Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society During the Great Terror PDF

24 Feature STALIN, PROPAGANDA AND SOVIET SOCIETY DURING THE GREAT TERROR Sarah Davies explores the evidence that even in the most repressive phases of Stalin’s rule, there existed a flourishing ‘shadow culture’, a lively and efficient unof...

24 Feature STALIN, PROPAGANDA AND SOVIET SOCIETY DURING THE GREAT TERROR Sarah Davies explores the evidence that even in the most repressive phases of Stalin’s rule, there existed a flourishing ‘shadow culture’, a lively and efficient unofficial network of information and ideas oday a man only talks freely with his wife — at night, rian of the terror, has suggested that ‘Everyone was isolated. ‘T with the blankets pulled over his head.’ This remark, allegedly made by the Russian writer, Isaac Babel, is The individual, silently objecting, was faced with vast meet- ings calling for the death “like dogs” of the opposition leaders, often cited as ‘evidence’ of the climate of fear which prevailed or approving the slaughter of generals. How could he know in the Soviet Union at the height of Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’. if they were not genuine, or largely so? There was no sign of The terror swept through Soviet society in the second half of opposition or neutrality...’. Although not without its critics, the 1930s, reaching a peak in 1937-38. Communist Party this has long been the prevailing view amongst historians. members, generals, writers, academics, engineers, ordinary Only recently, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the workers and peasants were arrested as ‘enemies of the peo- partial opening up of the Russian archives, has it been possi- ple’ on any pretext, and shot or sent to the Gulag. Despite the ble to unearth evidence which suggests that this may not have revelations from the former Soviet Union, there is still no con- been the case after all. This article will analyse the new evi- sensus about the number of victims of the terror: figures range dence, and then demonstrate how an alternative ‘shadow from tens of millions to several hundred thousand. The truth culture’ was able to survive in Stalin’s Russia. probably lies somewhere in between. Many historians have debated this issue of the number of victims, fewer have ven- Spying on the Nation tured into the more elusive and speculative areas of psychology Ironically, it is largely thanks to Stalin’s secret police (the and mentalities. Yet the question of the psychological impact NKVD) and the surveillance organs of the Communist Party of the terror is surely a central one. Was it indeed the case that we now have access to this ‘shadow culture’. The regime that the terror reduced the population to virtual silence, that was acutely concerned about the attitudes of its citizens, and men were only free to speak to their wives in the security of went to great lengths to monitor them, not openly via opin- the bedroom? ion polls or surveys, but covertly, through the use of Certainly there were many circumstances in which people informants, who either volunteered or were paid to eaves- may have refrained from openly voicing objections to the ter- drop on their fellow citizens. This eavesdropping by the state ror or other aspects of Stalinism. This was, after all, a period gives historians wonderful opportunities for exploring the when individuals accused of expressing critical views could mental world of ‘ordinary people’: peasants, workers, clerks, be prosecuted for the crime of ‘anti-Soviet agitation’ which low-level party members — the sort of people who rarely leave carried sentences of up to ten years imprisonment. At the documentary evidence and whose opinions and attitudes usu- height of the terror, people were even prosecuted for state- ally elude the historian. ments such as: ‘In Greece there are many fruits, and in the How did the state spy on its population? It is worth exam- USSR few’. Citizens were encouraged to denounce each other; ining its methods in a little detail, partly because these are in the most celebrated case a child, Pavlik Morozov, de- intrinsically interesting, partly because this helps us evaluate nounced his own parents and was turned into a national hero. the documentary material which it produced. The main or- The knowledge that denunciation was widespread undoubt- gans involved were the Communist Party and NKVD. The edly deterred some citizens from speaking out. Communist Party had its own Information Department re- Propaganda and censorship must also have inhibited the sponsible for liaising between Moscow and the regions. Part articulation of alternative views. Propaganda lay at the heart of its remit was to assemble reports on the mood of the masses. of the Stalinist system. People were fed an unalloyed daily Each party organisation within factories, government depart- diet of the joys of life in the USSR, the horrors of the capital- ments and so on was supposed to have an informant who ist West, the genius of Stalin, and the self-evident guilt of was required to report back to the district party secretary on certain ‘enemies of the people’ (Figure 1). This propaganda the mood amongst his co-workers. This information from was omnipresent, pervading all areas of life, including educa- informants