Much has been written about the feat of the Soviet people in World War II and its historical significance in the defeat of fascism. At the same time, the topic of challenges faced by the country after the end of the battles is almost not raised.
After the banners of the defeated masters of Europe were thrown to the steps of Lenin's mausoleum and the festive fireworks died down, the problem of a variety of expectations that people associated with a future peaceful life arose at full height. Moreover, many of them were addressed directly to the authorities. They represented a public request for changes and at the same time formulated control questions of the verification work, which the country's leadership had to perform at a new historical stage. To summarize all the problems, it was a historical challenge to Stalin personally, who was to lead the ship of the country between the peculiar Scylla and Charybdis of such insistently demanding expectations.
What were the dangers of this period and historical maneuver?
Let's not forget that after the Patriotic War of 1812 and the overseas campaigns of 1813-1814, Russian officers who returned home, blown through by liberal and revolutionary winds in Europe, conspired and raised the Decembrist uprising.
After the First World War, which many in Russia called the Second Patriotic War, the returning soldiers and officers staged a revolution of victorious socialism.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, many were waiting for a democratic and consumer revolution in the manner of the "fat" West.
People are tired of being soldiers of the "labor army". Sleep at the machines, have what you have to, walk in darned, darned clothes, live cramped, crowded, practically without amenities.
The creative intelligentsia, in turn, is tired of being "soldiers of political propaganda" and writing "Vasiliev Terkin", "Kill a German" and other "sharp and necessary things." She wanted to express herself. "Seething glory" of the brilliant decadents of the early twentieth century. I wanted "Hole-bul-shchil" (a poem by Alexei Eliseevich Kruchenykh, written using a "abstruse" language, in which, according to the author himself, "more Russian national than in all of Pushkin's poetry"), and not boring socialist realism. I wanted avant-garde bright jackets with a carrot in my pocket, I wanted to be idols of dudes and exalted girls in fildepera stockings, and not to answer "primitive" questions at creative meetings with working youth.
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Many people pinned very different hopes on the consequences of the victory.
There were outspoken Westernizers - representatives of, as we now say, the “fifth column”, who believed that since Stalin, under pressure from the allies, dissolved the Comintern in 1943, this would not end, and the West would force him to abandon collective farms, party management of the country's life, socialist dogmas, will allow a multi-party system, petty-bourgeois entrepreneurship, free entry and exit abroad. The USSR will take loans, and colorful overseas consumer goods and delicious food will appear in abundance on the still empty store shelves.
The group of these "waiters" was large enough. It included, first of all, representatives of the bohemians of both capitals and large cities, speculators of all stripes, rear businessmen, well-off immigrants from the former privileged estates, who sometimes occupied very high positions under the new government, and even party functionaries who secretly stood on the Trotskyist and oppositional general line positions.
Another group expecting changes was represented by the Bonapartists, who believed that “the war and the people in its course, nominated new heroes,” meaning, first of all, Zhukov, and they should remove the party “that once usurped power in Russia” from government and ensure the transition to democracy.
This group was also quite numerous, and it included people of a fairly wide range of political views - from professional military men to former Socialist-Revolutionaries, "strong business executives" and national minorities longing for more freedoms.
One more very important point should be added to this. Socio-political assessments of what was happening and expectations of the future sometimes diametrically divorced the well-known and influential people of that time, who were quite capable of leading their admirers and supporters of their views, thus creating a very dangerous split in society. Its tendencies were outlined during the war.
Let us refer to the document entitled: "Special message of the Counterintelligence Department of the NKGB of the USSR" On anti-Soviet manifestations and negative political sentiments among writers and journalists ", 07.24.1943. It reflects sentiments that are threatening from both the right and left flanks. Here are two typical examples.
“Nikandrov N. P., writer, former Socialist-Revolutionary: Last summer we were waiting for the end of the war and liberation from 25-year slavery, this year, this summer, and liberation will take place, it will only happen a little differently than we thought. Bolshevism will be dissolved, like the Comintern, under the pressure of the allied states.
