Stalin and the Cult of the Personality

started saying that “Stalin is the Lenin of today”. However it wasn’t enough for Stalin to just get the likings of the people, he wanted more. That’s why “the cult of the personality” was developed and was fully established between 1933-1934. The most likely explanation for the development of the cult lays in the economic and political circumstances of the Soviet Russia in the mid-1930’s. The disruption and disorientation brought about by the Five-Year Plan and the purges meant that this was a bewildering and confusing time. Former heroes were revealed as traitors; wreckers and saboteurs were everywhere. The image of Stalin reassured the people that they had a strong leader to take them through these difficult and momentous times. Therefore we can say that the cult of the personality was useful in holding Soviet society together. There were paintings, poems and sculptures to promote the Stalin cult. At the beginning of the cult the regime did not want people to be alienated by a remote leader, so they deliberately cultivated a more popular image of Stalin. Praise was heaped on Stalin’s personality and his link with Lenin and his role in the achievements of the First Five-Year Plan were emphasized. Paintings and posters stressed Stalin’s humanity and showed the people that he really cared about them, that he too was actually participating in their ordinary lives. He was shown working with peasants in the fields, investigating great projects or marching alongside with workers etc. there was especially a great emphasis on Stalin’s relationship with children. In every nursery there was a painting with “thank you, Stalin, for my happy childhood” saying on it. The painting showed Stalin more detached and superior, while the statues represented him in a more monumental style, like an all-powerful leader. Later on, as the cult was developing further on, operas and films glorified his role in the revolution or as the Chief hero of the Civil War. Also as the prospect of war loomed, his image became more that of an all-powerful leader, he was now seen as a savior. And to add up things even more, in 1939 there was an exhibition opened, entitled “Stalin and the Soviet people”, which contained pictures of his childhood showing him as a natural leader or like a young Christ explaining the scriptures. At this point in Russian history, even his childhood became a shrine. Success in the Second World War and the defeat of the Nazis enhanced Stalin’s position and fed the cult even more. His power was cemented by his success as a war leader and his image was literally everywhere. “The cult of the personality” reached its height at the end of the 1940’s. Stalin was no longer seen as a disciple, but was now an equal or even master. Portraits showed him superior and apart, in god-like solitude or with Lenin, sometimes even appearing to tell him what to do. He was presented as the heir of Lenin and the sole infallible interpreter of the party ideology. When John Steinbeck, the American novelist, visited the Soviet Union in 1947, that’s what he wrote in his diary: “…everything in the Soviet Union takes place under the fixed stare of the plaster, bronze, drawn or embroided eye of Stalin […] In shops they sell millions upon millions of images of him, and in every home there is at least one portrait of him…he is everywhere, he sees everything…” Stalin got what he wanted; he was now practically instead of God for the Soviet people, Stalin dominated the USSR physically as well as politically.