Victory in World War II promised significant changes for the USSR. These changes were also expected by citizens, many of whom, during the liberation of Europe, saw the bourgeois life from which they had previously been fenced off iron curtain. Residents of the USSR after the Great Patriotic War expected that the changes would affect the economy, Agriculture, national politics and much more. At the same time, the overwhelming majority were loyal to the authorities, since victory in the war was considered the merit of Stalin.

In September 1945, the state of emergency was lifted in the USSR, and the dissolution of the Defense Committee was announced.

In the post-war years, mass repressions began in the USSR. First of all, they affected those who were in German captivity. In addition, repressions were directed against the peoples of the Baltic states, western Ukraine and Belarus, whose populations most actively opposed Soviet power. In this cruel way, order was restored in the country.

As in the pre-war years, the repressions of the Soviet government affected the military. This time it was due to the fact that Stalin feared the popularity of the high military command, which enjoyed popular love. By order of Stalin the following were arrested: A.A. Novikov (USSR Air Marshal), generals N.K. Kristallov and P.N. Monday In addition, some officers who served under the command of Marshal G.K. were arrested. Zhukova.

In general, the repressions of the post-war years affected almost every class of the country. In total, between 1948 and 1953, approximately 6.5 million people were arrested and executed in the country.

In October 1952, the 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) took place, at which it was decided to rename the party the CPSU.

After the Great Patriotic War, the USSR radically changed its foreign policy. The victory of the USSR in World War II led to a worsening of relations between the USSR and the USA. As a result of this escalation, the Cold War began. Soviet power, in the post-war years, strengthened its influence on the world stage. Many countries of the world, especially those that were liberated by the Red Army from fascism, began to be ruled by communists.

The USA and England were seriously worried that the growing influence of the USSR could lead to a decrease in their influence on world politics. As a result, it was decided to create a military bloc whose function would be to counter the USSR. This bloc was called “NATO” and was formed in 1949. The Americans could no longer delay the creation of NATO, since in the same year the Soviet Union successfully tested the first atomic bomb. As a result, both sides were nuclear powers. The Cold War continued until Stalin's death on March 5, 1953. The main result of the post-war years was the understanding by the parties that issues must be resolved peacefully, since the Cold War, if the parties persisted, could develop into an armed one.

Russian history. XX century Bokhanov Alexander Nikolaevich

§ 4. Life after the war: expectations and reality

“In the spring of '45, people - not without reason - considered themselves giants,” E. Kazakevich shared his feelings. With this mood, the front-line soldiers entered peaceful life, leaving - as it seemed to them then - the most terrible and difficult things of the war beyond the threshold. However, the reality turned out to be more complicated, not at all as it was seen from the trench. “In the army, we often talked about what would happen after the war,” recalled journalist B. Galin, “how we would live the next day after the victory,” and the closer the end of the war was, the more we thought about it, and a lot to us was painted in a rainbow light. We did not always imagine the extent of the destruction, the scale of the work that would have to be carried out to heal the wounds inflicted by the Germans.” “Life after the war seemed like a holiday, the beginning of which requires only one thing - the last shot,” K. Simonov seemed to continue this thought. It was difficult to expect any other ideas from people who were under the psychological pressure of an emergency military situation for four years, which often consisted of non-standard situations. It is quite clear that " normal life, where you can “just live” without being exposed to every minute danger, in war time seemed like a gift from fate. The war in the minds of people - front-line soldiers and those who were in the rear, brought a revaluation of the pre-war period, to a certain extent idealizing it. Having experienced the hardships of the war years, people - often subconsciously - adjusted their memory of the past peacetime, preserving the good and forgetting the bad. The desire to return what was lost suggested the simplest answer to the question “how to live after the war?” - “like before the war.”