Now, first of all, we need to wait for reforms in agriculture - private initiative should be introduced there and credit partnerships should be created to replace collective farms. Then there should be reforms in the field of trade. In the area of morality, first of all, Jews must be destroyed or somehow brought to restraint. The Jewish question is the military question of every Russian."
Svetlov M. A., poet, former member of the Trotskyist group: I used to think that we were fools, we shouted that the revolution was dying, that we would follow the lead of world capital, that the theory of socialism in one country would destroy Soviet power. Then I decided: we are fools, why were we shouting? Nothing terrible happened. And now I think: God, we really were smart, we predicted and foresaw all this, we shouted, cried, warned, looked at us like Don Quixotes, made fun of us. And now it turned out that we were right.
The revolution ends where it began. Now the percentage rate for Jews, the table of ranks, shoulder straps and other "joys". Even we did not foresee such a cycle”.
These sentiments and expectations again pushed the Soviet Union towards civil war. Some, like Nikandrov, wanted "liberation" in a Westernizing spirit and with elements of a return to the pre-revolutionary bourgeois and nationalist order. Others, like Svetlov, on the contrary, shouted "guard" about the return of shoulder straps, norms for Jews and other, as it seemed to them, elements of the "accursed order of the past."
There were also those who were openly ready to stab the socialism that won the war in the back, if need be, acting hand in hand with the new invaders.
We read in the Special Communication of the NKGB of the USSR: “Krasnov PB, journalist: I have all my hope in England and America, which will deal a decisive blow to the Germans. But it is obvious that both England and America do not want to fully support the Stalinist government. They are striving for a peaceful revolution in the USSR. My sympathies are always on the side of the democratic powers. In the event of the victory of Soviet power, I, an old democrat, a disciple of V. G. Korolenko, will have only one thing to do - suicide! But I sincerely hope that the kingdom of darkness will be defeated and justice will prevail. From these goals, I am already thinking about the need to unite democratic journalists … I am ready to endure the war for at least three years, let millions more die, if only as a result the despotic, convict order in our country was broken. Believe me, dozens of my comrades reason like me, who,like me, they hope only for the allies, for their victory over Germany and the USSR."
There were demanding expectations and a frankly nationalist sense.
The same document contains the statements of Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko, a Ukrainian film director, writer and playwright, People's Artist of the RSFSR and laureate of two Stalin Prizes (1941 and 1950), who safely died in 1965 in Peredelkino near Moscow. “Ukrainian girls who fell in love with the Germans and married them are not to blame for the fact that they do not have patriotism, but those who have failed to cultivate this patriotism in them are to blame. we ourselves, the entire system of Soviet education, which failed to awaken in a person love for the motherland, a sense of duty, and patriotism. There can be no question of any punishment, everyone should be forgiven, unless they carried out espionage work. (Well, just like now, they are children, - ed.). The topic of exposing the depravity of Soviet education, the worthlessness of the Soviet teacher,the fallacy of propaganda and the tragic results of this should become the main theme of Soviet art, literature and cinema in the near future.
I am outraged why they created a Polish division, and not form Ukrainian national units."
Thus, an averaged and standardized view of the post-victorious USSR, in which, with the end of the battles, came general rejoicing and a radiant look into the bright future under the leadership of the Lenin-Stalin party, is not entirely correct. The challenges and requests to the authorities were very serious.
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How did she answer them?
