Post-war achievements of the USSR dates and events. The labor feat of the Soviet people in the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR in the post-war years

During Stalin's leadership, for 30 years, an agrarian, impoverished country dependent on foreign capital has become a powerful military-industrial power on a world scale, the center of a new socialist civilization. The impoverished and illiterate population of tsarist Russia became one of the most literate and most educated nations in the world. The political and economic literacy of workers and peasants by the beginning of the 1950s not only was not inferior, but even exceeded the level of education of workers and peasants of any developed country at that time. The population of the Soviet Union increased by 41 million people.

The only thing I would like to add from myself to this cognitive material is that all these achievements would not have been possible without those strategic fundamental transformations in the structure of society and the economy that were developed and began to be implemented by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, whose faithful student and follower was Joseph Stalin. About this in detail here:

Under Stalin, more than 1,500 major industrial facilities were built, including DneproGES, Uralmash, KhTZ, GAZ, ZIS, factories in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk, Norilsk, and Stalingrad. At the same time, not a single enterprise of this magnitude has been built in the last 20 years of democracy.

Already in 1947, the industrial potential of the USSR was fully restored, and in 1950 it more than doubled compared to the pre-war 1940. None of the countries that suffered in the war, by this time even reached the pre-war level, despite powerful financial injections from the United States.

Prices for basic foodstuffs in the 5 post-war years in the USSR fell by more than 2 times, while in the largest capitalist countries these prices increased, and in some even 2 or more times.

This speaks of the tremendous success of the country, which only five years ago ended the most destructive war in the history of mankind and which suffered the most from this war!!

Bourgeois specialists in 1945 gave an official forecast that the economy of the USSR would be able to reach the level of 1940 only by 1965, provided that it took foreign loans. We reached this level in 1949 without any outside help.

In 1947, the USSR, the first among the states of our planet after the war, abolished the card system. And since 1948, annually - until 1954 - he reduced the prices of food and consumer goods.

Child mortality in 1950 decreased in comparison with 1940 by more than 2 times.
The number of doctors increased by 1.5 times.
The number of scientific institutions increased by 40%.
The number of university students increased by 50%. Etc.

The stores had an abundance of a variety of industrial and food products and there was no concept of scarcity. The choice of products in grocery stores was much wider than in modern supermarkets. Now only in Finland you can try sausage, reminiscent of the Soviet one from those times. Banks with crabs were in all Soviet stores. The quality and variety of consumer goods and food products, exclusively of domestic production, was incommensurably higher than modern consumer goods and food. As soon as new fashion trends appeared, they were instantly monitored, and after a couple of months fashion goods appeared in abundance on store shelves.

The wages of workers in 1953 ranged from 800 to 3,000 rubles and more. Miners and metallurgists received up to 8,000 rubles. Young specialist engineer up to 1300 rubles. The secretary of the district committee of the CPSU received 1,500 rubles, and the salaries of professors and academicians often exceeded 10,000 rubles.

The Moskvich car cost - 9000 rubles, white bread (1 kg.) - 3 rubles, black bread (1 kg.) - 1 rub., beef meat (1 kg.) - 12.5 rubles, pike perch - 8 .3 p., milk (1 l.) - 2.2 p., potatoes (1 kg.) - 0.45 p., beer "Zhigulevskoe" (0.6 l.) - 2.9 p., chintz (1 m.) - 6.1 p. A complex lunch in the dining room cost - 2 rubles. Evening in a restaurant for two, with a good dinner and a bottle of wine - 25 rubles.

And all this abundance and a comfortable life was achieved, despite the maintenance of 5.5 million, armed "to the teeth" with the most modern weapons, the best army in the world!

Since 1946, work has been launched in the USSR: on atomic weapons and energy; on rocket technology; on automation of technological processes; on the introduction of the latest computer technology and electronics; on space flights; on gasification of the country; on household appliances.

The world's first nuclear power plant was put into operation in the USSR a year earlier than in England, and 2 years earlier than in the USA. Nuclear icebreakers were created only in the USSR.

Thus, in the USSR in one five-year period - from 1946 to 1950 - in the conditions of a tough military and political confrontation with the richest capitalist power in the world, at least three socio-economic tasks were solved without any external assistance:

1) the national economy was restored;
2) sustainable growth in the standard of living of the population is ensured;
3) an economic breakthrough into the future has been made.

And even now we exist only at the expense of the Stalinist legacy. In science, industry, in almost all spheres of life.

US presidential candidate Stevenson estimated the situation in such a way that if the growth rate of production in Stalinist Russia continues, then by 1970 the volume of Russian production will be 3-4 times higher than the American one.

In the September 1953 issue of National Business magazine, in an article by Herbert Harris "The Russians are catching up with us," it was noted that the USSR was ahead of any country in terms of growth in economic power and that at present the growth rate in the USSR is 2-3 times higher than in USA.

