1. came to. 3. The appearance of this information in the press facilitated the work of all kinds of spies and impeded the protection of the government members.” Therefore it suggested concealing the travel plans outside Moscow of the Party and state leadership and stipulated that all journalists carry OGPU licenses. Note in this document: the still prominent role of the OGPU; the lack of control over the use of leaders’ photos in the provinces; and the degree to which in 1924 the Politburo still considered it necessary to explain why it was tightening control. See “Proekt tsirkuliara OGPU organam pechati o svedeniiakh, davaemykh v pechati o chlenakh pravitel’stva” as part of Politburo protocol no. 5, 1924, published in Kommersant” Vlast’, 21 June 2004, 62.
11. See Lenoe, Closer to the Masses, 20.
12. Ibid., 19. To be sure, censorship constituted another filter. The day before Stalin’s fiftieth birthday, central Glavlit issued a circular exhorting local censorship boards “to watch out that Stalin’s photograph be printed exclusively from templates supplied by the ROSTA” press agency. A. V. Blium, Za kulisami “ministerstva pravdy”: Tainaia istoriia sovetskoi tsenzury, 1917–1929 (St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo ‘Akademicheskii proekt,’ 1994), 128 (emphasis in original). For more on Stalin’s image and censorship during High Stalinism see Blium, Sovetskaia tsenzura v epokhu total’nogo terrora, 1929–1953 (St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo ‘Akademicheskii proekt,’ 2000), esp. 237–242.
13. On the informal power of Stalin’s secretariat see Oleg Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 30-e gody (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996), 65–69, 117–118; Niels Erik Rosenfeldt, Knowledge and Power: The Role of Stalin’s Secret Chancellery in the Soviet System of Government (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1978); Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 123–125.
14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1499, ll. 2–2ob.
15. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1499, l. 39.
16. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 3 (the original photograph of Stalin’s head is on 1. 4, the letter from the journal informing Poskryobyshev that it is now enclosing the retouched version on l. 5, and the retouched photo finally on l. 6). The postwar continuation, ending in 1952, of this kind of correspondence is in RGASPI, f. 558, op. ll, d. 1476.
17. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, ll. 35–36.
18. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 40 (5 January 1945 letter by V. Boitekhov, editor in chief of the journal Smena).
19. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 7 (the photograph of Ordzhonikidze and Stalin is on l. 8).
20. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 13.
21. See the 270-page post-birthday collection Stalin: Sbornik statei k piatidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia, which contained 495 greetings. Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin,” 65–68.
22. Pravda, 4 January 1930, 4.
23. Ibid., 2 January 1930, 2; 6 January 1930, 1. Also see the ad for Stalin’s “Dizzy with Success” speech ibid., 3 March 1930, 6. Note that these examples of ads are spread throughout the entire newspaper, from the front page to the back page.
24. Ibid., 10 May 1930, 5.
25. See Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin,” 61, 80.
26. Pravda, 6 March 1931, 5.
27. For the Avilov picture see ibid., 13 August 1933, 3, 24 October 1934, 2, and 19 November 1934, 2; for the Gerasimov picture: 10 April 1934, 1.
28. Ibid., 24 January 1934, 3. Later aviators were termed “Stalin falcons” (stalinskie sokoly) and outstanding students at Moscow State University “Stalin fellows” (stalinskie stipendiaty). See ibid., 30 June 1938, 1; 3 July 1940, 4.
29. Ibid., 19 August 1933, 1.
30. Ibid., 13 June 1933, 1. For the first airplane formation spelling out the word “S-T-A-L-I-N” see ibid., 1 July 1935, 1.
31. Ibid., 20 January 1934, 4.
32. See ibid., 9 August 1930, 4, and 17 November 1930, 5.
33. See ibid., 4 January 1935, 1. Furthermore, in a photograph of a memorial meeting for Lenin, Stalin was shown as very much standing out, even though he was in the second row of attendants. See ibid., 22 January 1935, 1. The deliberate centering of Stalin is also seen in pencil drawings in 1931 and 1935 by Gustav Klutsis, which served as the basis for his posters. See Plate 22 and Fig. 138 in Margarita Tupitsyn, The Soviet Photograph, 1924–1937 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1996).
34. See Pravda, 8 February 1934, 1. Also see 7 February 1934, 1; 21 March 1939, 2.
35. See ibid., 13 July 1937, 1.
36. See ibid., 22 July 1940, 1.
37. See ibid., 24 February 1935, 1; 12 February 1934, 1. Stalin was for the first time shown with his hand holding a headphone to his ear and hence touching his face in Pravda on 16 February 1936, 1.