Even during the war, Stalin relied not only on rebuilding the country after victory, but on its avant-garde renaissance with promising, outstripping rates of development, from which Soviet people should immediately begin to receive tangible benefits. This plan was comprehensive and resembled the decree “On the General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow” for a ten-year period, adopted on July 10, 1935, by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), designed to radically change both the appearance of the capital and the life of Muscovites. At that time, they began to build streets and highways in the capital, designed for congestion with cars hundreds of times more intensive than the available vehicle fleet. Stalin looked ahead decades in everything. In one of his private conversations with foreign journalists immediately after the war, when they began to give him an example of European mansions that Soviet people did not have,he replied: “Yes, we have not built mansions, we have built factories. And soon, very soon you will see the fruits of this different approach to construction. " The interlocutors of the secretary general smiled politely: Western experts made a forecast according to which the economy of the USSR would be able to reach the level of 1940 only by 1965, and then, on condition that the country took foreign loans. These were theorist thinkers, similar to those who today sit in our Ministry of Economic Development and all kinds of Kudrinsky strategic offices. Stalin was a practical strategist. As a result, we unpleasantly surprised the world and our own "democratic community", having reached the level of 1940 only 4 years later (in 1949) without any external assistance. How did you achieve this?very soon you will see the fruits of this different approach to construction. " The interlocutors of the secretary general smiled politely: Western experts gave a forecast that the Soviet economy would be able to reach the 1940 level only by 1965, and then, on condition that the country took foreign loans. These were theorist thinkers, similar to those who today sit in our Ministry of Economic Development and all kinds of Kudrinsky strategic offices. Stalin was a practical strategist. As a result, we unpleasantly surprised the world and our own "democratic community", having reached the level of 1940 only 4 years later (in 1949) without any external assistance. How did you achieve this?very soon you will see the fruits of this different approach to construction. " The interlocutors of the secretary general smiled politely: Western experts made a forecast according to which the economy of the USSR would be able to reach the level of 1940 only by 1965, and then, on condition that the country took foreign loans. These were theorist thinkers, similar to those who today sit in our Ministry of Economic Development and all kinds of Kudrinsky strategic offices. Stalin was a practical strategist. As a result, we unpleasantly surprised the world and our own "democratic community", having reached the level of 1940 only 4 years later (in 1949) without any external assistance. How did you achieve this?that the country will take foreign loans. These were theorist thinkers, similar to those who today sit in our Ministry of Economic Development and all kinds of Kudrinsky strategic offices. Stalin was a practical strategist. As a result, we unpleasantly surprised the world and our own "democratic community", having reached the level of 1940 only 4 years later (in 1949) without any external assistance. How did you achieve this?that the country will take foreign loans. These were theorist thinkers, similar to those who today sit in our Ministry of Economic Development and all kinds of Kudrinsky strategic offices. Stalin was a practical strategist. As a result, we unpleasantly surprised the world and our own "democratic community", having reached the level of 1940 only 4 years later (in 1949) without any external assistance. How did you achieve this?
First, the Soviet monetary system, created in the late thirties, carefully controlled and supported by Stalin throughout the war, turned out to be much stronger and more effective than the national-fascist ones.
Thus, the money supply in Germany during the war years increased 6 times (although the Germans brought goods from all over Europe and a significant part of the USSR); in Italy - 10 times; in Japan - 11 times. In the USSR, the money supply during the war years increased only 3.8 times. As for Great Britain, which did not undergo ground invasion and devastation like the USSR, during the war it squandered all its gold reserves, which successfully migrated to the United States, and various cards in it were canceled only in the 50s. But Stalin again looked far ahead. According to the testimony of the People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR Arseny Zverev (he managed the finances of the USSR since 1938), for the first time Stalin inquired about the possibility of monetary reform at the end of December 1942 and demanded that the first calculations be submitted in early 1943. The result of this work was the adoption on December 3, 1947 of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the decision to abolish the rationing system and the beginning of monetary reform in the USSR. In parallel, immediately after the end of the war, the state began to implement a whole package of planned measures aimed at strengthening the monetary system and increasing the well-being of the population. Purchasing demand