“Life is a holiday”, “life is a fairy tale” - with the help of this image a special concept was modeled in the mass consciousness post-war life- without contradictions, without tension, the development stimulus of which was actually only one factor - hope. And such a life existed, but only in movies and books. Interesting fact: During the war and in the first post-war years, libraries experienced an increase in demand for literature in the adventure genre and even fairy tales. On the one hand, such interest is explained by a change in the age composition of those working and using libraries; During the war, teenagers came to production (at some enterprises they accounted for 50 to 70% of employees). After the war, the readership of the adventure library was replenished by young front-line soldiers, whose process of intellectual growth was interrupted by the war and who, because of this, after the front, returned to the youthful circle of reading. But there is another side to this issue: the growth of interest in this kind of literature and cinema was a kind of reaction to the rejection of the cruel reality that the war brought with it. Compensation for psychological overload was needed. Therefore, even during the war one could observe, as front-line soldier M. Abdulin testifies, for example, “a terrible thirst for everything that is not related to the war. I liked the simple film with dancing and fun, the arrival of artists at the front, and humor.” The thirst for peace, reinforced by the belief that life after the war would quickly change for the better, persisted throughout the three to five post-victory years.

The film “Kuban Cossacks”, the most popular of all post-war films, enjoyed enormous success among viewers. Now he is being subjected to sharp and largely fair criticism for not meeting reality. But criticism sometimes forgets that the film “Kuban Cossacks” has its own truth, that this fairy tale film carries very serious information of a mental nature, conveying the spirit of that time. Journalist T. Arkhangelskaya recalls an interview with one of the participants in the filming; she told how hungry these smart guys and girls were, on the screen cheerfully looking at models of fruits, an abundance of papier-mâché, and then added: “We believed that it would be so and that there would be a lot of everything - bicycles, saddles, and whatever you want. And we really needed everything to be elegant and songs to be sung.”

Hope for the best and the optimism it fueled set the rhythm of the beginning of post-war life, creating a special post-victory social atmosphere. “My entire generation, with the exception of perhaps a few, experienced... difficulties,” the famous builder V.P. recalled at that time. Serikov. - But they didn’t lose heart. The main thing is that the war was behind us... There was the joy of work, victory, the spirit of competition.” The emotional upsurge of the people and the desire to bring closer a truly peaceful life through their work made it possible to quite quickly solve the main problems of restoration. However, this mood, despite its enormous creative power, also carried a tendency of a different kind: a psychological orientation toward a relatively painless transition to peace (“The hardest part is behind us!”), the perception of this process as generally consistent, the further, the more came into conflict with reality, which was in no hurry to turn into a “fairy tale life”.

Conducted in 1945–1946. Inspector trips of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks recorded a number of “abnormalities” in the material and living conditions of people, primarily residents of industrial cities and workers’ settlements. In December 1945, a group from the Propaganda and Agitation Directorate of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks conducted such an inspection of coal industry enterprises in the Shchekinsky district of the Tula region. The results of the examination were very disappointing. The workers' living conditions were considered "very difficult", with repatriated and conscripted workers faring especially poorly. Many of them did not have underwear, and if they had it, it was shabby and dirty. The workers did not receive soap for months, the dormitories were very cramped and overcrowded, the workers slept on wooden trestle beds or two-tier bunks (for these trestle beds, the administration deducted 48 rubles from the workers’ monthly earnings, which was a tenth of it). The workers received 1200 g of bread per day, but despite the sufficiency of the norm, the bread was of poor quality: there was not enough butter and therefore the bread molds were greased with petroleum products.

Numerous signals from the field indicated that facts of this kind were not isolated. Groups of workers from Penza and Kuznetsk sent letters to V.M. Molotov, M.I. Kalinin, A.I. Mikoyan, which contained complaints about difficult material and living conditions, the lack of most necessary products and goods. Based on these letters, a brigade of the People's Commissariat left Moscow and, based on the results of an inspection, recognized the workers' complaints as justified. In Nizhny Lomov Penza region workers at factory No. 255 protested against the delay in bread rationing, and workers at the plywood factory and match factory complained about long delays in wages. Difficult working conditions after the end of the war remained at the reconstructed enterprises: they had to work in the open air, and, if it was winter, knee-deep in snow. The premises were often not lit or heated. IN winter time The situation was further aggravated by the fact that people often had nothing to wear. For this reason, for example, the secretaries of a number of regional committees of Siberia turned to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with an unprecedented request: to allow them not to hold a demonstration of workers on November 7, 1946, citing the fact that “the population is not sufficiently provided with clothing.”

