The holiday of May 9 is approaching - the 76th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
A decisive contribution to the Victory was made by the Red Army, armed with the advanced military equipment of the time. But this Victory would have been impossible without the appropriate ideological support, without the formulation of value ideological meanings that armed the soldiers of the Red Army (soldiers, commanders and political workers) with confidence in the rightness of their cause.
Outstanding Soviet writers and poets - Konstantin Simonov, Alexey Tolstoy, Ilya Erenburg, Alexander Tvardovsky and many others - made a huge contribution to the ideology of Victory.
Spirit of Victory
But the most important principles of the new ideological approach in the conditions of the great war that had begun were formulated in the speeches and addresses of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Chairman of the State Defense Committee, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Joseph Stalin.
All these provisions, most important for understanding the ideological work, are contained in J. Stalin's collection "On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union", published in 1947. This collection includes texts that are critical to understanding these new approaches. Starting with a radio speech on July 3, 1941, famous for the words "brothers and sisters, I am addressing you, my friends," and ending with the famous toast "To the Russian people."
Already in his first speech on July 3, 1941, Stalin explained in detail to society - was it not a mistake to conclude a non-aggression pact with Hitler's Germany, since Germany violated it and treacherously attacked our country. Stalin explains that by concluding a non-aggression pact with Germany, we ensured peace for our country for a year and a half and the possibility of preparing our forces to repulse if Germany would risk attacking our country, contrary to the pact. Recognizing that Germany, having made a treacherous attack, achieved a tactical advantage at the front, but she, the leader believed, "lost politically, exposing herself in the eyes of the whole world as a bloody aggressor."
Describing the nature of the outbreak of war, Stalin notes:
"It is about the life and death of the Soviet state, about the life and death of the peoples of the USSR, the destruction of the statehood of the peoples of the USSR."
He formulates not only the main tactical tasks of fighting the enemy in order to bleed and wear him out, leaving him with a destroyed infrastructure, but also defines the strategic goals of the struggle, calling the war - Patriotic!
“The goal of this nationwide Patriotic war against the fascist oppressors is not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our country, but also to help all the peoples of Europe groaning under the yoke of German fascism. Our war for the freedom of our Fatherland will merge with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for independence, for democratic freedoms , - proclaims Stalin.
Please note that the communist leader is not talking about the class struggle, the world proletarian revolution, support for the revolutionary struggle of workers in other countries, or the struggle against capitalism, as one might expect. The task was formulated as follows:
"The idea of defending our Fatherland … should and does give rise to heroes in our army, cementing the Red Army."
There was another important question, which was answered in detail by the leader. With whom is the USSR waging war, what political ideology and system of values does Hitlerite Germany profess, and what order does she want to establish? In his report dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin explains in detail who the German National Socialists are, why they call themselves that, and who they really are. In this speech, Stalin gives his definition of the ideology of German Nazism - Hitlerism and the social nature of the NSDAP.
Stalin argues that Hitler's party cannot be considered not only socialist, but also nationalist. It could have been nationalist while the Nazis were collecting German lands, but after the German fascists enslaved many European nations and began to seek world domination, the Hitlerite party turned into an imperialist party, expressing the interests of German bankers and barons. Proving why the Hitlerite party is a reactionary political force that deprived the working class and peoples of Europe of elementary democratic freedoms, Stalin did not limit himself to this, but acts as a defender of the liberal political systems of his allies.
Stalin refutes the most important thesis of Goebbels 'propaganda about the social nature of the bourgeois democratic regimes in Great Britain and the United States as plutocratic, noting that in these countries there are workers' parties, trade unions, there is a parliament, and in Germany these institutions are absent. He recalls that "the Nazis just as willingly organize medieval Jewish pogroms as the tsarist regime arranged for them."
And here is the definition that Stalin gives NASDAP.
"The Hitlerite Party is the party of enemies of democratic freedoms, medieval reaction and Black Hundred pogroms."
Stalin also ridiculed the attempts of Goebbels' propaganda to compare Adolf Hitler to Napoleon Bonaparte. Firstly, he recalled the fate of Napoleon and his campaign of conquest against Russia, and secondly, he drew attention to the fact that the French emperor represented the forces of social progress for his time, while Hitler personifies the forces of extreme reaction and obscurantism.
Winner Code
An important element of the Victory ideology was patriotic rhetoric and an appeal to iconic figures in Russian history. In the same report, Stalin utters the historic words:
"And these people, devoid of conscience and honor, people with animal morality have the audacity to call for the destruction of the great Russian nation, the nation of Plekhanov and Lenin, Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy, Sechenov and Pavlov, Repin and Surikov, Suvorov and Kutuzov."
Often they try to present Stalin's policy during the war years as a rejection of communist ideology, Marxism and Leninism. This is an erroneous point of view, where the wish of these authors is passed off as reality.
Although the Stalinist interpretation of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" had its own characteristics, as well as the authoritarian system of government created by the leader. However, we can rightfully speak about the restoration, within the framework of the official ideology, of the historical continuity of all Russian history. And this new ideological policy, which was undoubtedly initiated by Stalin, began not at all with the outbreak of war, as they sometimes write, but back in the second half of the 30s, when iconic patriotic films about the commander Suvorov, Alexander Nevsky, Minin and Pozharsky. These important historical figures were actually rehabilitated and returned to the pantheon of national heroes.