was stimulated by an increase in wage funds and a decrease in payments to the financial system. So, since August 1945, they began to abolish the war tax on workers and employees, which finally disappeared into oblivion at the beginning of 1946. Reduced the size of the subscription for a new government loan. In the spring of 1946, savings banks began to pay workers and employees compensation for unused vacations during the war.immediately after the end of the war, the state began to implement a whole package of planned measures aimed at strengthening the monetary system and increasing the welfare of the population. Purchasing demand was stimulated by an increase in wage funds and a decrease in payments to the financial system. So, since August 1945, they began to abolish the war tax on workers and employees, which finally disappeared into oblivion at the beginning of 1946. Reduced the size of the subscription for a new government loan. In the spring of 1946, savings banks began to pay workers and employees compensation for unused vacations during the war.immediately after the end of the war, the state began to implement a whole package of planned measures aimed at strengthening the monetary system and increasing the welfare of the population. Purchasing demand was stimulated by an increase in wage funds and a decrease in payments to the financial system. So, since August 1945, they began to abolish the war tax on workers and employees, which finally disappeared into oblivion at the beginning of 1946. Reduced the size of the subscription for a new government loan. In the spring of 1946, savings banks began to pay workers and employees compensation for unused vacations during the war. Purchasing demand was stimulated by an increase in wage funds and a decrease in payments to the financial system. So, since August 1945, they began to abolish the war tax on workers and employees, which finally disappeared into oblivion at the beginning of 1946. Reduced the size of the subscription for a new government loan. In the spring of 1946, savings banks began to pay workers and employees compensation for unused vacations during the war. Purchasing demand was stimulated by an increase in wage funds and a decrease in payments to the financial system. So, since August 1945, they began to abolish the war tax on workers and employees, which finally disappeared into oblivion at the beginning of 1946. Reduced the size of the subscription for a new government loan. In the spring of 1946, savings banks began to pay workers and employees compensation for unused vacations during the war.
A decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of February 28, 1950 transferred the ruble to a permanent gold basis, and the peg to the dollar was canceled. The gold content of the ruble was set at 0.222168 grams of pure gold. From March 1, 1950, the purchase price of the State Bank of the USSR for gold was set at 4 rubles. 45 kopecks. for 1 gram of pure gold. As Stalin noted, the USSR was thus protected from the dollar.
Secondly, again, long before the end of the war, not only the restoration of enterprises began, but their revival with modernization, in parallel with which there was a gradual transfer of the entire industry to a peaceful track. Promising specialists of the necessary professions were recalled from the front. In 1945, allocations for science exceeded the pre-war level, increasing from 2.1 to 2.9 billion rubles.
The State Planning Commission was instructed to prepare its own considerations on what kind of enterprises and specialists from Germany, defeated in the future, we will need, where and how to incorporate them infrastructurally. Prepare the appropriate calculations for production cycles and interspecies industrial cooperation. As soon as the war was over, German factories, technologies and specialists were relocated to the already prepared sites in the USSR and immediately integrated and merged into production chains and collectives.
Thirdly, contrary to various speculations, an important role in the economic life of the country was assigned, as we would say now, to small business. The development of artels was considered the most important state task. In the post-war years, 114,000 workshops and enterprises of various directions were created and successfully operated in the Soviet Union - from the food industry and metalworking to jewelry and the chemical industry. They employed about two million people, producing almost 6% of the gross industrial output. Artels and industrial cooperatives produced 40% of furniture, 70% of metal dishes, more than a third of knitwear, almost all children's toys. Moreover, there were about a hundred design bureaus, 22 laboratories and even two research institutes in the business sector. Within the framework of this private-production, and not speculative sector, it operated its own,non-state, pension system. Artels provided loans to their members for the purchase of livestock, tools and equipment, and the construction of housing.
Due to all this, and also thanks to the sale of some trophies, the commodity fund began to grow. He, in turn, pulled the government-encouraged expansion of commercial trade. Already in the next post-war 1946, commercial trade acquired an unprecedented scale. A wide network of shops and restaurants was created, the assortment of goods was expanded, their prices were reduced. In the famous detective story "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" Fox is hired in one of these establishments - the commercial restaurant Astoria.
