Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

VI

Cultural Developments

From the mid-20th century the Soviet government tried, within strict ideological confines, to enable all citizens of the Soviet Union's many nationalities to participate fully in the culture of a unified Communist society and at the same time to preserve the traditions of their regional homelands. Tuition-free education in the form of day schools, evening classes, volunteer “people's universities”, and correspondence courses was available to all those who toed the party line. Special efforts were made to reach isolated areas where educational opportunities had been few. Instruction was in Russian or in one of the Soviet Union's many other languages. Non-literate peoples were provided with their own alphabets, dictionaries, and grammars. As a result, illiteracy (about 70 per cent in the Russian Empire) was almost entirely eliminated, and a large part of the population acquired a narrow political awareness of Communism (but heavily biased interpretations of capitalism), and the technical skills needed to develop a modern industrialized state.

Cultural achievements in the natural sciences were outstanding: in some areas of chemistry and physics, for example, the Soviets outstripped all other countries. Great attention was paid to nuclear energy (at the cost of safe disposal of nuclear waste) and to space exploration. The first Earth satellites, Sputnik 1 and 2, were launched in 1957. The first circumnavigation of the Earth in a spaceship was made by Yury A. Gagarin in 1961. By the early 1980s Soviet technology had produced more than 30 manned space vehicles, and the USSR had launched more than 1,100 spacecraft and numerous satellites.

Nor were the arts neglected. Unions were formed for communist writers, painters, and other creative people. Theatres and concert halls were built, and orchestras and theatre and dance companies sent on tour. Local clubs and palaces of culture brought politically didactic urban and folk arts to the general public, and the government encouraged thousands of amateur groups. Dissidents and their families, however, were harshly persecuted and often banished to Siberia or imprisoned in mental hospitals.

A

State Control

The state insisted that all aspects of Soviet culture foster Communist society. This requirement did relatively little damage to science, although the government's vacillating attitude towards biologist and agronomist Trofim D. Lysenko shows how political values can affect scientific views.

Communist influence tended to hamper the social sciences, which had to be placed in a Marxist context. The Communist attitude towards music is less clear: The composers Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich were both alternately in and out of favour. After the mid-1960s even jazz and twelve-tone music were offered lipservice. The fine arts and literature suffered most from Communism, which required them to adhere to Socialist realism, a secular optimistic exaltation of the Soviet people in a style that satisfied popular taste. In the 1920s Russian modern art experienced a golden age, but at Stalin's instigation Avant Garde literature and the paintings of Marc Chagall, and Kasimir Malevich, and Wassily Kandinsky among others were banned. The government accepted religious toleration in theory but was itself atheistic and opposed organized religion in practice. Religious services were restricted and believers were denied educational and professional advancement and were subjected to antireligious propaganda and imprisonment.

B

Dissidence

A small but persistent current of dissident intellectuals, artists, religious believers, and nationalists wrote open letters, circulated clandestine literature (samizdat), and staged demonstrations in the cause of greater freedom. A “thaw” in government control during the de-Stalinization years from 1955 through 1964 was followed by a return to a more repressive policy, especially after the radical attempts at liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Hundreds of dissidents were dismissed, imprisoned, or sent to mental institutions or hard-labour camps, usually for actions considered subversive to the regime. The most distinguished among these dissidents were the writer Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and the nuclear physicist Andrey D. Sakharov. Solzhenitsyn, who was forbidden to publish in the Soviet Union in 1968, was forcibly expelled from the country in 1974. Sakharov, because of his distinguished scientific reputation, for a long time escaped punishment, but having denounced the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979, he was isolated the following month by banishment in Gorky (now known as Nizhniy Novgorod), a city “out of limits” to foreigners, where he was kept under police surveillance bordering on house arrest. Sakharov was permitted to return to Moscow in December 1986. Many intellectual dissidents were Jews who wanted to emigrate to Israel, but were refused by the government, which did not want to lose expensively trained citizens. Thousands of other Jews, however, were allowed to leave. Religious dissidents also included Jehovah's Witnesses, Lithuanian Catholics, and Baptists. Prominent among nationalist dissidents were Crimean Tatars and Soviet Germans, moved to Siberia in World War II, who wanted to return home.

VII

Affairs Abroad

After World War II the Soviet Union had the closest relations with the Eastern European nations that bordered it, often referred to as “satellite” countries. The CMEA after 1949 attempted to work out Soviet plans for the economic integration of its member nations in the Eastern bloc. Under the plans, each country would produce what it was best prepared for and purchase other products from the other countries. Opposition to this supranational system under Soviet domination developed, notably in Romania, which rejected its assignment as a basically agricultural and oil- producing country. Despite such dissatisfaction, additional economic links were later established, including an International Bank of Economic Collaboration. Pipelines carrying oil and gas from the Volga-Urals region to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany created further dependency by the economies of these nations on that of the USSR.

A

Relations with Satellites

Yugoslavia, which immediately after World War II seemed interested in cooperation with the Soviet Union, soon broke sharply with it, refusing to accept Moscow's direction. In the other satellites Soviet domination increased until 1955: in 1952, 80 per cent of Soviet trade was with the satellites. In 1954 the USSR granted a degree of economic independence to East Germany, which was freed from further reparations payments but retained a large contingent of Soviet troops. Formation of the Warsaw Pact for military assistance in 1955 was a countermeasure to NATO and served to tighten Soviet control. After the death of Stalin, relations with Yugoslavia improved, only to decline again, especially after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. After 1961 the Soviet Union completely lost control of Albania, which until 1978 remained closely allied with China.