In 1991, at the Soviet-American symposium, when our "democrats" began to squeal about the "Japanese economic miracle", the Japanese billionaire Heroshi Terawama gave them a wonderful "slap in the face":

“You are not talking about the main thing, about your leading role in the world. In 1939 you Russians were smart and we Japanese were fools. In 1949, you became even smarter, while we were still fools. And in 1955, we grew wiser, and you turned into five-year-olds. Our entire economic system is almost completely copied from yours, with the only difference that we have capitalism, private producers, and we have never achieved more than 15% growth, while you, with public ownership of the means of production, reached 30% or more. All our firms hang your slogans of the Stalinist era.

One of the best representatives of the believing working people, revered by the saint, Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea, wrote:

“Stalin saved Russia. He showed what Russia means to the rest of the world. And therefore, as an Orthodox Christian and a Russian patriot, I bow low to Comrade Stalin.”

Never in its history has our country known such majestic transformations as in the Stalin era! The whole world was shocked by our progress! That is why the “devilish” task is now being implemented - never again to allow people comparable in their inner strength, moral qualities, strategic thinking, organizational skills and patriotism to Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin to appear in the power levers of the state.

But a quarter of a century of unbridled propaganda against Stalin did not bring victory to its organizers even over the dead Stalin.

1. Briefly describe the achievements of Russian science and culture in the postwar years that made the greatest impression on you.
2. What do you see as the main prerequisites for these achievements?

ANSWER

1. The most important task of the Soviet government after the war in the field of culture was the restoration of the education sector. In a short time, the material base of scientific institutions was restored. Socialist realism reigned supreme in literature. The leading theme for the writers was the past war, but in the official literature it was revealed at that time rather monotonously. This does not mean, of course, that nothing good has been written. Boris Nikolaevich Polevoy (Kampov) (1908–1981) was a talented writer. In 1946, he created The Tale of a Real Man, which was based on real events: the feat of the Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot A.P. Maresyev, who was wounded, lost his legs, but continued to fly. In the features of the main character of the work of the pilot Meresyev, the image of the Soviet goodie found expression. This story is one of the best works of the "educational" literature of socialist realism, the traditions of which were laid by N. Ostrovsky in the novel "How the Steel Was Tempered". E. G. Kazakevich wrote about the Great Patriotic War and the post-war world (“Two in the Steppe” 1948, “Spring on the Oder” 1949). The history of three generations of the working dynasty was depicted in his novel Zhurbiny (1952) by V. A. Kochetov.
   The development of painting and sculpture still defines socialist realism. The main task of the architects was to restore what was destroyed by the war. Almost anew had to rebuild Stalingrad, Kyiv, Minsk, Novgorod. Stylistically, neoclassical "Stalin's Empire style" continues to dominate. The famous skyscrapers crowned with spiers are being erected in Moscow. The most successful is considered to be the building of Moscow University on Sparrow Hills.
   Achievements in science: In the summer of 1949, an atomic bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. Academician A.D. Sakharov also developed the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, work on creating a bomb began in 1945, tested at the Semipalatinsk test site on August 12, 1953. In 1948, the first industrial uranium-graphite reactor was put into operation. In 1946, the first ultra-shortwave radio station went into operation in Moscow. In 1951, under the guidance of academician S. A. Lebedev, the first Soviet computer was assembled. Significant progress has been made in the development of mathematics, mechanics, physics, astronomy, and some branches of chemistry.
2. The main premise was the "cold war" with the United States, international situation and the aggravation of relations between the two military-political blocs. Involved in the competition with the United States for strategic superiority, the USSR was forced to spend huge amounts of money on achievements in the field of science.

Our RD-181 engines are still used by the United States in their launch vehicles

On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The first country in the world that became great, relying not on the elite, but on the working people. In a matter of decades, the USSR surpassed the countries of one and a half centuries of capitalism in almost everything - the triumph of science and production was accompanied by brilliant achievements in healthcare, culture and sports. But the liberal elites, who have betrayed the Motherland, are going out of their way to erase from memory any of our achievements of the recent past and present the Soviet Union as a half-starved, weak and backward state. In the year of the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR, it is not a sin to recall what Russia, the successor to a great power, has the right to be proud of.

If you dig into the archives, you can write voluminous volumes about the successes of any of the branches of Soviet industry, science and technology. We will recall only a few accomplishments in the 70 years of the existence of the Soviet Union.

Atomic Energy

1928 Discovery of the quantum nature of radioactive alpha decay. The phenomenon, known since 1896, for the first time received a revolutionary theoretical justification.
1937 The first cyclotron in Europe was launched at the Radium Institute in Leningrad.
1954 The USSR tested "Tokamak" - the world's first facility for controlled thermonuclear fusion. It reached a record plasma temperature of 10 million degrees.
1954 The world's first nuclear power plant gave electricity in Obninsk.
1957 The world's first synchrophasotron was created in Dubna. The grandiose device of fantastic dimensions became a revolutionary discovery for the entire world of nuclear physics.
1976 In Lower Arkhyz in the Caucasus, the world's largest Large Azimuthal Telescope (LTA) is installed, capable of seeing stars up to 26th magnitude.