38. On the gaze and eyes in sixteenth and seventeenth-century art see Alfred Neumeyer, Der Blick aus dem Bilde (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1964). Also see Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), esp. chap. 5. Curiously, nineteenth-century ruler portraits rarely employ this visual strategy. See Rainer Schoch, Das Herrscherbild in der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Prestel, 1975). Thanks to Sergiusz Michalski for directing me to Neumeyer and Schoch.
39. For a reproduction of this 1915 photograph see Pravda, 5 January 1940, 3.
40. On 22 January 1930, for example, Pravda’s second page carried a picture of Stalin sitting second from the right among a total of six high Party bosses, yet in the caption he was mentioned first. On 4 May 1933 the caption underneath a photograph of the presidium on a tribune mentioned Stalin first, even though he was in the second row and in order of standing neither first from the right nor from the left; on 19 May 1933 a photograph depicted, from left to right, Kaganovich, Stalin, and Molotov, while the caption placed Stalin ahead of Molotov and Kaganovich; on 15 May 1935 Pravda again listed Stalin ahead of Kaganovich, Molotov, Voroshilov, and others, even though he was not seated first from left or right.
41. See e.g. ibid., 15 January 1938, 1, and 19 March 1938, 1.
42. See e.g. Stalin’s full-page article “O rabote v derevne: Rech’ tov. Stalina,” Pravda, 17 January 1933, 1.
43. See the speech by Kalinin, ibid., 18 May 1933, 2.
44. See e.g. the article “Proizvedeniia I. V. Stalina na 75 iazykakh,” ibid., 5 November 1935, 6.
45. On this see John MacCannon, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
46. See the entire issue of Pravda, 6 June 1934.
47. For the ticker tape parade see ibid., 11 August 1936, 6; for Stalin kissing Chkalov and Baidukov respectively see ibid., 11 August 1936, 1, 4; for the article, “Eto Stalin vospital takikh khrabretsov,” see ibid., 24 July 1936, 3. For a first picture of Chkalov and Stalin see ibid., 22 July 1936, 1.
48. See ibid., 14 September 1936, 1.
49. See ibid., 25 May 1937, 1.
50. See ibid., 4 May 1935, 3.
51. See ibid., 3 March 1936, 1.
52. Joan Neuberger has called this “the double whammy cult of Pushkin and the cult of Stalin.” Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 282 n. 12. For the cult of Taras Shevchenko in Pravda see 1 April 1935, 6; for the Lomonosov cult see the article, “Genial’nyi syn russkogo naroda,” ibid., 18 November 1936, 1. For linkages between the cults of Lenin and Pushkin see Rainer Grübel, “Gabe, Aufgabe, Selbstaufgabe: Dichter-Tod als Opferhabitus. Zur Genese des sowjetischen Personenkultes aus Dichtertod, Lenin- und Puškingedenken,” in Welt hinter dem Spiegel: Zum Status des Autors in der russischen Literatur der 1920er bis 1950er Jahre, ed. Klaus Städtke (Berlin: Akademie, 1998), 139–204. On the celebration of the centenary of Pushkin’s death in 1937, particularly the politics and iconography of the Pushkin memorials, see Iurii Molok, Pushkin v 1937 godu: Materialy i issledovaniia po ikonografii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2000). On the 1937 Pushkin centennial in literature, especially as it related to Russian Nietzscheanism, see Irina Paperno, “Nietzscheanism and the Return of Pushkin in Twentieth-Century Russian culture (1899–1937),” in Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 211–232. On the mutual reinforcement of Dostoevsky’s and Pushkin’s symbolic power as writers see Marcus C. Levitt, Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). On the celebration surrounding the hundredth anniversary of Pushkin’s birth see Levitt, “Pushkin in 1899,” in Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age, ed. Boris Gasparov, Robert P. Hughes, and Irina Paperno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 183–203.
53. Pravda, 13 February 1937, 3. The transfer of specific markers of the iconography of the leaders to other cultural figures was generally widespread.
54. See Stephen Moeller-Sally, Gogol’s Afterlife: The Evolution of a Classic in Imperial and Soviet Russia (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 159.
55. Pravda, 4 December 1938, 4.
56. See e.g. ibid., 1 May 1941, 1.
57. See ibid., 14 July 1932, 1 (photograph); 8 July 1934, 1 (drawing).
58. Prior to the Kirov murder Stalin was shown in Pravda as a pallbearer at the funerals of Sen Katayama, 10 November 1933, 2; Clara Zetkin, 23 June 1933, 1–2; and Viacheslav Menzhinsky, 14 May 1934, 1; and dressed in white at the funeral of Valerian Dovgalevsky, 23 July 1934, 1. After the Kirov funeral Stalin appeared as a pallbearer at the funerals of Kuibyshev, 28 January 1935, 1; the geologist Aleksandr Karpinsky, 18 July 1936, 1; Ordzhonikidze, 21 February 1937, 3 (with Voroshilov); Maria Ulianova, 15 June 1937, 1; Marshal Shaposhnikov, who had died 26 March 1945 (with Molotov), 29 March 1945, 1; Aleksandr Shcherbakov, 13 May 1945, 1; Kalinin, 6 June 1946, 3; and Vasily Vakhrushev, 16 January 1947, 1. It seems that Stalin is mostly placed to the right of the coffin, probably because of his chronically stiff left elbow. In the postwar period other leaders—not so much Stalin—increasingly appeared walking alongside an open coffin carried by a car.
