Questions on Suny, Chapter 16
(the "Big Questions" are in italics)
After WWII ended, what needed to be restored or reconstructed in the USSR?
How did the USSR respond to post-war labor shortages?
How had the war changed conditions in rural areas?
Suny says that the peasants "paid for" the post war recovery (p. 365)--what does this mean?
Why did the rural population fall from 1950?
Was Soviet agriculture sufficiently productive in the first few years after the war, and what impact did this have on food supply in the USSR? In the rest of Europe?
Did agriculture recover quickly in Ukraine? Explain. What other problems did the party face in Ukraine?
When was rationing ended, and what was the reason for (and effect of) replacing the "old" currency?
What were the aims of the Fourth Five Year Plan (1946-50)?
Why do old people now look at the late Stalin era "as a golden age of peace, low prices, and strict, predictable order" (367)? (see "Children's Verse" in Von Geldern)
How had the war changed the Communist Party?
Does Suny think that the concept of Totalitarianism is a useful way of understanding the "late" Stalinist era? Explain.
Was there a liberalization of cultural policy after the war? Explain.
What was the Zhdanovshchina?
Give some examples of artists or works of art that were attacked by Zhdanov and co. (see "The Zhdanov Movement" in Daniels)
How did Stalinist ideological controls effect the scholarship and the sciences in the late 1940s and early 1950s? Give some examples. (see documents on science and linguistics in Daniels; see also "The Man Who Did the Impossible" and "Michurin's Dream" in Von Geldern)
Was the party or the government of the USSR officially supportive of anti-Semitism before WWII? How did the official attitude towards Jews change after the war? (see document "Campaign Against Cosmopolitanism" in Daniels)
How does Suny explain Stalin's growing antipathy towards Jews? And what was the "anticosmopolitan" campaign? What was the 1952-53 Doctor's Plot affair?
What do historians mean by the term "Big Deal" to describe soviet social policy in the post-war years? Was this conservatism a brand new phenomenon? Explain.
When did the Eastern European states get Soviet-style constitutions, and what was so significant about the concept of the "People's Democracy"?
Is it fair to say that Stalin ruled Eastern Europe by terror in 1949-52? Explain.
Which proved more economically dynamic in the post-war decade, the USSR or the "People's Democracies"?
Suny suggests that the seeds for the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 were planted in 1949. Explain why.
What developments improved the "balance of power" for the USSR in 1949?
The US feared an international Communist monolith after the Chinese Communist victory in 1949. Was there really such a monolithic Communist bloc? Explain.
How had Stalin been involved in the June 1950 North Korean invasion of the South? Was Stalin eager to escalate that war? Explain.
How did Stalin take advantage of US losses in Korea in late 1950-early 1951?
Did Stalin believe (ideologically) that war between the capitalist and socialist countries could be avoided? Explain.
Briefly summarize Suny's explanation of the aims of the US and the USSR during the Cold War.
Suny says the USSR had really already lost the Cold War by 1952. What does he mean?
What probably happened to Stalin's health soon after the war? What about his psychological state?
How would you describe the maneuvering and jockeying for position of Stalin's main subordinates in the years after the war? What was the "Leningrad affair?"
What signaled that Malenkov and Khrushchev were the party's most important leaders (besides Stalin of course!) in fall 1952? (see Malenkov document in Daniels)
Explain the main idea of Stalin's comments to the Central Committee on 16 October 1952 (p. 382), which we might consider his "last wishes."
When and how did Stalin die?