Space

1957 The world's first artificial Earth satellite is launched, which the US press described as "...a devastating blow to the prestige of the United States."
1959 A spacecraft landed on the moon, providing earthlings with the first ever picture of the far side of the moon.
1961 Yuri Gagarin in space! Whole 108 minutes.
1963 For the first time, a woman went into orbit - Valentina Tereshkova.
1964 Flight of the first multi-seat spacecraft.
1965 Alexei Leonov was the first person in the world to go into outer space.
1966 The Luna-9 station is the first in the world to make a soft landing on the surface of the Moon in the Ocean of Storms.
1970 Lunar soil plows "Lunokhod-1".
1971 A single-module space station "Salyut" was created.
1976 Start of work on the creation of the RD-170 rocket engine - the most powerful so far on liquid fuel. New RD-180 and RD-181 US purchased from us until the spring of 2015. The last deal is the sale of 60 engines.
1986 The Mir multi-module station has been mounted in space.
1988 The flight was made by "Buran" - a reusable space system.

Military equipment

1939 Tank KV ("Klim Voroshilov"). The Germans considered it the best heavy tank of the Second World War, which none of their guns "takes".
1940 The T-34 tank later became the best medium tank of World War II. And the most massive - 60 thousand pieces were made.
1941 On August 3, the first volley of the Katyusha battery, the legendary artillery rocket launcher, was fired on the Leningrad Front. During the war years, the industry produced more than 10 thousand pieces of this formidable weapon.
1943 The triumph of the heavy tank IS-2. Its gun was 1.6 times the power of the gun of the best German tank "Tigr-2.1".
1944 Yak-3 arrived at the front - the most maneuverable fighters of the Second World War. 1946 The troops received the first domestic jet fighter Yak-15.
1949 The AK-47 assault rifle of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the most massive small arms in the world, was adopted for service. It was purchased by the armies of more than 50 countries. Over 70 million pieces produced
1949 On August 29, the first domestic atomic bomb RDS-1 was tested. In the conditions of post-war devastation, our scientists and engineers were able to make a weapon to deter aggressors in 2 years and 8 months. In the United States, which did not fight on its territory, it took only a month less.
1953 On August 12, the world's first hydrogen bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.
1964 The world's first intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 was put into service.
1964 The serial MiG-25 fighter set a speed record - 3000 km/h.
1969 The Anchar nuclear submarine (K-222) has reached an underwater speed of over 80 km/h.

1975 The MiG-31 was adopted - the best fighter of the Cold War era. On its basis, the MiG-31M was later created, which in 2015 is considered one of the best in the world in its class. In total, over 30 world records have been set on various modifications of the MiG-31.
1976 The development of the attack helicopter KA-50 ("Black Shark") has begun. Adopted in 1995. Released 15 pieces.
1978 The R-36M silo-based strategic missile system (according to NATO classification SS-18 "Satan"), the most powerful in the world, was put on combat duty.
1981 The world's largest nuclear submarine of the Akula type was launched. Six submarines of this type were built.
1986 The MAZ-7907 all-wheel drive tractor was created, the only vehicle in the world with 24 driving wheels. Power 1250 l. with.
1987 The combat railway complex 15P961 Molodets, a mobile-based strategic missile system, was put into service. The United States unsuccessfully tried to create the same.
1987 The AN-124 "Ruslan" was adopted, a transport aircraft with a record for that time carrying capacity of 50 tons. 56 cars were produced.
1988 The largest hovercraft in the world, the Zubr landing ship, was put into operation.
1989 The Su-30, the world's first mass-produced multi-role heavy fighter of the 4+ generation with super-maneuverability, entered the troops.

Civil aviation and navy

1955 Flights began to make a passenger aircraft Tu-104, until 1958 - the only jet liner in operation in the world.
1957 The atomic icebreaker "Lenin" was launched - the first in the world.
1957 Became the starting point for hydrofoil ships "Rocket", "Meteor", "Kometa" and others.
1965 The air show in Le Bourget conquers our "Antey" - the world's largest transport aircraft with a carrying capacity of 100 tons. After its demonstration, experts recognized the USSR as the leader in aircraft construction.
1966 The ekranoplan "KM" was created - a vessel on a dynamic air cushion. Western intelligence agencies called it the "Caspian Monster". Length 92 m, takeoff weight 544 tons, flight altitude 4 - 14 m, maximum speed 500 km/h. Designed for the transfer of troops, firefighters and rescuers.
1968 The world's first commercial flight of the Tu-144 supersonic passenger aircraft was completed.