A difficult situation developed in the village after the war. If the city did not suffer so much from a lack of workers (there the main problem was to organize the work and life of existing workers), then the collective farm village, in addition to material deprivation, experienced an acute shortage of people. The entire existing population of collective farms (including those who returned after demobilization) by the end of 1945 decreased by 15% compared to 1940, and the number of able-bodied people decreased by 32.5%. The number of able-bodied men decreased especially noticeably (from 16.9 million in 1940, by the beginning of 1946 there were 6.5 million left). Compared to the pre-war period, the level of material security of collective farmers also decreased: if in 1940, on average, about 20% of grain grains and more than 40% of the monetary income of collective farms were allocated for distribution among workdays, then in 1945 these figures decreased, respectively, to 14 and 29%. Payment in a number of farms looked purely symbolic, which means that collective farmers, as before the war, often worked “for sticks.” A real disaster for the village was the drought of 1946, which affected most of the European territory of Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova. The government used the drought to apply strict surplus appropriation measures, forcing collective and state farms to hand over 52% of their harvest to the state, i.e. more than during the war. Seed and food grains were confiscated, including those intended for distribution on workdays. The grain collected in this way was sent to the cities; villagers in areas affected by crop failure were doomed to mass starvation. Accurate data on the number of victims of the famine of 1946–1947. no, because medical statistics carefully concealed the true cause of the increased mortality during this time (for example, other diagnoses were made instead of dystrophy). Infant mortality was especially high. In the famine-stricken regions of the RSFSR, Ukraine, Moldova, the population of which numbered approximately 20 million people, in 1947, compared to 1946, due to flight to other places and an increase in mortality, there was a reduction of 5–6 million people, from According to some estimates, the victims of famine and related epidemics amounted to about 1 million people, mainly rural population. The consequences did not take long to affect the mood of collective farmers.

“During 1945–1946. I came into close contact with and studied the life of a number of collective farmers in the Bryansk and Smolensk regions. What I saw made me turn to you, as the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks), - this is how I began my letter addressed to G.M. Malenkova, student of the Smolensk Military-Political School N.M. Menshikov. “As a communist, it pains me to hear such a question from collective farmers: “Do you know whether the collective farms will be dissolved soon?” As a rule, they motivate their question by the fact that “there is no strength to live like this any longer.” Indeed, life on some collective farms is unbearably bad. So, on the collective farm " New life"(Bryansk, region) almost half of the collective farmers have not had bread for 2-3 months, some do not have potatoes either. The situation is no better in half of the other collective farms in the region. This is not unique to this area.”

“A study of the state of affairs on the ground shows,” there was a similar signal from Moldova, “that hunger covers all large quantity rural population... An unusually high increase in mortality, even compared to 1945, when there was a typhus epidemic. The main cause of high mortality is dystrophy. Peasants in most regions of Moldova eat various low-quality surrogates, as well as the corpses of dead animals. Recently there have been cases of cannibalism... Emigration sentiments are spreading among the population.”

In 1946, several notable events occurred that somehow disturbed the public atmosphere. Contrary to the fairly common belief that public opinion at that time was extremely silent, actual evidence suggests that this statement is not entirely true. At the end of 1945 - beginning of 1946, the election campaign took place in The Supreme Council USSR, which took place in February 1946. As one would expect, at official meetings people mostly spoke out in favor of the elections, unconditionally supporting the policies of the party and its leaders. As before, on the ballot papers on election day one could find toasts in honor of Stalin and other members of the government. But along with this, there were judgments of a completely opposite direction.

Contrary to official propaganda emphasizing the democratic nature of the elections, people said something else: “The state is wasting money on elections, it will still hold those it wants”; “It won’t be our way anyway, they will vote for whatever they write”; “We spend too much money and energy on preparing for the elections to the Supreme Council, and the essence comes down to a simple formality - the registration of a predetermined candidate”; “The upcoming elections will not give us anything, but if they were held like in other countries, then it would be a different matter”; “Only one candidate is included on the ballot; this is a violation of democracy, since if you want to vote for someone else, the one on the ballot will still be elected.”

