Abstract
Describing various forms of participation and their motivations, I argue that even against a backdrop of reported mass passivity, absenteeism, and control of the public sphere, with its ritualized speeches and enthusiasm, there was a certain body of autonomous expression during the campaign. Despite forced, involuntary participation, numerous nonconformist statements at the heavily controlled meetings condemned shortages and kolkhozes. The large corpus of individual reactions (such as diaries and letters), plus the facts of spontaneous gatherings of citizens to discuss the constitution—all demonstrated voluntary political engagement.
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Notes
- 1.
Pravda published a brief by Babintsev speaking only about poor reporting in Belorussia.
- 2.
Secret party CC and Council of People’s Commissars (SNK) instruction from 8 May 1933.
- 3.
Loudspeakers on the streets worked all day long in the 1930s and became the background noise of the epoch.
- 4.
Nationality issues are excluded from this study.
- 5.
G. K. Ordzhonikidze, member of the Politburo, minister of heavy industry. Committed suicide in February 1937.
- 6.
Arzhilovsky is sarcastic here, referring to the Soviet campaign to fight the waste of resources.
- 7.
Just one example: “I, a holder of a state order, A. A. Gavrilov, have read the draft of the Constitution. All its articles I approve with the great joy. … Many thanks go to our great party and government, to the leader of the people, comrade Stalin, for liberation from the yoke of capitalism!” (Danilov et al. 2002, pp. 804–5).
- 8.
A measure of labor in the collective farms included monetary and in-kind portions.
- 9.
Top Secret. Main Administration of State Security (GUGB). Special information about negative comments during the course of the report campaign in the soviets and discussion on the USSR constitution draft in Saratov krai. 15 November 1936.
- 10.
See discussion of the dichotomist nature of Soviet life in Yurchak (2005, pp. 8–29).
- 11.
Entries from 1930 and 1934.
- 12.
The White Guard military fled abroad after the civil war.
- 13.
Krestianskaia Gazeta, between 1923 and 1933, received 5 million letters.
- 14.
The NKVD reported: “In the Cossack village Novomysskaia … Merkulov recruited only Whiteguardists and church people into the Cossack choir. He states: ‘You should learn how to live with this pack of robbers [Communists] and how to cope with this iron heel. I conduct the choir, dance, I perform as a Soviet person, but inside I tremble from malice’” (Berelowitch and Danilov 2012, p. 319).
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Velikanova, O. (2018). Soviet Sociopolitical Mobilizations. In: Mass Political Culture Under Stalinism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78443-4_6
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