1968 He made the first flights of the heaviest helicopter in the world - V-12 (Mi-12). Set a load capacity record - 44,205 kg.
1971 Launched the world's largest research ship - "Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin". Displacement 45 thousand tons.
1977 The nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika became the first surface vessel to sail to the North Pole.
1982 The AN-124 ("Ruslan"), the world's most load-lifting aircraft, was put into mass production.
1988 The first flight was made by the world's largest transport aircraft - An-225 (Mriya), designed to transport the Buran reusable space transport system. Load capacity is about 250 tons. Two aircraft have been produced, one is in working condition.

Computers and mobile communications

1957 The world's first experimental portable mobile phone with a range of 20 - 30 km was created. The device together with the power supply weighed about 0.5 kg. The first mobile phone in the US appeared only in 1973.
1958 The M-20 computer, the fastest electronic computer in the world, was put into operation, although cybernetics was considered pseudoscience in the USSR until 1954.
1963 The first national mobile communication system in the USSR, Altai, was put into operation. By 1970, it operated in 114 cities.
1966 The era of BESM - large electronic computers, and in fact - Soviet supercomputers - was crowned by BESM-6. Its performance was on par with the fastest American CDC-6600 with fewer transistors and a better architecture.

1975 The joint Soviet-American space flight "Soyuz-Apollo" from our side was controlled by a complex based on BESM-4, which has been produced since 1965. She processed information many times faster than the American one.
1978 The era of the Elbrus supercomputer has begun. They were the first to implement all the basic principles of modern architectures. The speed of information processing "Elbrus 3-1" was at the level of the most modern for that time American computer Cray Y-MP. After Boris Yeltsin came to power in 1991, funding for the work was discontinued. Project manager Vladimir Pentkovsky left for the United States and became the lead designer of the Pentium III, which uses the achievements of Elbrus.

Just a fact
In 1913, 11.6 thousand scientists worked in the Russian Empire. By 1975 in the USSR their number had increased 100 times and accounted for 1/4 of the scientific workers of the world.

Socio-economic development of the country

After the victorious end of the Great Patriotic War, the process of revival of the destroyed national economy began in the areas subjected to enemy occupation.

The beginning of the transfer of the economy to the rails of peaceful development was carried out in difficult conditions. The war brought innumerable losses and destruction to the country. Military operations on the territory of the country caused enormous damage to the national economy. 1,710 cities and urban-type settlements were destroyed, over 70,000 villages and villages were destroyed, 31,850 plants and factories, 1,135 mines, and 65,000 km were blown up and put out of action. railway tracks.

The war inflicted deep wounds on the countryside. The sown areas decreased by 36.8 million hectares, i.e. for a quarter. Livestock has been seriously affected. In terms of technical equipment, agriculture was thrown back to the level of the first half of the 30s. The damage inflicted on the Soviet Union exceeded the losses during the Second World War of all other European states combined.

At the end of May 1945, the State Defense Committee decided to transfer part of the defense enterprises to the production of goods for the population. In August 1945, the government instructed Gosplan to prepare a draft of the fourth five-year plan. During its discussion, proposals were made for some softening of the voluntarist regime in economic management, reorganization of collective farms. Somewhat later, a law was passed on the demobilization of thirteen ages of army personnel. Demobilization was carried out gradually and was basically completed in 1947. A total of 8.5 million people were demobilized. Simultaneously with the demobilization, the Soviet state carried out the difficult work of repatriating (returning to their homeland) Soviet citizens who had been driven away by the fascist invaders. It was necessary to identify their whereabouts and help them return home. These resolutions marked the beginning of the transition of the Soviet Union to peaceful construction.

There have been changes in the structure of state bodies and forms of management of the national economy. In September 1945, the state of emergency was lifted and the State Defense Committee was abolished. All functions of governing the country were concentrated in the hands of the Council of People's Commissars (in March 1946 it was transformed into the Council of Ministers of the USSR). At the same time, there was an increase in the number of ministries and departments, and the number of their apparatus grew. At the same time, elections were held for local councils, the Supreme Soviets of the republics and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as a result of which the deputies corps was renewed, which did not change during the war years. In accordance with the requirements of peacetime, the reorganization of the people's commissariats (ministries) began to be carried out.

The restructuring of the national economy and public life in relation to peacetime conditions was completed mainly in 1946. The 8-hour working day was restored at enterprises and institutions, mandatory overtime work was canceled and workers and employees were allowed regular and additional holidays. State budget for 1945 and 1946 provided for a reduction in military spending, a sharp increase in appropriations for the development of the national economy, for socio-cultural events. The network of educational institutions, libraries, clubs was restored. Increased enrollment in schools and universities. Faculties that had been closed during the war years resumed their work in many universities.