Rumors, of all kinds, were spread among the people about the elections. For example, in Voronezh there was talk: voter lists are being checked in order to identify those who are not working to be sent to collective farms. People closed their apartments and left home to avoid being included in these lists. At the same time, special sanctions were imposed for evading elections; in the statements of some people one can read a direct condemnation of this kind of “stick democracy”: “The elections are held incorrectly, there is only one candidate per electoral district, and the ballot is controlled in some special way. If you don’t want to vote for a certain candidate, you can’t cross it out, the NKVD will know about it and they will send you where it should be”; “We don’t have any freedom of speech in our country; if I say anything today about the shortcomings in the work of Soviet bodies, then tomorrow I will be put in prison.”

The inability to openly express one’s point of view without fear of sanctions from the authorities gave rise to apathy, and with it subjective alienation from the authorities: “Whoever needs it, let him choose and study these laws (meaning the laws on elections. - E. Z.), and we’re already tired of all this, they’ll elect without us”; “I am not going to choose and will not choose. I have not seen anything good from this government. The communists appointed themselves, let them choose.”

During discussions and conversations, people expressed doubts about the expediency and timeliness of holding elections, for which large amounts of money were spent, while thousands of people were on the verge of starvation: “They don’t care about the grain that was not harvested in the fields, but they have already begun to “call” about re-elections of the government . This is of no benefit to anyone"; “Rather than do nothing, they would rather feed the people, but you can’t feed them with elections”; “They make good choices, but the collective farms don’t provide bread.”

A strong catalyst for the growth of discontent was the destabilization of the general economic situation, especially the situation in the consumer market, which dates back to the war, but at the same time has post-war reasons. The consequences of the drought of 1946 limited the volume of marketable grain. However, the already difficult food situation was worsened by the increase in ration prices carried out in September 1946, that is, prices for goods distributed on ration cards. At the same time, the population covered by the card system was reduced: the number of the supplied population living in rural areas was reduced from 27 million people to 4 million, in cities and workers’ settlements 3.5 million unemployed adult dependents were removed from bread rations and 500 thousand cards were destroyed due to the streamlining of the card system and the elimination of abuses. In total, bread consumption for ration supplies was reduced by 30%.

As a result of such measures, not only the possibility of a guaranteed supply of people with basic food products (primarily bread), but also the possibility of purchasing food products on the market, where prices quickly crept up (especially for bread, potatoes and vegetables), were reduced. The scale of grain speculation has increased. In a number of places it came to the point of open expression of protest. The most painful news about the increase in ration prices was met by low-paid workers with large families, women who lost their husbands at the front: “Food is expensive, and a family of five. The family doesn't have enough money. We waited, it would be better, but now there are difficulties again, but when will we survive them?”; “How to survive difficulties when there is not enough money to buy bread?”; “You’ll either have to give up the products or buy them back with some other means; there’s no point in thinking about buying clothes”; “It was hard for me before, but I had hope for food cards with low prices, and now last hope disappeared and I will have to starve.”

The conversations in the bread lines were even more frank: “Now you need to steal more, otherwise you won’t survive”; " New comedy- salaries were increased by 100 rubles, and food prices were increased three times. They did it so that it was beneficial not to the workers, but to the government”; “They killed their husbands and sons, and instead of giving us relief, they raised prices”; “With the end of the war, they expected the situation to improve and they waited for it to improve; now life has become more difficult than during the war years.”