throughout a region was then summarised into tion, newspapers, cinema and literature. Stringent censorship a report which was passed on to the regional party secretar- was enforced to prevent the articulation of ‘forbidden’ themes. ies and head of the local NKVD. Stalin also appears to have These measures inevitably restricted the emergence of com- received digests of the national mood. Although seemingly peting definitions of reality. well structured, this system was in practice quite haphaz- But how far did these circumstances succeed in eliminating ard, and only really well developed in areas where the party all but the official voice? Robert Conquest, a leading histo- was strong. Thus in the countryside, where the party had  STALIN AND PROPAGANDA 25 Figure 1: ‘Leader, Teacher, Friend.’ (Stalin at the Presidium of the 2nd Congress of Collective Farm and Shock Workers, February 1935). This painting by Shegal from 1937 was typical of the propaganda of the cult of Stalin. State Russian Museum, St Petersburg feelings... For us it is unu- sually important to know how these measures (i.e. NEP) are accepted by vari- ous groups of the population (such as work- ers, peasants, soldiers, petty bourgeoisie, etc.), to what extent these groups understand the sense of what is happening, how it is reflected in their consciousness.’ This brief appears not to have changed essentially in the 1930s, when the NKVD was responsible, through the information department of its Secret Political Department, for preparing reports on the popular mood for the party on a regular basis. These ‘special reports’ were com- piled on the basis of material from NKVD agents from all walks of life: its range was therefore more extensive than that of the party, and included workers, peasants, intellec- tuals and artists. relatively little influence, it had great difficulty collecting in- Another service supplied by the NKVD was perlustration formation. — the opening and inspection of private correspondence (a While the party’s information network was only really well practice inherited from tsarist times). Censors copied out sec- developed in the city, the NKVD ranged far more broadly. tions of letters in any way related to the political mood of the Unfortunately, much remains obscure concerning the organi- people. Digests of these extracts were prepared for the party sation of NKVD information work in this period. The NKVD’s to supplement the informants’ reports. modern-day successor is reluctant to divulge material relat- ing to what it still considers, rather ominously, to be The nature of the evidence ‘operational work’. The picture is clearer in relation to the These, then, were the primary channels of information. NKVD’s earlier incarnation, the GPU. At the beginning of The reports produced by the NKVD and party, which were the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1922, the GPU’s role in classified ‘top secret’, usually consist of about two to ten pages the collection of information for the state was described in of typewritten script. All invariably begin with the standard the following way: ‘The most important task of state formula that ‘the majority of the people’ has reacted to a policy information is the illustration of the feelings of all groups in or event in a ‘healthy’ way. This is always followed by exam- the population, and of the factors influencing changes in these ples of typical ‘correct’ opinions, which tend just to reiterate 26 Feature the official line published in the newspapers. Negative remarks follow the positive comments in a section beginning ‘How- ever, alongside this there are certain cases of backward/ negative/unhealthy/anti-Soviet/counter-revolutionary state- ments’ (usually about three of these adjectives are employed). What are immediately striking are these so-called ‘anti-So- viet’ remarks, which diverge so markedly from the official picture of unanimity portrayed in the press. Because histori- ans have so long assumed that in the conditions of Stalin’s ‘terror’, people were too afraid to criticise and complain, it is sometimes suggested that, given the general atmosphere of conspiracy which characterised the terror and pressure from above to exercise vigilance and expose ‘enemies’, the nega- tive comments recorded in these reports were fabricated as part of the whole phenomenon of denunciation. It is obviously hard to know whether party, and particu- larly NKVD informants, invented or distorted the negative comments in their reports. The temptation to invent remarks, or to report an unverified denunciation must have been great. Informants signed undertakings to provide accurate material, and could be punished for not doing so: in 1932, 180 secret police informants were sentenced to five years for supplying ‘unobjective information’. Informants could also be excluded from the party for failure to be ‘objective’. However, these undertakings may have meant little at the height of the terror in 1937-38. It is plausible that some genuine expressions of discontent may have been given a more ‘counter-revolutionary’ gloss by some informants, perhaps by the addition of fictitious praise of Trotsky, threats to kill Stalin, or other such incriminating formulae. However, it is also clear that many of the opinions cited in the reports do