In March 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved a plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1946-1950. It determined the ways of revival and further development of the economy. The main task of the five-year plan was to restore the areas of the country that had been occupied, to reach the pre-war level of development of industry and agriculture, and then to surpass it (by 48 and 23%, respectively). The plan provided for the priority development of heavy and defense industries.

The year 1946 turned out to be the most difficult in the post-war restoration of the domestic economy. The constant shortage of food, the most difficult working and living conditions of the workers, the high level of morbidity and mortality of the population had a negative impact, hindered the process of economic recovery. But the working people of the country basically recognized the importance of social tasks and, despite the difficulties, showed selflessness, striving to heal the wounds of the war as soon as possible.

To switch enterprises to the production of civilian products, the production technology was changed, new equipment was created, and retraining of personnel was carried out. Mines and blast furnaces were modernized, heavy and labor-intensive processes were mechanized, and the first steps were taken to automate production processes. A great achievement was the creation of turbines and generators for large power plants. The fleet of cars and buses has been significantly updated.

In accordance with the five-year plan, restoration work began in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. The coal industry of Donbass was revived. Oil production has increased significantly. The extensive development of exploratory drilling led to the discovery of a number of oil fields between the Volga and the Urals, in Dagestan, in the republics of Central Asia, and in the Ukraine. The development of oil wealth in the Caspian Sea began. Zaporizhstal was restored. The Dneproges came into operation. Power plants in the Donbass, the Dnieper region, Voronezh, Kharkov, Krasnodar, and others were also restored. New power plants were built - the Farhad hydroelectric power station in Uzbekistan, the Ust-Kamenogorsk hydroelectric station on the Irtysh, and the Mingechaurskaya in Azerbaijan. At the same time, construction of new and reconstruction of existing plants and factories was carried out. Leningrad residents put into operation most of the destroyed enterprises in a short time. Particular attention was paid to the Izhora and Kirov plants. The textile, light and food industries were restored on the new technical base, but they have not yet satisfied even the minimum needs of the population. Over 6,200 industrial enterprises were restored and rebuilt during the five years.

Work on the restoration of industry was basically completed in 1948. But at individual metallurgical enterprises, they continued even in the early 50s. The mass industrial heroism of the Soviet people, expressed in numerous labor initiatives (the introduction of high-speed methods of work, the movement for metal savings and high product quality, the movement of multi-machine operators, etc.), contributed to the successful fulfillment of planned targets. One of the most famous initiatives of those years was the movement of "speed workers", initiated by the Leningrad turner G. S. Bortkevich. The movement became massive. By the end of the five-year plan, the level of industrial production exceeded the pre-war level by 73%.

The war severely affected the state of agriculture. More than 100 thousand collective farms, state farms and machine and tractor stations were ruined. The sown areas were reduced, the processing of fields worsened. The number of able-bodied population decreased by almost a third. For several years, almost no new equipment was supplied to the village. The severe consequences of the war were exacerbated by unfavorable climatic conditions. In 1946, the Volga region, the North Caucasus, the Central Black Earth regions, Ukraine, and Moldova were struck by a severe drought. It caused a severe famine that affected 1 million people.

In February 1947, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks considered the question "On measures to improve agriculture in the post-war period." The main ways of its rise were determined: providing the village with tractors, agricultural machines and fertilizers, improving the culture of agriculture. Attention was drawn to the need to improve the management of the agrarian sector of the economy. To implement the plan, the output of agricultural machinery was increased. The restoration of old and the construction of new tractor and agricultural engineering plants made it possible to expand the material and technical base of agriculture. Work was underway to electrify the village. Emergency measures were taken to strengthen collective farm and state farm production. Much attention was paid to measures to prevent droughts, the construction of ponds and reservoirs in the steppe and forest-steppe regions.

An increase in the production and supply of machinery to the countryside, measures for the organizational restructuring of collective farms did not change the difficult situation in the agricultural sector. There were many backward collective farms in the country. The grain problem remained unresolved. Grain procurements in 1950 amounted to 32.3 million tons against 36.4 million tons in 1940. All production activities of collective farms and state farms were under the control of party and state authorities. The peasants, working on the collective farm, received practically nothing. Taxes on agricultural enterprises were periodically increased, which led to their impoverishment. Market trade was allowed only to those peasants whose collective farms fulfilled state deliveries. Each peasant farm was obliged to hand over to the state meat, milk, eggs, and wool as a tax for a land plot. Measures were tightened in relation to individual peasant farms, and requisitions from personal plots increased. Pre-war norms were preserved that limited the freedom of movement of collective farmers: they were actually deprived of the opportunity to have passports, they were not covered by temporary disability pay, they were deprived of pensions. With the help of volitional measures taken and at the cost of the enormous efforts of the peasantry in the early 1950s. succeeded in bringing the country's agriculture to the pre-war level of production. But the deprivation of incentives for peasants to work brought the country's agriculture to an unprecedented crisis.