The end of the war led to a fall of more than a third of prices on the collective farm markets, and the abolition of cards and monetary reform led to a gradual general reduction in the price of goods and services. Since 1949, annual price reductions for consumer products have become a good spring tradition. Over the 5 post-war years, prices for basic foodstuffs have decreased by more than 2 times, while in the largest capital countries these prices have increased. Now it is hard to believe, but then in the UK began strikes of miners who demanded to provide them with a standard of living, like the miners of the USSR.
People were actively involved in housing construction, issuing loans for 7-12 thousand rubles. for up to 12 years at 1% per annum. For these construction projects, the state sent prisoners of war and Soviet citizens convicted as a result of the war (traitors, collaborators, deserters, bandits, thieves, speculators) as working hands, and prefabricated houses from Germany and Finland, received as reparations, as production components.
During the first post-war five-year plan, 100 million square meters of living space were built and restored in cities and workers' settlements, and 2.7 million residential buildings were built in rural areas.
As a result, the country quickly rose from the ruins, refuting and canceling all negative expectations.
Here is a typical example.
This is how Stalin Square looked like in one of the most damaged and destroyed cities of the USSR - Kiev, in 1948
The task was set to provide the population with high-quality and diverse consumer goods and food products exclusively of domestic production. It was precisely in the post-war years that the installation was formed to ensure that Soviet products and goods were only natural, absolutely safe for humans, of the best quality in the world and incredible wear resistance. For the development of household appliances and consumer goods of promising design and scientific and technical models, specialized research institutes and laboratories, creative workshops and engineering design bureaus were created. As soon as new trends appeared in fashion, they were instantly tracked, and after a couple of months, fashionable goods appeared on store shelves.
Who does not believe, I refer to the catalogs of food and drinks (including alcohol) of the 50s, widely presented on the Internet. There are so many samples that a European who came to us at that time would have experienced the same shock as we did in the late 80s from a trip to Europe.
As for fashion and the statement that it was not in the post-war USSR and the country lived almost in the Stone Age, the Bolshevik ascetic hell, then the photographs of those years suggest otherwise.
Solariums on the roofs of Moscow in the early 50s.
In the September 1953 issue of National business magazine, Herbert Harris' article "The Russians Are Catching Up" noted that the USSR is ahead of any country in terms of growth in economic power and that the current growth rate in the USSR is 2-3 times higher than in the United States. And most importantly, these rates were immediately realized in concrete benefits for the inhabitants of the country.
A typical example. On November 26, 1953, the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper wrote: from November 25, 1953, long-distance telephone conversations were introduced in Moscow from any pay phone. There are hundreds of pay phones in the capital. They are posted all over the place. Therefore, this innovation is a great convenience for Muscovites. When using a pay phone, the duration of conversations with a subscriber in another city is not limited! In order to obtain the right to a long-distance conversation, it is enough to purchase a coupon at any telephone booth or city post office in Moscow. While on the pay phone you can talk with subscribers of the cities of Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Novgorod and Vladimir.
According to preliminary plans, in 1960, bread in the USSR was to be free!
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Being, as they say, determines consciousness. Such successes of Stalinist socialism completely changed the entire line of expectations, from top to bottom.
The creative environment for the most part has abandoned the decadent and pro-Western views and expectations, replacing them, along with the entire country, with futuristic ones. This was also facilitated by the active introduction (co-optation) of journalists, writers, artists, composers, filmmakers, etc. into unions of a young fresh stream. And the adoption in March 1946 of a decree on increasing the salaries of scientists and cultural workers. This, in particular, is written by the writer and poet Konstantin Simonov in his book of memoirs "Through the eyes of a man of my generation."
The rate of certain people and forces on Zhukov and other marshals, as on future Bonapartes, also did not justify itself. Zhukov was a "bonaparte" in relation to his colleagues - the military, and never, at least in any way, in any public way, did not express himself sharply and critically about Stalin or Soviet power.
