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In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction
Book by Dunham, Vera S.
297 pages, Hardcover
First published October 29, 1976
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December 5, 2014
Through her paradigm-shifting work In Stalin’s Time, Vera Dunham emerged as one first individuals to present a true challenge to the traditional historical perspective of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian society in which everything was controlled from above and individuals were subordinated to the will of the state. Through an analysis of “middlebrow fiction”, the author seeks to uncover what she refers to as “The Big Deal”: in essence, the Soviet regime revived meshchanstvo, or individual and desire-based petty bourgeois culture, and offered it to a youthful and professional “middle class” in exchange for loyalty to and dependence on the state and filling administrative posts that were left empty following the 1930s purges and World War II. In other words, in order to foster voluntary engagement with the state bureaucracy that was needed to keep the union alive, the Soviets offered a select segment of society material incentives and the promise of upward mobility and job security.
After the hardships they endured in order to win World War II, Soviet society expected rewards from the government in the forms of both improvements to their quality of life and in personal freedoms. Stalin, meanwhile, had solidified his right to rule due to the perception of him having led the nation to victory in the conflict, yet still had to contend with mutual distrust from a party that included more military and peasant elements than ever before and a society roused by antiauthoritarian sentiments and the expectation of reward. Although its short term response to discontent could be repression, in the long term it required new allies to ensure the smooth functioning of the system. It therefore engaged the middle class, which was young and ambitious yet could be satisfied with material rewards and the promise of upward mobility. Using both the carrot and the stick, the regime offered incentives to draw these individuals in on a voluntary basis, then used their fear of dismissal and punishment to temper their ambitions and foster loyalty to the system. Both sides desired something: the regime sought career-minded bureaucrats while the middle class wanted to be needed and rewarded for fulfilling that need.
Without access to archives, however, it would be difficult to draw out this “Big Deal” if it were an overt objective of the regime, but the issue is further complicated by the likely lack of an explicit plan, since the agreement between the two sides was tacit and probably inchoate in their minds. Dunham therefore turns to “middlebrow fiction” to uncover developments in narratives that would indicate the infusion of meshchanstvo principles into kulturnost, or the program for the correct way of behaving. Popular fiction reflected regime values and acted as a mediator for a conversation between the state and the people and provided a way to make ideology and messages palatable in a way that more official forms of indoctrination could not, because it engaged the emotional level of individuals. Fiction gave everyday people a view of what was going on among the elites, while reader reaction provided feedback for the regime. Perhaps most importantly, books are personal and lasting artifacts, in comparison to other forms of dissemination, and even in controlled environments they allow reality to creep in.
The remainder of Dunham’s work, therefore, focuses on drawing out the elements of meshchanstvo that were offered by the regime, as well as the limits placed on its development and the framework within which the middle class was allowed to engage material satisfaction and an acquisition-based ideology. Among all the facets she explores, a key theme that repeats is the concept of balance, the idea that one must temper their newfound access to meshchanstvo with adherence to the public sphere and the collective good. This was necessary to disguise the “Big Deal” so that it did not appear to be a deviation from socialist principles. In other words, one cannot surrender completely to individualism and personal yearning, even with a new desire for private accomplishment and personal acquisition. By the same token, strict adherence to communist idealism was also denigrated in order to give meshchanstvo principles a berth to integrate into socialism and regime ideology. As her first chapter demonstrates, for example, objects gain a voice as something desirable, affluence is criticized less, the toil and frugality of the working class are no longer lionized, yet there are limits placed on the level and nature of material desire. The need for balancing the public and private sphere was most evident in regards to family life. Stemming from a need to rebuild the family after the devastation wrought by war, the collective was no longer championed over the family, but made subservient to its needs. Having a family became a sign of both success and virtuous “proper” living under the socialist regime, which placed an extra burden on women, who were expected to remain prominent in both the public and private realms as worker and master of the household.
In exchange for these expanded freedoms, the middle class was expected to fulfill bureaucratic functions, which effectively entailed the imposition of Stalinism over the rest of the population. Again a balance had to be struck, because local party leaders could become too involved or meddlesome, yet also had to inspire, continue their education, and overcome myopia. The biggest roadblock, meanwhile, was the intelligentsia, with the younger lionized members studying in service of the state and the older despised ones pursuing knowledge for its own sake or for personal aims. Fiction thus blamed the old intelligentsia who was purged for being purged and encouraged the new generation to balance the public and the private in their intellectual life and fill those positions. In the agricultural sector, meanwhile, populism was held over the heads of rural bureaucrats to warn them that they were accountable to the people, rather than just their superiors, implying that failures would force them to answer to the entire population. This invocation of ideology, while effective at instilling fear and productivity into the new bureaucratic class, was little more than a thin veil over Stalinism, the true driving force in peasant collectivization, and disguised the pressures from above as enthusiasm from below. Since the new middle class would be held responsible if the high quotas were not met, they pressed the peasants harder towards production and became effective agents in disseminating top-down power over the masses.