Since 1934, as is known, the teaching of history in schools has been restored as a full-fledged subject, covering, among other things, the entire history of Russia. In the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated May 16, 1934 "On teaching civil history in the schools of the USSR" it was said in particular:
"Instead of teaching history in a lively, entertaining form with the presentation of events and facts in chronological sequence, with the characteristics of historical figures, students are presented with abstract definitions of socio-economic formations, thus replacing a coherent presentation of history with abstract sociological schemes."
This resolution was an important step in the rejection of the previously dominant dogmatic interpretations of Marxist concepts in Soviet historical science and school education. Stalin, unlike a number of other leaders of the Bolshevik Party, did not oppose the values of state patriotism to communist ideology, but united them.
On November 7, 1941, at the famous parade on Red Square in Moscow, when the troops went straight from the parade into battle to defend the capital of our country, Stalin ended his speech as follows:
“Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, commanders and political workers, partisans and partisans! The whole world looks at you as a force capable of destroying the plundering hordes of German invaders. The enslaved peoples of Europe, who have fallen under the yoke of the German invaders, look at you as their liberators. A great mission of liberation has fallen to your lot. Be worthy of this mission! The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war. Let the courageous image of our great ancestors - Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Kuzma Minin, Dmitry Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov inspire you in this war!
And here's an interesting parallel.
The fact is that with the beginning of the war - literally on June 22, 1941, the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne of the Russian Orthodox Church, Sergiy Stragorodsky, addressed the Orthodox believers. He characterized the doctrine of German fascism as consistently anti-Christian. His text also contained the following words:
"Let's remember the holy leaders of the Russian people, for example, Alexander Nevsky, Dimitri Donskoy, who laid down their souls for the people and the Motherland."
And his appeal ends with a confident statement:
"The Lord will grant us Victory!"
Stalin, of course, was aware of this appeal by Sergius and appreciated its ideological significance. And on September 4, 1943, Stalin's historic meeting with the highest hierarchs of the Orthodox Church marked the beginning of the official restoration of Orthodoxy with some support from the Soviet state. What was difficult to imagine before the war, in the 30s, during the period of the total struggle against religion, when the so-called godless five-year plan, declared by the communist party since 1932, was carried out.
It is sometimes argued that during the war years Stalin deliberately abandoned the ideology of proletarian internationalism in favor of the idea of national patriotism. Rather, we must talk about giving up the illusions inherent in the policies of the Comintern, hopes for a European communist revolution and blind faith in the German working class as a revolutionary vanguard on the European continent. It is no coincidence that, answering the question of the English correspondent of the Reuters agency, Mr. King, on May 28, 1943, about the decision to dissolve the Communist International, Stalin, in particular, explained this unexpected step in this way.
The dissolution of the Comintern "makes it easier for the patriots of freedom-loving countries to unite all progressive forces, regardless of their party affiliation and religious convictions, into a single national liberation camp - to launch the struggle against fascism."
Stalin emphasized that the source of the people's heroic deeds is "ardent life-giving Soviet patriotism." In the report of the Chairman of the State Defense Committee at a ceremonial meeting of the Moscow Council of Working People's Deputies with party and public organizations in the city of St. Moscow on November 6, 1944, dedicated to the 27th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, emphasizes the fundamental difference between the ideological values of Soviet society and German fascism.
“The German fascists have chosen as their ideological weapon the misanthropic racial theory in the expectation that the preaching of bestial nationalism will create the material and political prerequisites for domination over the enslaved peoples. However, the policy of racial hatred pursued by the Nazis became in fact a source of internal weakness and foreign policy isolation of the German fascist state,”
- Stalin notes. And he makes a conclusion. During the war, the Nazis suffered not only a military, but also a moral and political defeat.
"The ideology of equality of all races and nations, the ideology of friendship among peoples, which has taken root in our country, has won a complete Victory over the ideology of bestial nationalism and racial hatred of the Nazis."
Stalin emphasizes that
"The Hitlerite clique, with its cannibalistic policy, has revived all the peoples of the world against Germany, and the chosen German race has become an object of universal hatred."
At the same time, Stalin, unlike a number of well-known Western politicians and journalists, never blamed the German people as a whole for the crimes of the National Socialist regime and did not slip into the position of ethnic nationalism and hostility towards the Germans as a people, and towards Germany as to the country and the state. His phrase from the Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of February 23, 1942 to the next 24th anniversary of the creation of the Red Army is well known:
"Hitlers come and go, but the German people, and the German state remains."
Stalin also strongly opposed the idea of dismembering defeated Germany into several small states. Similar proposals to return Germany to a situation of fragmentation, as it was before its unification during the time of the iron chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the second half of the 19th century, were put forward, as you know, by Great Britain and its leader, Prime Minister Winston pc.
Stalin saw the strength of the Red Army precisely in the fact that it "does not and cannot have racial hatred for other peoples, including the German people." And the weakness of the German army lies in the fact that by its "ideology of racial superiority it has won the hatred of the peoples of Europe"!
“In addition, one should not forget that in our country the manifestation of racial hatred is punishable by law,”
- Stalin emphasized.
Toast to the health of the people
Speaking at a reception in the Kremlin in honor of the commanders of the Red Army on May 24, 1945, Marshal I. Stalin made his famous toast to the health of the Russian people, which caused the jubilation of all those present. He said:
"I raise my glass to the health of the Russian people, because in this war they have earned general recognition - as the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the peoples of our country."
Having admitted certain mistakes of his government at the beginning of the war, Stalin expressed gratitude to the Russian people, who believed in his leadership, and stressed:
"And this confidence of the Russian people in the Soviet government turned out to be the decisive force that ensured the historic Victory over the enemy of humanity - over fascism!"
