Twentieth Century Russia
Outline #12
Professor Knight

The Great Retreat: Soviet Culture in the 1930s

I.  Cultural Revolution
	Stalin's motto:
		The closer to socialism the more intense the class struggle."
	"Wreckers," "Saboteurs"
	The Shakhty trials, March 1928.
	Show Trials of 1930:  
		The Industrial Group
		The Toiling Peasants Party Group
	RAPP--Russian Association of Proletarian Writers
	League of Militant Godless (Atheists)
	Academy of Red Professors
	Mikhail Pokrovsky
	T.D. Lysenko

II. Cultural Retreat

	Socialist Realism
	Rapp disbanded, 1931
	Union of Writers, 1934
	Stalin's Letter to journal Proletarian Revolution, 1931
	Rehabilitation of Russian history
	Upward Mobility
	The "Brezhnev" Generation

III. Second Five Year Plan
	Sergo Ordzhonikidze–Commissar of Heavy Industry
	Sergei Kirov–Head of Leningrad Party Organization
	Stakhanovite Movement (Alexei Stakhanov)
	Draconian Labor Legislation–Labor Law of 1940.
	Return of Social Inequality, Privilege.  "Blat"

IV. Nationalities Policy
	Soviet Patriotism–Concept of the Motherland
	Rehabilitation of Russian Nationalism
		Movies by Sergei Eisenstein: 
		Alexander Nevsky (1937), Ivan the Terrible (1939)
	Downscaling of Soviet Nation Building

V.  Social Policy: Family Life
	Weakening of the Family under NEP
		High rates of Divorce, Abortion; low birth rates.
	Campaign of 1934-35–return to family values.
		Cult of Motherhood
		New Divorce Law, Abortion banned
	Return to Bourgeois aesthetics
	Stalin (1935): "Life has become better, Life has become happier"