On the contrary, Zhukov repeatedly emphasized that “Stalin never said a single bad word about me”, that “if someone tries to offend me in front of him, Stalin will rip my head off for me”. “And I, - noted GK Zhukov, - was, of course, grateful to him for such objectivity”. Zhukov said that "Stalin respected my military head, and I appreciated his state mind."
Back in the late 1930s, Stalin planned political reforms aimed at transferring power from the party to democratically elected popularly elected institutions, which would mean the establishment of direct and direct democracy. The war disrupted these plans. Stalin returned to them in 1952.
At the 19th Party Congress, he announced a number of proposals. In particular, they talked about the abolition of the Politburo, about its replacement by the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. As Yuri Mukhin writes in his book "The Murder of Stalin and Beria", this step meant that "the party is deprived of the body that directly governs the entire country, and a body is created for it, which leads only the party and then in the intervals between plenary sessions of the Central Committee."
Yu. N. Zhukov in his work "Another Stalin" writes that a draft ballot for elections on an alternative basis has already been prepared, a photocopy of which Zhukov cites in his book.
But Stalin was not allowed to complete what he had begun. In 1953, he unexpectedly and suddenly left this world, and Khrushchev staged a complete pogrom on almost all of his undertakings - from agriculture to returning to trading for the American dollar.
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In the late 80s of the last century, the country was also waiting for changes. Moreover, both the scientific and technical base (in terms of the number of inventions registered per year, by the mid-1980s, we came out on top in the world), and the people were ready to support them in the most active way and move the country forward along the renewed and modernized socialist path. But the "backbone" of these expectations and readiness was broken at first by the complete drainage of all and all national interests and interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union, disguised under the word "perestroika", which hardly anyone understood, and then by "Yeltsinism", which made a control shot in the head of all people's expectations and aspirations …
Today, there is almost nothing left of these expectations and readiness to support the initiatives of the authorities.
This is evidenced by the results of a study by an employee of the Russian State Humanitarian University, sociologist Irina Vorobyova under the general title "Contradictions and paradoxes of political orientations in the structure of the life world of Russians," published in the journal "Sociological Research", No. 1 for 2016. So, if in 1987 54.4% of Russians declared their active interest in political events, then in 2013 their share dropped to 27.1%. At the same time, there was a noticeable increase in the number of people who do not follow political events at all: there were 12.9% of those in 2013, while in 1987 it was just over 1%.
Such an attitude of almost 13% of the country's residents testifies not only to the fact that these people do not see their place in the political life of their own state, they do not expect anything from this eventful life, but also that they are completely disappointed in the entire line of political parties. forces and leaders actively functioning in Russia.
51% of respondents agreed with the statement: "I do not understand politics." Such a response can be evidence of either a defensive reaction, which, in fact, means a semantic positional identity with a 13 percent group of those who are openly not interested in their own politicians, or the absence of a clearly expressed public and personal position in relation to existing parties, the substantive basis of their activities and basic views.
It turns out that almost 64% of the population are not convinced ideological supporters and defenders of the existing political and economic order in the country and cannot serve as its solid unconditional support. This vacuum of solidarity and support is not filled by any other force acting in the country.
Further, sociologists note completely paradoxical things.
The current government is supported by more than half of the country's population (55%), while only 21% believe that it protects the interests of all citizens. And less than 1% agreed that the state functions in the interests of the poor! Only 7% believe in the honesty of election commissions. Most Russians are convinced that election commissions rig the election results (63%). In the mass consciousness of citizens, a stereotypical view of elections as a formal procedure with previously known results has developed. And this idea, in their opinion, is justified from time to time.
It follows from other polls that Russians are suffocating from a lack of money and justice and support the authorities from a hopeless lack of alternatives. A study by the Public Opinion Foundation, published on April 27, and dedicated to the main expectations of Russians related to their daily life, showed that people do not expect change.
Vadim Bondar