59. A high point was attained a year later when an Aleksandr Gerasimov painting of Stalin, Voroshilov, and other military figures occupied the entire width and one-third of the front page of Pravda, 17 April 1936, 1.
60. For the newborn see ibid., 7 November 1935, 7.
61. The “blossoming generation” and the Pioneer article are ibid., 1 July 1935, 2.
62. See Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 99, 105.
63. See Pravda, 10 November 1935, 1. For another example of the new Stalin, smiling and at ease, see ibid., 23 February 1936, 1.
64. “Zhit’ stalo trudnee i grustnee (Ot londonskogo korrespondenta ‘Pravdy’),” ibid., 27 December 1935, 7.
65. On this and the “friendship of peoples” see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1929–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 432–461.
66. Rogers Brubaker, “Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Eurasia,” Theory and Society 23, no. 1 (1994): 47–78. For more on the ethnic dimension of Stalin’s portrayal see David L. Hoffmann, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 157–158; Jan Plamper, “Georgian Koba or Soviet ‘Father of Peoples’? The Stalin Cult and Ethnicity,” in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. Balâzs Apor et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 123–140.
67. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 164. Quoted from V. A. Nevezhin, ed., Zastol’nye rechi Stalina: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2003), 158.
68. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 11, l. 18. By G. I. Fomin, typewritten copy dated 17 March 1938.
69. Several pages of an issue devoted to the “reception of the delegation from Soviet Georgia” showed no ethnic link whatsoever between Stalin and his personal co-nationals. See Pravda, 21 March 1936, 1–3. Also see the reproduction of Irakly Toidze’s painting “Tovarishch Stalin na Riongese” and the article “Opening of the Exhibition of Artists of Georgia,” ibid., 31 July 1936, 1.
70. For an Uzhekicized Stalin portrait in the background on the wall of the Stalin kolkh
oz laboratory in Namanganskii raion, Uzhek SSR, see Pravda, 13 January 1940, 4.
71. On the “oriental despot” from Montesquieu to Wittfogel see Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 250 n. 39.
72. “Narod odobriaet stalinskuiu konstitutsiiu” was the title of an article published in Pravda, 13 July 1936, 1.
73. See ibid., 18 October 1936, 6: “J. V. Stalin Room at the Kharkov Palace of Pioneers. Kharkov, 17 Oct. (TASS). While familiarizing himself with the work of the P. P. Postyshev Palace of Pioneers and Young Octobrists, Kharkov obkom secretary Comrade S. A. Kudriavtsev suggested opening I. V. Stalin rooms at the palace. The idea of creating rooms that will showcase materials on the youth, life, and struggle of the wise leader and beloved friend of children, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, was enthusiastically greeted by thousands of Kharkov Pioneers and schoolchildren.” On a projected “Stalin Museum of the Defense of Tsaritsyn” in Stalingrad see ibid., 19 October 1936, 4.
74. “Berech’ i okhranit’ svoikh vozhdei, kak boevoe znamia,” ibid., 16 August 1936, 3; “Berech’ i okhranit’ tov. Stalina,” ibid., 17 August 1936, 5.
75. See e.g. the article “Schastlivye deti stalinskoi epokhi,” ibid., 23 September 1937, 1.
76. Ibid., 30 December 1937, 3.
77. See e.g. ibid., 24 August 1939, 1; 1 September 1939, 1; 29 September 1939, 1, where he was shown somewhat standoffishly in the background.
78. For a still of Gelovani starring as Stalin in The Vyborg Side see ibid., 28 November 1938,4.
79. See the respective images ibid., 22 January 1941, 1 (“old” Stalin), and 15 February 1941, 1 (“young” Stalin).
80. To be sure, Party comrades and others sent Stalin letters and telegrams on every birthday, not just the decennial ones. For examples see congratulatory telegrams and letters from individuals (e.g. Kaganovich) and organizations (e.g. school no. 72, Moscow) for Stalin’s sixty-third birthday in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1359; or Poskryobyshev’s letter to Stalin congratulating him on his sixty-eighth birthday in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 786, l. 130 (dated 21 December 1947).