Russian Culture

Lesson 1: Myths and Legends of Soviet Russia

Censorship and Workcamps

Censorship

Stalin was not just Russia leader (or dictator), Stalin was Russia’s Father. Stalin is also a product of his times. He was a strong leader when Russia needed him most; he was not the greatest battle strategist, but Stalin is what unified the country in order to survive the Great Patriotic War. Without Stalin, Russia today might only be those lands located in Siberia. This does not excuse his war crimes, but that is a different topic. Stalin was a harsh Father to his people, but no matter how cold the History Channel paints this one man, they can never capture the pride the Russia people had in Stalin at the time. He held before the Russian people the Grail of the times and I think there are very few wars in the history of modern times when the citizens of a country were so unified and sacrificing in battle and war times.

Russia came too close to losing herself in that war. Dissidence could not be afforded at that time. But Russian censorship was a funny thing. It was not as all encompassing as we were lead to believe. And actually it was the neighbor or co-worker who was the greatest censor in the life of an average person. Governmental censorship seemed to change like the wind. Not many works or topics were banned for the entire history of Soviet Russia. A painting could be banned and in five years it could be the toast of the town, and then banned again, and the cycle continued. Not all works or authors that were critical of the Soviet state were completely banned either. Mikhail A. Bulgakov was a struggling playwright, whose plays never made it past the censors. In frustration Bulgakov wrote a personal letter to Stalin, explaining that all he wanted was to be a good citizen. Stalin gave Bulgakov a position at a theater as the house playwright and Bulgakov wrote many critically acclaimed plays during that time, some satirical and some historical, but not everyone was complementing the Soviet state. This is not to say, artists and writers were not punished (exiled, sent to work camps, put under house arrest, or just plain murdered) by the state for their dissent.

But I am trying to show that censorship was not cut and dry in the Soviet State. Even Stalin, once beloved and adored, was banned eventually. I feel the government had very little to do with censorship. Instead, I feel that it was the public opinion and communistic academic critics who played the largest part in decided what was to be banned and was to be allowed. After the horrors of the Great Patriotic were sufficiently put to rest and Stalin good and dead, the public saw fit to destroy the Stalin cult and anything that had to with Stalin (this was in the 1960’s). Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd, statues were dismantled and destroyed (in Volgograd they dumped Stalin in the river!), and pictures burned.

Work Camps

This is a very difficult subject to explain. During the Great Patriotic war, if you were not fighting, then you were in a work camp. The populations of Russia after WWII was, at the most 50% of the population that Russia had before the war. Work camps are similar to concentration camps, except that a prisoner was worked to death, instead of gassed. The common criminal was not immediately sent to a work camp. These camps were reserved mainly for felonies and treason. Treason was a matter taken very seriously. If you were not Russian by ethnicity you were a suspect for treason. Entire ethnic populations, such as the Tuva and the Kalmykians, were relocated to work camps during the WWII era.

When those horrors were over, Russians forgot. There are many statistics for the number of people killed and/or imprisoned during this time, but the range is so great between them that is almost not worth mentioned any numbers at all.

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