Abstract
Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949 was the most extensive celebration of his leader cult.1 After months of campaigning, the attention of the entire Socialist Bloc was focused on Moscow, the Stalinist Rome, where communist dignitaries from around the world had assembled to pay their tribute. No efforts had been spared: throughout autumn the mobilisation for the event had left its mark on public life in the Soviet empire. The official public celebrations as staged by the party-states concentrated on building up excitement for the event. The whole socialist camp became one giant display case showing the love of its peoples for the leader. The jubilee provided an opportunity to spread and solidify Stalin’s image as the leader and symbol of unity of the post-war Soviet empire. In contrast to the celebrations of his 50th and his 60th, Stalin’s 70th birthday was an international affair: Pravda showed the leader not only amongst his Soviet lieutenants, but amidst a host of foreign guests such as Mao Zedong and Walter Ulbricht. Highlighting the campaigns around Stalin’s 70th birthday campaign and his death in 1953, this chapter will explore how the cult was exported to and indigenised in Poland and East Germany. How were the narratives of the cult changed? And, finally, what can we say about reactions to the Stalin cult in these countries?
The Centre will shape everything, though individual countries will retain a few ornaments in the way of folklore.
Czeslaw Miłosz, 1953
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Notes
Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, (Cambridge, 1997), p. 148.
The highly fragmented nature of the public sphere in Soviet-type societies is discussed in Gábor T. Rittersporn, Malte Rolf and Jan C. Behrends, ‘Open Spaces and Public Realm: Thoughts on the Public Sphere in Soviet-Type Systems’ in id. (eds) Sphären von Öffentlichkeit in Gesellschaften sowjetischen Typs (Public Spheres in Soviet Type Societies) (Frankfurt/ Main, 2003), pp. 423–52.
This term was coined by Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin. Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, NJ, 2000).
But see for Poland as a first assessment, Robert Kupiecki, ‘Natchnienie Milionów’ Kult Józefa Stalina w Polsce (Warsaw, 1993);
for the GDR: Katharina Klotz, ‘Führerfiguren und Vorbilder — Personenkult in der Ära Ulbricht’ in Dieter Vorsteher (ed.) Parteiauftrag. Ein neues Deutschland. Bilder, Rituale und Symbole der frühen DDR, (Munich, 1997), pp. 322–41;
Jan Plamper, ‘“The Hitlers Come and Go…”, the Führer Stays: Stalin’s Cult in East Germany’ in Klaus Heller and Jan Plamper (eds) Personality Cults in Stalinism (Göttingen, 2004).
On the treatment of Poles and Germans in the USSR and their status as ‘enemy nations’ before the war, see Terry Martin, ‘Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing’, Journal of Modern History, 70 (1998), pp. 813–61,
and on their image in Soviet culture: David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Russian National Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
Stalinist dictatorships cannot be characterised as fitting the Weberian ideal type of ‘charismatic rule’. The Stalinist narrative, however, emphasised the extraordinary [außeralltäglich] qualities of the leader and thus tried to add charismatic elements to stabilise communist power. Cf. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie (Tübingen, 1980), pp. 140–8, 654–87, quotation p. 124.
On the Soviet friendship of the peoples see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, (Ithaca, NY, 2001), pp. 432–61;
on German-Soviet friendship, see Jan C. Behrends, ‘Sowjetische ‘Freunde’ und fremde ‘Russen’. Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft zwischen Ideologie und Alltag (1949–1989)’ in id. et al. (eds) Fremde und Fremd-Sein in der DDR (Berlin, 2003), pp. 75–100.
Lothar Machtan, ‘Bismarck Kult und deutscher National-Mythos 1890–1940’, in Lothar Machtan (ed.), Bismarck und der deutsche National-Mythos (Bremen, 1994), pp. 14–67;
Noel D. Cary ‘The Making of the Reich President, 1925: German Conservatism and the Nomination of Paul von Hindenburg’, Central European History, 23 (1990), pp. 179–204.
Heidi Hein, Der Piłsudski Kult und seine Bedeutung für den polnischen Staat 1926–1939 (Marburg, 2002).
For the case of the Russian tsars, see Michael Cherniavski, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myth (New Haven, Conn., 1961).
See Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987).
For a recent influential interpretation of the Third Reich as an example of charismatic rule in the Weberian sense, see Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Vierter Band 1914–1949 (Munich, 2003).