In the post-war years, much was done to improve the living standards of the people. At the end of 1947, the card system for supplying the population with food and industrial goods was abolished. State and cooperative trade developed. Housing construction developed in towns and villages. During the five-year period, more than 100 million square meters of living space were put into operation. However, the pace of construction work lagged behind the scale of population growth.

In 1952 JV Stalin's work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" was published. In it, the head of state tried to theoretically substantiate the principles of the economic policy pursued in the country. Stalin opposed any attempts to revive market relations. It was about the priority of curtailing cooperative-collective farm property by turning it into state property, about reducing the sphere of commodity circulation. Compliance with these principles, according to Stalin, was to ensure high growth rates of the national economy in the USSR. The work also said that under socialism the growing needs of the population will always overtake the possibilities of production. This provision "explained" to the population the dominance of a deficit economy and justified its existence.

Foreign policy. Socio-political life of the country

After the Second World War, two different political lines, opposite platforms, clashed on the world stage. One was defended by the Soviet Union and the countries of "people's democracy", the other by the capitalist states. The USSR was concerned about the US nuclear monopoly, the Americans and the British feared the Soviet Army - the largest and most powerful in the world. They were also worried that in the eyes of the world community the USSR was losing its traditional stereotypical image of the enemy, its decisive contribution to the victory over fascism caused an increase in sympathy for our country in the West. The confrontation between these two systems led to the Cold War. Not the last role in this was played by W. Churchill's speech in Fulton (USA) on March 5, 1946, in which he openly spoke out against the USSR. Churchill's call to "show strength to the Russians" and rally the "English-speaking world" against "Eastern communism" was made in the presence of American President Harry Truman and meant a coordinated transition of the United States and Britain to a hard line towards the USSR.

The Cold War led to the rivalry between the USSR and the USA in the field of armaments. After testing the atomic bomb in the USSR in 1949, the arms race moved to a qualitatively new round. Now it was not limited only to the improvement of traditional military equipment and an increase in the number of troops. The arms race has extended to missiles, strategic bombing, and nuclear-capable submarines.

The ideology of Stalinism left a negative imprint on the relationship of the Soviet Union with the outside world. It was based primarily on ideas about the inevitable and imminent collapse of the bourgeois system, about the irreconcilability of the contradictions between socialism and capitalism, and the aggravation of the ideological struggle as socialism was built. The new position of the USSR, the growth of influence in the world gave rise to Stalin's desire for further territorial claims. Soviet representatives made proposals to change the regime of the Black Sea straits (including the creation of Soviet naval bases there) at the Potsdam Conference (July 17 - August 2, 1945). At the same time, they declared their interest in changing the regime of government in Syria, Lebanon, and the former Italian colonies in Africa. In February 1946, Molotov declared that now not a single issue of international life should be decided without the participation of the USSR.

The expansion after the Second World War of the community of countries that embarked on the socialist path of development did not lead to a weakening of the "besieged fortress" ideology. The interventions of Stalinist diplomacy, the unification of the Soviet model of building socialism, the imposition of bureaucracy and monotonous clichés in the public mind did a lot of harm. Stalin actually contributed to the mechanical transfer of the Soviet experience to countries with different experiences of economic development. The Soviet troops that remained on the territory of these states helped create regimes of socialist orientation. Most of these countries were also drawn into the orbit of confrontation.

In this situation, a bipolar structure arose in international relations, in which the role of the main antagonists belonged to the USSR and the USA. In the summer of 1947, Europe was finally divided into allies of the USA and allies of the USSR. Formation of appropriate military and economic alliances was only a matter of time. The border between the two "camps", as the split of the world into 2 irreconcilable socio-political systems was then called, passed in Europe through the territory of Germany along the line of the Western and Eastern occupation zones, in the Far East along the 38th parallel in Korea and in Southeast Asia in Vietnam.

As a result of the process of political disengagement, many of the agreements adopted at the end of the war and the institutions established to maintain peace and cooperation ceased to function. Work at the UN on disarmament and peace was paralyzed.

The cold war culminated in 1948-1950. In April 1948, the United States, England, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Portugal signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Later, Turkey, Greece and Germany joined it.

In 1948 - 1949 The US passed export control laws that were essentially "economic war" against the USSR. Lists of so-called "strategic goods" were drawn up, prohibited from being exported to the socialist countries. The single world market broke up and 2 parallel world markets were formed.

The end of the Great Patriotic War had a significant impact on the socio-political development of society. The growing role of the USSR in the world community, the expansion of international scientific and cultural cooperation as a natural continuation of the military and political interaction of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition during the war years created ample opportunities for the active inclusion of the Soviet country in universal processes.

During the three and a half post-war years, millions of former soldiers were demobilized from the Red Army and returned to civilian life. More than 4 million repatriates returned to their homeland (prisoners of war, inhabitants of the occupied regions driven into captivity, and part of the emigrants). The mass return of Soviet people to their homeland began after the defeat of Nazi Germany on the basis of a special agreement with the allied states (England, the USA and France) on mutual repatriation.