correspond with those contained in other sources, such as reports prepared by the agitprop (Agi- Figure 2: ‘Our Army and Our Country Are Strengthened with the Spirit of tation and Progaganda) department on feedback from the Stalin!’A poster from 1939, when the Red Army was about to be humiliated in war against Finland. Although official information was sparse, people became grassroots, letters, memoirs, diaries, emigré journals, censors’ skilled at discovering the facts for themselves Russian State Library, Moskow reports, and even occasionally the official media. The authen- ticity of the reported opinion can also be verified by comparing it with that from various areas and periods. A comparison of ments. Presumably this was because party officials were keen reports in several archives reveals that there were certain con- to demonstrate that their particular organisation was func- sistent traits of popular opinion which existed independently tioning well, and that the propaganda was being absorbed. of the whims and fantasies of those responsible for the re- Unlike the party, the NKVD was concerned primarily with ports. Nor did the opinions articulated during the terror period monitoring ‘enemies’ and the suppression of dissent: its re- differ significantly from those of earlier and later years. Evi- ports therefore devoted the majority of space to critical dently a body of critical opinion existed throughout the early comments. However, in both cases the insistence was always Soviet period, and views held by ordinary Russians during that negative comments were in a minority. No statistics were the terror did not diverge significantly from those expressed provided so it is almost impossible to establish how widely at other times. these opinions were in fact articulated. Were they the pre- Distortion occurred rather in the manner in which mate- serve of a tiny disaffected minority, as the regime would claim? rial was selected and analysed. The selection of material was Or were they shared far more widely? This is a crucial ques- clearly influenced by considerations of what informants and tion, but one on which these sources at least are the compilers of reports imagined their superiors wanted to unilluminating. hear at any particular moment. If the regime was particularly This is frustrating, but certainly does not invalidate the re- concerned with, for example, exposing ‘Trotskyists’ or ‘sabo- ports as sources. While they may not enable us to reconstruct teurs’ of the Stakhanovite (shock work) movement, informants grassroots opinion with scientific accuracy (but how far do may have made a special effort to record comments express- even contemporary opinion polls do that?), they do create a ing pro-Trotsky or anti-Stakhanovite feelings (Figure 2). picture, albeit impressionistic, of recurring tendencies and Reports were compiled because the regime wished to moni- themes within popular opinion. When used in connection with tor reactions to particular events and policies; thus the subject other sources, such as letters, they show quite clearly that the matter of the reports was already circumscribed. seemingly all-pervasive Soviet propaganda failed to eliminate Although party and NKVD reports were very similar in dissonant opinion, that the terror failed to silence people al- structure and content, they differed in one important respect: together and that an alternative ‘shadow’ political culture party reports included a large proportion of positive com- managed to survive the horrors of Stalinism.  STALIN AND PROPAGANDA 27 FORMS OF SHADOW CULTURE almost no concrete information about the course of the war, yet people became skilled at discovering for themselves what Propaganda and experience was actually going on. Especially in Leningrad, close to the How, then, did dissonant opinion survive at the grassroots? frontline of war, the rumour-mill functioned remarkably effi- It is worth noting that the Soviet Union in this period was still ciently. Many rumours focused on alleged ‘wrecking’ by Soviet in many ways primarily an oral culture. The almost universal commanders. It was claimed that the latter were deliberately literacy which was attained in the 1930s was a recent phe- leading soldiers under the artillery fire of the enemy. Accord- nomenon. People did not necessarily rely on newspapers for ing to one rumour, the head of the armed forces, Voroshilov, information. Aware of the importance of oral communica- had apparently come and replaced the entire military com- tion, the party sent round agitators and propagandists to speak mand. Many of these rumours were in fact accurate and based to the people, but they were not always highly educated and on first-hand knowledge and observations, often extracted the official propaganda messages could be distorted in the from wounded soldiers who were brought back to hospitals process of transmission. in Leningrad. At one military hospital in Leningrad, as soon Nor were people likely to absorb the official messages if as the wounded were brought in, they were surrounded by these seemed too blatantly to contradict their own experience. crowds desperate for the latest information. Soldiers return- It was no use reiterating and expecting people to believe that ing to Leningrad from the front related graphic stories. For ‘life has become better, life has become gayer’ (a popular slo- example, one reported: gan from the mid-1930s) if their lives did not seem to be In the first days of our forces’ attack (Petrozavodsk direction) improving at all, if prices were going up or if shortages and there were numerous losses, as a result of wrecking on the part queues were endemic as they often were in the Soviet Union. of the command. The commander of one regiment gave an For example, workers in 1937 asked, ‘Why does everyone order to attack and he himself fled. The regiment found itself in say that life has become better; the stoves in our hostel have a dense forest and was surrounded by white [enemy] Finns and not been lit for three days, there are no sheets or pillows.’ destroyed... there are many abnormalities in the actions of our The endless reiteration of such slogans could actually be- military units. The infantry goes in front and the tanks behind. come counter-productive. As one worker wrote in a letter Only after Voroshilov came to the front were some of these of 1938: abnormalities eliminated... Many of our fighters have frostbite As we embark on the third five-year plan we shout at meetings, in their feet and have left the formation. Only in the last few congresses and in newspapers ‘Hurray, we have reached a days have soldiers got warm footwear... Our commanders happy, joyful life!’ However, incidentally, if one is to be honest, organised a Finnish corps of 6,000 men to work in the rear of those shouts are mechanical, made from habit, pumped by the white Finns. Only 3,000 of the corps remain; the rest social organisations. The ordinary person makes such speeches deserted to the white Finns. like a street newspaper-seller. In fact, in his heart, when he Such graphic personal information was in striking contrast comes home, this bawler, eulogist, will agree with his family, to the official silence on the whole question of the war, and his wife who reproaches him that today she has been torturing was typical of the way in which rumours functioned in Soviet herself in queues and did not get anything — there are no suits, society. no coats, no meat, no butter. This writer went on to note explicitly that ‘Those who Letters are well off shout that life has become better, life has be- Personal letters were a useful source of first-hand informa- come merrier. This slogan of Stalin’s is spoken with irony tion. Remarkably, some people do not seem to have been afraid and is used when people are experiencing some kind of dif- to put down their critical views in writing. Perhaps some were ficulty.’ unaware of the extent of censorship of mail, or perhaps they thought their criticisms were not sufficiently political to merit Rumour persecution. During the winter of 1936-37, near famine con- Rather than trusting the official propaganda, some people sim- ditions prevailed in some parts of the country. The media never ply turned to alternative, more reliable sources of information. mentioned this. However, the alternative news network con- Rumours are particularly important in closed societies, and tinued to operate. the Soviet regime devoted much effort to tracing and quashing Private letters intercepted by the censor reported dire short- them, usually without success. Rumours spread quickly and, ages of bread. Writers described how the collective farms had most importantly, relatively anonymously. They flourished in collapsed, how they were obliged to stand in queues of thou- areas where people were crowded together, such as the ubiqui- sands for bread. Some wrote that they had to get to the bread tous queues, and on public transport. They concerned a huge shop at six o’clock the previous evening, bringing chairs and variety of subjects, from impending price rises, to Stalin’s rela- pillows so that they might get some sleep, but even then they tions with his colleagues, to the alleged forthcoming had no guarantee of obtaining any bread. Shop windows were disbandment of the collective farms. Although sometimes wildly being smashed and there was an upsurge in crime, especially distorted (if probably less so than the official propaganda), they murder and theft. Many said ‘the famine has arrived’, and often contained more than a grain of truth. deaths were reported, both from starvation and from people, Rumours emerged most strongly at times of crisis, or when including small children, getting crushed in queues. Parallels official information was particularly sparse, such as during were drawn with the famine of 1932-33. Others wrote that the Soviet-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40. The USSR sus- the situation was worse than in 1918. The flavour of these tained enormous losses in this war against a supposedly much letters emerges in just one from a resident of the Leningrad weaker opponent (Figure 3, overleaf). The Soviet media offered region to a relative in Leningrad city: 28 Feature There’s no bread in the kolkhoz [collective farm]. We got 12 pounds hierarchies, as in the following in which a cunning peasant for the whole year. Now we’ve got such a bread crisis in Miaksa outwits Stalin: ‘A peasant went up to Stalin and asked him that they bring in 400kg — that’s all — and they give out 2kg per when socialism would be built. Stalin replied that it