Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 by Timothy Johnston

expansion into the Balkans. The following day, however, it rebutted the allegation that the Soviet Union had colluded in German plans to move troops into Romania. 46 This cycle of two-way denial was symptomatic of a wider fragmentation of Official Soviet Identity in this period. 47 The slogans for the November 1940 anniversary of the Revolution had little to say about the relationship between the USSR and the outside world other than to appeal to proletarian solidarity and class brotherhood. 48 When Molotov visited Berlin in November 1940, the press could point to no concrete outcomes other than the dinners and meetings he attended. 49 It was unclear whether he had travelled in order to heal a
     
43 Ogon¨ek , 01–02.1941: 1–5, pp. 10–13.
44 Ogon¨ek , 09.1940: 27, p. 3; 01.1941: 1, pp. 10–11.
45 Pravda , 31.12.1940, p. 1.
46 Pravda , 15.10.1940, p. 2; 16.10.1940, p. 2.
47 It also reflected some of the tensions generated by the dual audience of the Soviet press, domestic and international.
48 Pravda , 04.11.1940, p. 1.
49 Pravda , 13–16.11.1940, p. 1.
12 Being Soviet
rift or build an alliance. 50 Having abandoned collective security in August 1939, and with the German relationship cooling, the USSR began to look increasingly isolated within the international community by the start of 1941.
The period after 1940 also saw a rise in boasting about the military might of the Red Army. The Pact Period witnessed the pre-war peak of the militarization of Soviet public life. May Day, Navy Day, Air Force Day, and Red Army Day were marked by ostentatious parades that were intended to reassure their audience about the capacity of Soviet forces. 51 A reorganization of the highest ranks of the Red Army and Navy during 1940 provided the pretext for page after page of portraits of senior Soviet generals. 52 Meanwhile the press extolled the rich history of Russian military success culminating in the recent Finnish War. 53
However, these reassuring tones sat uneasily alongside a number of other stories from this era. First, the operative svodki during the first couple of months of the Finnish War were notable for their brevity, often amounting to nothing more than a couple of lines of text. 54 Pre-war cartoons had depicted the tiny Finns being crushed by the Soviet boot, but once the war began Pravda was forced to publish official denials that the Red Army was facing defeat. Second, the official mass media began to warn elliptically of the danger that the European war might spill over into the USSR. For example, none of the thirty-five films produced during 1940 featured a domestic traitor: the threat to the USSR always appeared in the form of a foreign spy. 55 As a Red Army Political Education Manual produced in early 1941 explained, the soldiers must have at the centre of their understanding ‘the thought about the inevita- bility of a conflict of the USSR with the capitalist world’. 56 Third, in the summer of 1940, the Red Army began a major and widely publicized tactical review, the necessity for which cast doubt on its current abilities. 57 Fourth, a harsh new labour law was issued in June 1940 lengthening the work day and ordering custodial sentences for workers who arrived late
     
     
50 See: Werth, Russia At War , 106–9.
51 Ogon¨ek , 02.1940: 4, p. 1; Pravda , 18.08.1940, p. 1.
52 e.g. Pravda , 05.06.1940, pp. 1–3; 06.06.1940, pp. 2, 3, 5.
53 Ogon¨ek , 09.1940: 26, p. 13.
54 Pravda , 02.03.1940, p. 1; 03.03.1940, p. 1.
55 P. Kenez, ‘The Image of the Enemy in Stalinist Films’, in, S. M. Norris and
Z. M. Torlone, ed., Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema (Bloomington, 2008), 104.
56 RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 27, ll. 1–54.
57 Pravda , 22.08.1940, p. 1; 22.09.1940, p. 1–3; 20.03.1940, p. 3.
The Liberator State? 1939–41 13
or attempted to move jobs without permission. 58 Finally, three days after the publication of the labour law, the news broke about the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Bukovina, two