Having brought the incredible hardships of wartime, the population expected better working and living conditions, positive changes in society, and a softening of the political regime. The peasants hoped for the dissolution of collective farms, the intelligentsia - for the weakening of the political dictate, the population of the Union republics (especially in the Baltic states, Western Ukraine and Belarus) - for a change in national policy. As in previous years, the majority of these hopes were associated with the name of I. V. Stalin. Victory in the war raised Stalin's authority to an unattainable height, and the indisputability of his opinion was even more established. The vast majority of the country's population perceived victory in the war as a victory for Stalin and the system he headed.

At the end of the war, Stalin was relieved of his duties as People's Commissar of Defense, but retained the post of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. He continued to be a member of the Politburo and the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b)). In 1946 the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was transformed into the Council of Ministries of the USSR. I. V. Stalin was approved as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The authority of I. V. Stalin, which had grown during the war years, was supported by the entire system of the administrative-bureaucratic and ideological apparatus. The victory showed the strength of the political, state and public institutions created in the pre-war period, convinced of their inviolability, preserved the system.

In 1946-1947. on behalf of I. V. Stalin, drafts of the new Constitution of the USSR and the Program of the CPSU (b) were developed. The development of a new program of the CPSU (b) Stalin instructs a special commission chaired by A. A. Zhdanov. The program was to consist of two parts. The second part was to formulate the main tasks of the party from the point of view of the movement of Soviet society towards communism in the next 20-30 years. The constitutional project provided for some development of democratic principles in the life of society. During a closed discussion of the draft Constitution, Program and Charter of the CPSU (b), proposals were made on the liquidation of special wartime courts, the release of the party from the function of economic management, the limitation of the term of stay in leading party and Soviet work, on alternative elections, etc.

The solution of the tasks of the recovery period was carried out in the conditions of the command-bureaucratic system that had developed in previous years. The political regime in the USSR, the undivided power of a strictly hierarchical party nomenklatura, sharply tightened. Relying on the powerful apparatus of the repressive and punitive organs, having received the Generalissimo's shoulder straps from the hands of his close associates, Stalin was a dictator by no one and nothing. They violated all the basic legislative norms and statutory rules of internal party life.

The development of all legislative acts and resolutions, formally approved then by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was carried out in the highest party instances. The leadership of all spheres of society's life was concentrated in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Party. Here the plans for the activities of the Supreme Council were determined, candidates for the positions of ministers and their deputies were considered, and the highest command staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR was approved. This time was characterized by frequent reorganizations, mergers and divisions of ministries and departments, the formation of a powerful block of governing bodies of the military-industrial complex of the country, headed by L.P. Beria.

Most of the issues of economic construction were considered at party-economic assets. The resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks obliged the primary party organizations to control the work of the administration of industrial enterprises and collective farms, to reveal "mistakes and blunders of economic leaders."

As for the CPSU, in its real political practice there was, in essence, no genuine democracy. Plenums of the Central Committee of the party were held in 1945-1952. only twice, and the Politburo of the Central Committee from a permanent supreme collegiate body turned into a kind of meeting of a narrow circle of close associates of the "leader", convened only at his will.

A stratification of the communists into the party elite, the leading stratum and the rank-and-file mass of the party took shape. The role of elected party bodies was sharply weakened. Real power passed to the executive structures of the CPSU - bureaus, secretaries of party committees, and often simply to the apparatus of party bodies. Party workers strictly followed the execution of directives and instructions issued "from above". The logic of the administrative-command system led to the fact that the leading role of the CPSU was transformed into managerial activity in solving current economic, socio-economic, cultural, military and other problems. Party committees assumed many of the current operational and administrative functions. In essence, administrative and administrative work has practically supplanted the political methods of leadership.

The key to the reliable functioning of this system was the activity of the internal affairs and state security bodies, the role and influence of which was enormous and comprehensive, and they themselves became the most important regulator of relations in society. In order to "effectively" manage the party and state structures, Stalin made extensive use of repressive methods. The repressions affected some of the party functionaries who aspired to independence and greater independence from the central government. At the beginning of 1948, almost all the leaders of the Leningrad party organization were arrested. The total number of those arrested in the "Leningrad case" amounted to about 2,000 people, 200 of them were shot after some time. Only after Stalin's death did the Supreme Court of the USSR rehabilitate some of the surviving convicts in the "Leningrad" and other fabricated cases.

Also provoked and organized were the "case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee", the case of "doctors - pests", etc.