would person. There’s a queue from 2 o’clock in the morning. We stand be soon, in two years time. And the peasant asked, “So then and stand and leave without any bread, you live for a day without there will be no GPU [secret police] or other guard?” Stalin bread, or even two without having eaten. The administration gives said that there would not be. Then the peasant said, “Then the answer that there was a big over expenditure and that now we we will shoot you all.”’ have to go hungry. All the people are exhausted. The signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939 led to a spate of jokes: ‘The two dictators have agreed simply that It seems likely that many people would have trusted these there should be no leaders of the opposition and no parlia- letters from members of their own family rather than offi- ments. Now all that is needed is for Hitler to transfer from cial propaganda. fascism to socialism and Stalin from socialism to fascism.’ The unlikely combination of fascists and communists also Leaflets and inscriptions led to jokes that Hitler and von Ribbentrop had put in Less common, but still important, were the hand-written or applications to join the Communist Party, and that Mos- even printed subversive leaflets which circulated, usually in cow was deciding whether to take them or not. small numbers, although sometimes in up to 100 copies. They tended to be placed in peo- ple’s mailboxes, but could also be pasted to walls. They were usually written in a rhetori- cal style and often contained emotional pleas to the people to rise up. During the winter of 1936-37, leaflets appeared in the countryside which read: ‘I, Aleksandr Ob’edkov, declare that in the USSR hunger reigns, there is no bread, people get up at 2am to get a piece of bread. Gather an army and attack the USSR.’ In one district, a leaflet attached to a letter box appeared entitled ‘Give bread’ and enjoining comrades to ‘rise up for bread, comrade peas- ants’, to rout the shops and village soviets. During the ‘free’ elections of 1937 in which all the candidates were fixed by the party, leaf- lets were spread urging people to vote for alternative candidates, such as Bukharin and Trotsky, who had been Lenin’s close associ- ates but were now prominent ‘enemies of the people’. At the height of the terror in 1937- ‘Long Live the Stalinist Order of Stakanovites!’ A poster from the height of the 38, the following appeared: Stakhanovite movement in 1936 Russian State Library, Moscow To the Russian people, devoted to the mother- land. All around the popular masses are groaning under the yoke of bolshevism. The bloody hangman of the Particularly significant, especially amongst peasants, were soviets — the NKVD — is fulfilling its foul work. Unite in a the chastushki: four-line ditties which were a traditional part powerful nucleus to achieve the right to freedom. It is near and of peasant popular culture. Like jokes, many of these fo- belongs to us. Everyone is prepared for an armed uprising, but cused on leaders. The assassination of Leningrad party time is holding us back. Down with the soviets! leader, Kirov, at the end of December 1934, was followed A simpler version of the leaflet was the inscription. The by a plethora of chastushki expressing glee and irreverence NKVD often reported finding inscriptions on walls, espe- — far from the official attitude of abject sorrow and mourn- cially in ‘private spaces such as toilets’. These inscriptions ing. These are just a few examples: were usually short phrases, such as ‘Long live Trotsky!’ Swas- Kirova ubili tikas too were often daubed on walls in direct defiance of Skoro Stalina ub’iut the USSR’s strongly anti-fascist line. Vse kolkhozy razbegutsia Nam svobodnei budet zhit Popular culture (Kirov’s been killed/Soon Stalin will be killed/All the kolkhozy Dissonant opinion could also be articulated through vari- will collapse/We will live more freely); ous forms of ‘popular culture’ such as jokes, songs and poems. Like rumours, these were relatively anonymous. They Kirova ubili were also usually concise and easily memorised, which aided po kotletke podarili transmission. Political jokes ranged across a variety of sub- Stalina ub’iut jects, but many focused on the country’s leaders, especially po kuritse dadut’ Stalin. They often involved the reversal of traditional social (Kirov died/We had cutlets/Stalin’ll die/We’ll have chicken).  STALIN AND PROPAGANDA 29 Other chastushki highlighted the miseries of life on the propaganda to brainwash people, and the use of terror to collective farm: silence opposition and break down social ties. The new evidence indicates that although Stalin’s regime V kolkhoz prishla was undoubtedly totalitarian in aspiration (the use of in- Iubka novaia formants is just one example of this), in practice Soviet Iz kolkhoza ushla society was more resilient than has sometimes been assumed. Sovsem golaia. It is clear, for example, that the Stalinist propaganda ma- (I arrived at the kolkhoz/with a new skirt/l left the kolkhoz/ chine, and Soviet propaganda more generally, was incapable Completely naked). of ‘brainwashing’ the population. The machine itself was far from omnipotent, lacking sufficient resources and per- Propaganda and its manipulation sonnel to make it fully effective. Whole regions and social