Dunham’s conclusion is that the invocation of meschanstvo succeeded in obtaining the regime’s aims and unified upper and lower class desires by binding them through a sense of acquisition. At several points in her work, Dunham disparages this new “middle class”, implying that they were mindless and uncultured servants of the state, something that she, as a member of the elite, could not abide. Greed at the top and envy at the bottom kept the system running and Stalin only cared that people were producing, not what they were doing at an ideological level. Looking beyond Stalin, the author argues that while Khrushchev did not handle this balance well, Brezhnev engaged it with renewed vigor by encouraging and facilitating consumerism. Overall, In Stalin’s Time was as innovative as it was revolutionary, and while its methodology and evidence might not hold up as well today now that the Soviet archives have been opened, it remains an important and essential text in the field.
After the hardships they endured in order to win World War II, Soviet society expected rewards from the government in the forms of both improvements to their quality of life and in personal freedoms. Stalin, meanwhile, had solidified his right to rule due to the perception of him having led the nation to victory in the conflict, yet still had to contend with mutual distrust from a party that included more military and peasant elements than ever before and a society roused by antiauthoritarian sentiments and the expectation of reward. Although its short term response to discontent could be repression, in the long term it required new allies to ensure the smooth functioning of the system. It therefore engaged the middle class, which was young and ambitious yet could be satisfied with material rewards and the promise of upward mobility. Using both the carrot and the stick, the regime offered incentives to draw these individuals in on a voluntary basis, then used their fear of dismissal and punishment to temper their ambitions and foster loyalty to the system. Both sides desired something: the regime sought career-minded bureaucrats while the middle class wanted to be needed and rewarded for fulfilling that need.
Without access to archives, however, it would be difficult to draw out this “Big Deal” if it were an overt objective of the regime, but the issue is further complicated by the likely lack of an explicit plan, since the agreement between the two sides was tacit and probably inchoate in their minds. Dunham therefore turns to “middlebrow fiction” to uncover developments in narratives that would indicate the infusion of meshchanstvo principles into kulturnost, or the program for the correct way of behaving. Popular fiction reflected regime values and acted as a mediator for a conversation between the state and the people and provided a way to make ideology and messages palatable in a way that more official forms of indoctrination could not, because it engaged the emotional level of individuals. Fiction gave everyday people a view of what was going on among the elites, while reader reaction provided feedback for the regime. Perhaps most importantly, books are personal and lasting artifacts, in comparison to other forms of dissemination, and even in controlled environments they allow reality to creep in.
The remainder of Dunham’s work, therefore, focuses on drawing out the elements of meshchanstvo that were offered by the regime, as well as the limits placed on its development and the framework within which the middle class was allowed to engage material satisfaction and an acquisition-based ideology. Among all the facets she explores, a key theme that repeats is the concept of balance, the idea that one must temper their newfound access to meshchanstvo with adherence to the public sphere and the collective good. This was necessary to disguise the “Big Deal” so that it did not appear to be a deviation from socialist principles. In other words, one cannot surrender completely to individualism and personal yearning, even with a new desire for private accomplishment and personal acquisition. By the same token, strict adherence to communist idealism was also denigrated in order to give meshchanstvo principles a berth to integrate into socialism and regime ideology. As her first chapter demonstrates, for example, objects gain a voice as something desirable, affluence is criticized less, the toil and frugality of the working class are no longer lionized, yet there are limits placed on the level and nature of material desire. The need for balancing the public and private sphere was most evident in regards to family life. Stemming from a need to rebuild the family after the devastation wrought by war, the collective was no longer championed over the family, but made subservient to its needs. Having a family became a sign of both success and virtuous “proper” living under the socialist regime, which placed an extra burden on women, who were expected to remain prominent in both the public and private realms as worker and master of the household.
In exchange for these expanded freedoms, the middle class was expected to fulfill bureaucratic functions, which effectively entailed the imposition of Stalinism over the rest of the population. Again a balance had to be struck, because local party leaders could become too involved or meddlesome, yet also had to inspire, continue their education, and overcome myopia. The biggest roadblock, meanwhile, was the intelligentsia, with the younger lionized members studying in service of the state and the older despised ones pursuing knowledge for its own sake or for personal aims. Fiction thus blamed the old intelligentsia who was purged for being purged and encouraged the new generation to balance the public and the private in their intellectual life and fill those positions. In the agricultural sector, meanwhile, populism was held over the heads of rural bureaucrats to warn them that they were accountable to the people, rather than just their superiors, implying that failures would force them to answer to the entire population. This invocation of ideology, while effective at instilling fear and productivity into the new bureaucratic class, was little more than a thin veil over Stalinism, the true driving force in peasant collectivization, and disguised the pressures from above as enthusiasm from below. Since the new middle class would be held responsible if the high quotas were not met, they pressed the peasants harder towards production and became effective agents in disseminating top-down power over the masses.
Dunham’s conclusion is that the invocation of meschanstvo succeeded in obtaining the regime’s aims and unified upper and lower class desires by binding them through a sense of acquisition. At several points in her work, Dunham disparages this new “middle class”, implying that they were mindless and uncultured servants of the state, something that she, as a member of the elite, could not abide. Greed at the top and envy at the bottom kept the system running and Stalin only cared that people were producing, not what they were doing at an ideological level. Looking beyond Stalin, the author argues that while Khrushchev did not handle this balance well, Brezhnev engaged it with renewed vigor by encouraging and facilitating consumerism. Overall, In Stalin’s Time was as innovative as it was revolutionary, and while its methodology and evidence might not hold up as well today now that the Soviet archives have been opened, it remains an important and essential text in the field.
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