Andrei
Zhdanov was born in Mariupol, Ukraine, on 14th February, 1896. He
joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and as a close associate of Joseph
Stalin he made steady progress in the Communist
Party hierarchy.
Zhdanov
helped develop Stalin's cultural policy and was behind the establishment
of the Union of Soviet Writers and the
doctrine of Socialist Realism.
After the
assassination of Sergy Kirov in 1934 Joseph
Stalin appointed Zhdanov as governor of Leningrad. In this post
he played an important role in the Great Purge
that took place in the Communist Party between
1934 and 1941.
As party
boss of Leningrad he helped defend the city in the Second
World War. After the war Zhdanov organized Cominform
(Communist Information Bureau) and was instrumental in formulating
an aggressive, anti-Western foreign policy.
Zhdanov
also led the post-war purge of non-conformist artists and intellectuals
in the Soviet Union. He demanded that Soviet writers adhere to the
principle of Partiynost (party spirit). That is, that they follow
closely the views laid down for them by the Communist
Party. This also became known as Zhdanovism.
Zhdanov
also banned progressive journals such as Zvezda
and Leningrad and expelled people
such as Mikhail Zoshchenko from the
Union of Soviet Writers. Andrei Zhdanov
died
on 31st August, 1948.
(1)
Nikita Khrushchev
was critical of Stalin's cultural policies implemented by Andrei Zhdanov.
I think
Stalin's cultural policies, especially the cultural policies imposed
on Leningrad through Zhdanov, were cruel and senseless. You can't
regulate the development of literature, art, and culture with a stick,
or by barking orders. You can't lay down a furrow and then harness
all your artists to make sure they don't deviate from the straight
and narrow. If you try to control your artists too tightly, there
will be no clashing of opinions, consequently no criticism, and consequently
no truth. There will be just a gloomy stereotype, boring and useless.
(2)
Isaac Deutscher, Stalin (1949)
Stalin appointed Andrei Zhdanov to succeed Kirov as the
governor of Leningrad. Zhdanov was a young, capable, and ruthless
man, who had purged the Komsomol of deviationists and distinguished
himself in arrogant attacks on Tomsky during the fight in the trade
unions. Stalin could rely upon him to destroy the hornets' nest in
Leningrad. In the spring of 1935 tens of thousands of suspect Bolsheviks
and their families were deported from Leningrad to northern Siberia.
(3)
Milovan
Djilas,
Conversations With Stalin (1962)
Zhdanov, too, was rather
short, with a brownish clipped moustache, a high forehead, pointed
nose, and a sickly red face. He was well educated and was regarded
in the Politburo as a great intellectual. Despite his well-known narrowness
and dogmatism, I would say that his knowledge was not inconsiderable.
Although he had some knowledge of everything, even music, I would
not say that there was a single field that he knew thoroughly - a
typical intellectual who became acquainted with and picked up knowledge
of other fields through Marxist literature. He was also a cynic, in
an intellectual way, but
all the uglier for this because behind the intellectualism one unmistakably
sensed the potentate who was 'magnanimous' toward men of the spirit
and the pen. This was the period of the 'Decrees' - decisions by the
Soviet Central Committee concerning literature and other branches
of the arts which amounted to a violent attack against even those
minimal freedoms in the choice of subject and form that had survived
(or else had been snatched from) bureaucratic Party control during
the war. I remember how that evening Zhdanov told as if it were the
latest joke how his criticism of the satirist Zoshchenko had been
taken in Leningrad: they simply confiscated Zoshchenko's ration coupons
and did not give them back to him until after Moscow's magnanimous
intervention.
(4)
Nikita Khrushchev
wrote Andrei Zhdanov in his autobiography, Khrushchev Remembers
(1971)
Before his death, Zhdanov had been in poor health for
some time. I don't know what he was suffering from, but one of his
ailments was that he had lost his will power and was not able to control
himself when it came to drinking. It was pitiful to watch. I even
remember that in the last days of Zhdanov's life, Stalin used to shout
at him to stop drinking. This was an astounding thing because Stalin
usually encouraged people to get drunk. But he compelled Zhdanov to
drink fruit water and suffer while the rest of us were drinking wine
or something stronger.
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