On the Soviet leader as an icon of trust, see Jan C. Behrends, ‘Soll und Haben. Freundschaftsrhetorik und Vertrauensressourcen in der staatssozialistischen Diktatur’ in Ute Frevert (ed.) Vertrauen. Historische Annäherungen (Göttingen, 2003), pp. 336–64.
Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, legytimizacja, nacjonalizm. Nacjonalistyczna legitymizacja władzy komunistycznej w Polsce (Warsaw, 2001).
Józef Stalin, Marszałek Związku Radzieckiego [1945].
Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland 1943–1948, (Berkeley, Cal., 1991), p. 301ff.
For a case study of Stalin’s 70th birthday in Lublin, see Izabella Main, ‘The Weeping Virgin Mary and the Smiling Comrade Stalin: Polish Catholics and Communists in 1949’ in Gábor T. Rittersporn et al. (eds) Sphären von Öffentlichkeit in Gesellschaften sowjetischen Typs (Public Spheres in Soviet-Type Societies) (Frankfurt/Main, 2003), pp. 255–78.
Dariusz Jarosz and Maria Pasztor, W krzywym zwierciadle. Polityka władz komunistycznych w Polsce w świetle plotek i pogłosek z lat 1949–1956 (Warsaw, 1995), p. 121ff.
Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 69–204.
Eric J. Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life (London, 2002), p. 179.
Victor Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Berlin, 1947);
Victor Klemperer, So sitze ich denn zwischen allen Stühlen. Tagebücher 1945–1949 (Berlin, 1999), p. 38.
Joseph Stalin, Über den Großen Vaterländischen Krieg der Sowjetunion (Berlin, 1951), p. 49f.
On the divided Germany, see Christoph Kleßmann, Die doppelte Staatsgründung. Deutsche Geschichte 1945–1955 (Bonn, 1991).
On GDR nationalist discourse, see Sigrid Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft. Zum Paradox von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR, 1945–1989 (Frankfurt/ Main, 1992).
On the dogma of Soviet superiority: Jan C. Behrends, ‘Besuch aus der Zukunft. Sowjetische Stachanov-Arbeiter in der DDR’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 50 (2002), pp. 195–204.
Otto Grotewohl, ‘Rede zum Tag der Befreiung. 8. Mai 1950’ in id., Im Kampf um die einige Deutsche Demokratische Republik, vol. II (Berlin, 1954), pp. 48–54; id. ‘Eine historische Lehre. 22. Juni 1950’ in ibid., pp. 84–88; ‘Deutscher Patriot sein heißt Freund der Sowjetunion sein. Aus der Rede zur Feier des 71. Geburtstages Stalins. 21. Dezember 1951’ in ibid., pp. 306–19; id.: ‘Stalin und das deutsche Volk. März 1953’, in id., Im Kampf um die einige Deutsche Demokratische Republik, vol. III (Berlin, 1954), pp. 256–67.
See the well-documented popular reaction in: AAN, KC PZPR, 237/ VII-132, pp. 376–547.; SAPMO-BArch DY 34 – 15/56/1196; Marcin Zaremba, ‘Opinia publiczna w Polsce wobec choroby i śmierci Józefa Stalina’ in Andrzej Friszke (ed.), Władza a społeczeństwo w PRL. Studia historyczne, (Warsaw, 2003), pp. 19–53; Plamper, ‘The Hitlers Come and Go’;
Karl-Heinz Schmidt, ‘Als Stalin starb. Die Reaktion des SED-Regimes und der Bevölkerung im Spiegel interner Berichte’ in Klaus Schroeder (ed.) Geschichte und Transformation des SED-Staates. Beiträge und Analysen (Berlin, 1994), pp. 85–111.
Werner Mittenzwei, Die Intellektuellen. Literatur und Politik in Ostdeutschland, 1945–2000 (Berlin, 2003), p. 104.
On these events in the GDR, see Christian Ostermann (ed.) Uprising in East Germany 1953 (Budapest 2001);
on Poland, Pawel Machcewicz, Polski rok 1956 (Warsaw, 1993).
For the GDR, see Siegfried Lokatis, Der rote Faden. Kommunistische Parteigeschichte unter Walter Ulbricht (Cologne, 2003), pp. 33–53.
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Behrends, J.C. (2004). Exporting the Leader: The Stalin Cult in Poland and East Germany (1944/45–1956). In: Apor, B., Behrends, J.C., Jones, P., Rees, E.A. (eds) The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230518216_9
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