Background for Educators

The Soviet government that emerged after the 1917 Russian revolutions and civil war was driven in large part by the theories of Karl Marx. Marx wrote that capitalism would inevitably progress to a point at which the workers (proletariat) would become conscious of their exploitation by those who profited from their labor, and rise up to collectively take control of the government and economy. But this is not quite what happened in Russia. At the time of the revolutions, Russian society was not in the worker-led revolutionary stage predicted by Marx. In 1917 Russia had not reached full, industrial capitalism; wage-earning workers were a still a small part of the population, and a large majority of Russians were farming peasants.

Following the February revolution of 1917 that ousted the tsarist autocracy, Vladimir Lenin played a key role in toppling the ensuing provisional government and establishing a socialist state under his leadership. But the collective worker identity and revolutionary worldview that was supposed to bring it into power had not fully developed among the larger Russian population. The legitimacy and ideology of the government was inextricably tied to how Soviet citizens understood themselves as individuals and as part of a larger class. Leaders like Lenin, informed by Marx’s vision, understood it as their mission to form this identity in Russian citizens. Shaping and forming such an identity happened in many ways, through the ever-growing state presence in the everyday lives of Soviet citizens, including control over public culture, art, and media. Learn more about this period in Robyn Angley’s lecture “Intersection of Early Soviet Ideology and Culture.”  

After Lenin's death in 1924, the scope of the role of the state continued to grow under the rule of Joseph Stalin, to include policies related to collective farming and housing; control over official film, the press, radio, music, and visual art; and eventually control of citizens through arrest and deportation to the system of forced labor camps known as “the Gulag”. Scholars like Alexis Peri, whose lecture is highlighted in this resource, ask us to consider what kinds of freedoms of thought, choice, and conscience were preserved, and what kinds of diverse individual experiences were had by Soviet persons even in the midst of such intensive efforts to control and assimilate them by the state. How can we know or gain access to the inner thoughts and lives of individuals who lived in this time and place in order to answer these questions? The oral histories of the HPSSS on which this module focuses are one such resource to consider.

These interviews were conducted in the early 1950s, following the Second World War. Peri highlights this moment of the war and its aftermath as a turning point in the way that Soviet individuals thought about themselves and their relationship to larger Soviet society. The scale of devastation from the war was unimaginable—a massive interruption of the story of success and progress that the Soviet state told about itself. Peri describes several effects of this shock. Because there was no simple or easy way for the state to explain this tremendous loss, there was more room for Soviet individuals to decide on their own what it meant. After the decades led by Lenin and Stalin when Soviet citizens were continually seen as works in progress, always “becoming” the conscious, collective, worker class they were supposed to be, the sacrifices of the war meant that citizens had unquestionably proven themselves. They now were Soviet citizens, no longer “in progress”. And they were citizens who felt entitled to question and contradict the state more outspokenly, both in their public and private voices. Learn more about this period in Alexis Peri’s lecture “Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Times: Personal Accounts of the Soviet Experience.” Minutes 45:36–46:40 discuss changes to Soviet state identity during World War II, and minutes 48:15–49:34 talk about changes in personal identity, illustrated with three passport photos of a Soviet woman.

Peri invites us to ask: How do scholars like herself know what citizens know or think in their private lives? Private writing found in diaries and letters are one source. The oral histories focused on in these lessons are another. But even when reading personal writings, is it possible to separate someone’s “true” self, thoughts, or feelings, from the identity, thoughts, and feelings that are shaped by outside forces? Through close exploration of individual Soviet voices, this module invites students both to learn about the diverse individual experiences of Soviet citizens, and to connect these larger questions about personal identity and public forces to their own lives.