These, then, were the main forms in which alternative views groups were excluded from its influence at various times, circulated. This ‘shadow culture’ ensured that the official and the propaganda that it did manage to transmit was propaganda was never able to secure a total monopoly on sometimes communicated in a distorted form. popular opinion. This is not to deny the significance of In addition, it seems obvious now that the communica- propaganda. Many people clearly did absorb its messages. tion of propaganda is a two-way process, and an Yet even the most ardent believers were able to move be- understanding of the functioning of propaganda is incom- tween the official culture and the shadow culture, to plete without a consideration of its consumption. Soviet articulate different languages on different occasions, to spout propaganda was multivalent, and ordinary citizens invested the official slogans at meetings, while cursing Stalin in the it with meanings quite foreign to those intended by the re- privacy of the toilets. gime, invoking official propaganda to criticise the regime Also, the propaganda itself could be used for subversive itself. The official propaganda also had to compete with a purposes. An example of this practice is the way in which remarkably efficient unofficial parallel network of informa- the rights enshrined in the Stalin Constitution of 1936 were tion and ideas. The importance of rumour, anecdotes and employed by ordinary people. An enormous propaganda other Aesopian strategies in Soviet society has perhaps not campaign accompanied the promulgation of the new been fully appreciated. constitution which guaranteed, among other things, free- The mere existence of these dissonant views does not im- dom of conscience and belief. It soon became evident that ply, however, that there existed a hard core of the regime was not going to take these rights seriously, but non-conformist individuals unequivocally opposed to the it is interesting that ordinary people, by then well-versed in regime. This would be to repeat the errors of the regime the official language, invoked these rights in their battles itself which classified the most trivial criticism as an anti- with the regime. For example, one peasant said, ‘They say Soviet subversive act. By relating an anti-Stalin joke or there’s freedom of religion, but then why do they make us chastushka, or criticising price rises, an individual was not work on Pokrov [a church holiday]?’ So too, when the necessarily rejecting the Soviet system or socialism or Sta- authorities tried to close down churches, people would lin. A critic of one policy could also be an enthusiast of send letters of protest and petitions to Stalin and other another. As in other authoritarian states (Nazi Germany, leaders demanding that they be left open, and citing arti- Fascist Italy) elements of consent and dissent, conformity cle 124 of the Constitution which guaranteed freedom of and resistance could coexist within the same individual. Peo- religion. ple moved freely between the two worlds of official culture Likewise Stalin’s own words, which were very familiar to and the ‘shadow culture’. the people because of the intense propaganda, could also be This shadow culture evidently flourished in the USSR even cited. So when it transpired that the Stakhanovite shock during the worst moments of Stalinist authoritarianism. movement was causing some workers’ incomes to fall in While not symptomatic of outright opposition, its existence 1936, workers recalled Stalin’s earlier promises and asked must have contributed towards the frailty of the Soviet sys- agitators ‘how should we understand Stalin’s statement that tem, and have played some role in the emergence of the “you should not suffer, your income will stay the same” — Khrushchev and Gorbachev reform movements. It was one where is the distortion: in the workshop or the Commis- of several interlocking factors undermining the legitimacy sariat of Heavy Industry?’. Thus the official propaganda of the Communist regime. It helped, therefore, to hasten the could be used by people as a way of asserting themselves, eventual demise of the USSR. but also of shielding themselves. Further Reading Stalinism and Soviet society Robert Conquest, The Great Terror. A Reassessment (1990). What is the significance of this new information? Apart from Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia (Cambridge University Press, 1997). the intrinsic interest of being able for the first time to resurrect J. Getty and R. Manning, Stalinist Terror. New Perspectives (1993). the voices of ordinary Soviet citizens, the sources also allow us to understand more clearly the workings of the now defunct Soviet ‘system’. In recent years, discussion about Stalinism has often centred on the question of whether the Dr Sarah Davies is a lecturer in the Department of History at the USSR under Stalin was ‘totalitarian’; whether ‘society’ in University of Durham. Her first book is Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia any meaningful sense was completely destroyed or atomised (Cambridge University Press, 1997). She is currently working on Gender by an all-powerful state. Those who support the totalitar- and War in the Soviet Union. ian thesis tend to point to factors such as the use of