These campaigns of ideological purification were used by some to settle old grievances. The active participants of these pogroms would later hold the positions of the scientists accused of "cosmopolitanism" or "bourgeois liberalism." The research institutes of the academy and the universities were filled with graduates from the Academy of Social Sciences, which was under the party's Central Committee, and from the party's higher schools. Competence was no longer the criterion for selecting doctoral candidates; instead it was loyalty to the party and willingness to participate in any and all ideological pogroms.
During Stalin's last years, the level of Soviet research in the social sciences, already low, declined sharply, largely thanks to Stalin's new theoretical works, Marxism and Problems of Linguistics and Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. As soon as they were printed, they became the object of universal study. The whole of social science was reduced to commentary on the Leader's new "works of genius." When Stalin issued a negative judgment on the linguistic theories of N. Marr, a new ideological crusade began, this time against "Marrism" and its defenders. An avalanche of denunciations descended upon Soviet linguists, archeologists, and ethnographers, many of whom had shared Marr's theories on the evolution of language, theories which the party had previously supported. Stalin's writings on the economy managed to confuse economists totally and were used as a pretext for new polemics and persecutions of scholars.
Physics was the only domain where the party's obscurantists were never able to rally scientists in the "struggle against hostile manifestations." True, the magazine Problems of Philosophy published inflammatory articles containing accusations of philosophic idealism and kowtowing to Western physics, but they were dealing with a touchy subject. The desire to develop atomic weapons weighed far more heavily than the desire to conduct a pogrom against the physicists. During a meeting called to discuss the struggle against "rootless cosmopolitanism," Academician A. F. Ioffe, the leading atomic researcher, presented the representatives of the Central Committee who chaired the meeting with the following choice: scientists could either work in their laboratories or they could waste their time in useless meetings. If the latter choice was made, the organizers of the meetings would have to replace the scientists in the laboratory. Disarmed, the apparatchiki were forced to report that the meeting had taken place, and nothing more was heard of it. Shortly before, Academician Petr Kapitsa had categorically refused to take part in the atomic bomb project. The authorities did not want to risk alienating other physicists. Ioffe's remarks, like Kapitsa's attitude, were acts of resistance against the government, which in this instance felt powerless to take direct reprisals. Instead, it chose revenge. For many years, under both Stalin and Khrushchev, Kapitsa was denied permission to go abroad to attend international scientific meetings.113
One of the principal characteristics of the Soviet regime is continuous ideological struggle. It is unimportant against whom or what this struggle is directed; rather, it is the very process of struggle that is significant—a struggle into which the masses may be drawn, making them accomplices.
During the period of late Stalinism the main focus of ideological struggle was the affirmation of Soviet Russian patriotism. Given the specific conditions of the time, this form of nationalism took on a distinctly anti-Semitic coloration. The anti-Semitic policies of the Soviet government, which can be traced back to the 1920s, developed especially rapidly during the Nazi— Soviet rapprochement, when the government apparatus, mainly in the foreign affairs and state security agencies, was purged of Jews (as was described in Chapter 7).
In 1941 Erlich and Alter, two Polish socialists of Jewish origin who had fled to the Soviet Union, were executed on "espionage" charges. The accusation, which was a complete fabrication, was an extreme expression of official Soviet anti-Semitism.114 In 1943 all Jews began to be systematically removed from the army's political apparatus and replaced by Russians. After the war the same policy was applied to Jews who held command posts.
The flames of anti-Semitism, ignited by the Nazis in the occupied territories, were further fanned by the authorities after those areas were liberated. In the Soviet army and in the rear, rumors intentionally were spread about cowardice and desertion on the part of Jews. Those who miraculously escaped mass extermination by the Nazis often were accused by the Soviet authorities of having been agents of the Germans; otherwise, how could they have survived? After the war Soviet Jews began to be depicted as agents of "American imperialism."
The campaign to rid Soviet society of "antipatriotic" elements began a few months after a speech by Stalin at a gathering of voters on February 9, 1946. He did not make any special references to socialism or communism; instead, the state, the Soviet social system, and the greatness of "the motherland" were the main themes of his speech.115
On June 28, 1946, Culture and Life, a new party publication, appeared. It was to be issued every ten days by the Central Committee's Directorate of Agitation and Propaganda, "Agitprop." Agitprop had been simply a department (otdel) of the Central Committee; the fact that it had been transformed into a "directorate" (upravlenie) indicated that the role of ideology in the party-government system was being reinforced. Soon a far- reaching offensive began against "ideological deviations" in all fields of science and culture.
The party's control was particularly strict over literature and history, which had a tremendous influence in the shaping of individual personality. This was particularly true in Russia, where reading was a mass phenomenon. It is likely that all prewar generations were raised on the Russian classics, and the literary tastes of the majority were therefore firmly conservative, despite the many attempts to create a new proletarian culture, with such works as Gladkov's Cement and Serafimovich's Iron Flood. The party leadership finally understood that its best interest lay in maintaining the people's conservative tastes and encouraging those young writers who followed classical models, albeit with new content that glorified the revolution, socialism, and Soviet patriotism. After the war a novel by one of these writers, The Young Guard, by Aleksandr Fadeev, described the Young Communist heroes who had resisted German occupation in the mining town of Krasnodon. These Young Communists were fully in the tradition of the classical heroes of Soviet literature. However, Fadeev, the secretary of the Writers Union and a Central Committee member, "had forgotten" to stress the party's leading role in organizing the anti-Nazi resistance. Thus in 1947 he became the target of party criticism. As a true son of the party, and under its guidance, he rewrote the novel, making it much worse.
The war provided a new generation of heroes—authentic for the most part—who appeared in the works of such writers as Vasily Grossman, Viktor Nekrasov, Boris Polevoi, and Konstantin Simonov. The war became the principal theme of Soviet literature for many years.
But there was a need for a new kind of hero, a shining example for the period of reconstruction and socialist emulation. He was born in the form of the Cavalier of the Golden Star, a novel by Semen Babaevsky. This book, and others like it, were printed in the millions. Critics praised them, and the authors received the Stalin prize. But readers shied away from them; they were too primitive and full of lies.
At the same time a new danger appeared, presented by a young generation of writers and poets who had matured and become seasoned by their wartime experience. They sought to rethink the world in which they lived. In the eyes of the party, however, any such rethinking was sedition of the worst kind. "New winds" were blowing in all areas of cultural life. The party ideologists, who saw in this trend an erosion of ideology and, consequently, harm to the Soviet regime, rose to meet this danger. The party launched a campaign that did not overlook any field of cultural endeavor. Volunteers willing to judge and condemn their colleagues were found everywhere. With a zeal as great as their lack of talent, they were then and are still the party's main reserve force. The party had only to give the signal and point out the channel down which the streams of mud were to flow, and the rest took care of itself.