Noteworthy is the unpretentiousness of people’s desires, which require only the establishment of a living wage and nothing more. The dreams of the war years that after the war “there will be a lot of everything” and a happy life will begin, began to fall quite quickly, devaluate, and the set of benefits included in the “ultimate dreams” became so depleted that a salary that made it possible to feed a family, and a room in a communal apartment were already considered a gift of fate. But the myth of “life as a fairy tale”, living in the everyday consciousness and, by the way, supported by the major tone of all official propaganda, which presents any difficulties as “temporary”, often prevented adequate awareness of the cause-and-effect relationships in the chain of events that excite people. Therefore, not finding visible reasons to explain “temporary” difficulties that would fall under the category of objective ones, people looked for them in the usual emergency circumstances. The choice here was not too wide; all the difficulties of the post-war period were explained by the consequences of the war. It is not surprising that the complication of the situation within the country was also associated in the mass consciousness with the factor of war - now a future one. At meetings, questions were often asked: “Will there be a war?”, “Is the rise in prices caused by the difficult international situation?” Some spoke out more categorically: “The end of peaceful life has come, war is approaching, and prices have increased. They hide this from us, but we figure it out. Before a war, prices always rise.” As for rumors, here the popular imagination knew no bounds at all: “America broke the peace treaty with Russia, there will soon be war. They say that trainloads of wounded have already been delivered to the city of Simferopol”; “I heard that the war is already going on in China and Greece, where America and England intervened. Not today or tomorrow they will attack the Soviet Union.”

War in the popular consciousness will for a long time be perceived as the main measure of the difficulties of life, and the sentence “if only there was no war” will serve as a reliable justification for all the deprivations of the post-war period, for which, apart from it, there were no longer any reasonable explanations. After the world has crossed the line " cold war", these sentiments only intensified; they could keep under wraps, but at the slightest danger or hint of danger they immediately made themselves known. For example, already in 1950, during the Korean War, panic intensified among residents of the Primorsky Territory, who believed that since there was a war going on nearby, it meant that it would not pass the borders of the USSR. As a result, essential goods (matches, salt, soap, kerosene, etc.) began to disappear from stores: the population created long-term “military” reserves.

Some saw the reason for the increase in ration prices in the fall of 1946 in the approaching new war, others considered such a decision to be unfair in relation to the results of the past war, in relation to the front-line soldiers and their families who survived a difficult time and have right for something more than a half-starved existence. In many statements on this subject, it is not difficult to notice both the feeling of the insulted dignity of the winners and the bitter irony of disappointed hopes: “Life is becoming more beautiful, more fun. The salary was increased by one hundred rubles, and 600 was taken away. We've finished the war, winners!”; “Well, we’ve made it. This is called caring for the material needs of the working people in the fourth Stalinist five-year plan. Now we understand why meetings are not held on this issue. There will be riots, uprisings, and the workers will say: “What did you fight for?”

However, despite the presence of very decisive moods, at that time they did not become dominant: the craving for a peaceful life was too strong, the fatigue from the struggle was too serious, in any form, the desire to free oneself from extremes and associated no harsh actions. In addition, despite the skepticism of some people, the majority continued to trust the country's leadership and believe that it was acting in the name of the people's good. Therefore, difficulties, including those that the food crisis of 1946 brought with it, most often, judging by reviews, were perceived by contemporaries as inevitable and someday surmountable. Quite typical were statements like the following: “Although it will be difficult for low-paid workers to live, our government and party have never done anything bad for the working class”; “We emerged victorious from the war that ended a year ago. The war has brought great destruction and life cannot immediately return to normal. Our task is to understand the ongoing activities of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and support it”; “We believe that the party and the government have thought through the event well in order to quickly eliminate temporary difficulties. We believed in the party when, under its leadership, we fought for Soviet power, and we believe now that the ongoing event is temporary...”

The motivation behind the negative and “approving” sentiments is noteworthy: the former are based on the real state of affairs, while the latter come solely from faith in the justice of the leadership, which “has never done anything bad for the working class.” It can definitely be argued that the policy of the leaders of the first post-war years was based solely on the credibility of the people, which was quite high after the war. On the one hand, the use of this loan allowed the leadership to stabilize the post-war situation over time and, in general, ensure the country's transition from a state of war to a state of peace. But on the other hand, the people’s trust in the top leadership made it possible for the latter to delay the decision of vital reforms, and subsequently actually block the trend of democratic renewal of society.

Valery Danilov Stalin's strategy for starting the war: plans and reality The political dispute about responsibility for the start of the German-Soviet war flared up from its first hours. Both warring parties gave their interpretations of what happened in government