During this period, the Gulag system reached its apogee. To those who have been sitting there since the mid-1930s. "enemies of the people" added millions of new ones. They included prisoners of war. After being released from fascist captivity, they were sent to Siberian and Ukhta camps, "foreign elements" from the Baltic States, Western Ukraine, and Belarus. According to various sources, during these years the "population" of the Gulag ranged from 4.5 to 12 million people. Beginning in 1948, "special regime" camps were set up for those convicted of "anti-Soviet activities" and "counter-revolutionary acts", in which particularly sophisticated methods of influencing prisoners were used. By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated June 2, 1948, local authorities were granted the right to deport to remote areas persons who maliciously evade labor activity in agriculture.

Within the framework of ideology, there was a break with the political traditions established after October 1917: the cult of the “leader of the peoples” and “the greatest of commanders” finally took shape, national patriotism and propaganda of the “Soviet way of life” intensified, many symbols of the imperial past were recreated (for example, , shoulder straps and ranks introduced in the army during the war years, extended to civilian departments).

The Soviet state more and more urgently needed to create a qualitatively new political environment, in cardinal political, socio-economic and cultural-ideological reforms, in changing all spheres of life and activity of the Soviet people.



The difficulties of returning to peaceful life were complicated not only by the presence of huge human and material losses that the war brought to our country, but also by the difficult tasks of restoring the economy. After all, 1,710 cities and urban-type settlements were destroyed, 7,000 villages and villages were destroyed, 31,850 plants and factories, 1,135 mines, 65,000 km were blown up and put out of action. railway tracks. The sown areas decreased by 36.8 million hectares. The country has lost about a third of its wealth.

The war claimed almost 27 million human lives, and this is its most tragic outcome. 2.6 million people became disabled. The population decreased by 34.4 million people and amounted to 162.4 million people by the end of 1945. The reduction of the labor force, the lack of proper nutrition and housing led to a decrease in the level of labor productivity compared to the pre-war period.

The country began to restore the economy during the war years. In 1943, a special party and government resolution was adopted "On urgent measures to restore farms in areas liberated from German occupation." By the colossal efforts of the Soviet people, by the end of the war, it was possible to restore industrial production to a third of the level of 1940. However, after the end of the war, the central task of restoring the country arose.

Economic discussions began in 1945-1946.

The government instructed Gosplan to prepare a draft of the fourth five-year plan. Proposals were made for some softening of the pressure in economic management, for the reorganization of collective farms. A draft of a new Constitution was prepared. He allowed the existence of small private farms of peasants and handicraftsmen based on personal labor and excluding the exploitation of other people's labor. During the discussion of this project, ideas were voiced about the need to provide more rights to the regions and people's commissariats.

"From below" calls for the liquidation of collective farms were heard more and more often. They talked about their inefficiency, reminded that the relative weakening of state pressure on manufacturers during the war years had a positive result. They drew direct analogies with the new economic policy introduced after the civil war, when the revival of the economy began with the revival of the private sector, the decentralization of management and the development of light industry.

However, these discussions were won by the point of view of Stalin, who at the beginning of 1946 announced the continuation of the course taken before the war to complete the construction of socialism and build communism. It was about returning to the pre-war model of super-centralization in planning and managing the economy, and at the same time to those contradictions between sectors of the economy that had developed in the 1930s.

The struggle of the people for the revival of the economy became a heroic page in the post-war history of our country. Western experts believed that the restoration of the destroyed economic base would take at least 25 years. However, the recovery period in the industry was less than 5 years.

The revival of industry took place in very difficult conditions. In the first post-war years, the work of Soviet people differed little from work in wartime. The constant shortage of food, the most difficult working and living conditions, the high incidence of mortality, were explained to the population by the fact that the long-awaited peace had just come and life was about to get better.

Some wartime restrictions were lifted: the 8-hour working day and annual leave were reintroduced, and forced overtime was abolished. In 1947, a monetary reform was carried out and the card system was abolished, and uniform prices were established for food and industrial goods. They were higher than before the war. As before the war, from one to one and a half monthly salaries per year was spent on the purchase of obligatory loan bonds. Many working-class families still lived in dugouts and barracks, and sometimes worked in the open air or in unheated premises, on old equipment.

The restoration took place in the conditions of a sharp increase in the movement of the population caused by the demobilization of the army, the repatriation of Soviet citizens, and the return of refugees from the eastern regions. Considerable funds were spent on supporting the allied states.

Huge losses in the war caused a labor shortage. Staff turnover increased: people were looking for better working conditions.

As before, acute problems had to be solved by increasing the transfer of funds from the countryside to the city and by developing the labor activity of workers. One of the most famous initiatives of those years was the movement of “speed workers”, initiated by the Leningrad turner G.S. Bortkevich, who completed a 13-day production rate on a lathe in February 1948 in one shift. The movement became massive. At some enterprises, attempts were made to introduce self-financing. But no material measures were taken to consolidate these new phenomena; on the contrary, when labor productivity increased, prices went down.

There has been a trend towards a wider use of scientific and technical developments in production. However, it manifested itself mainly at the enterprises of the military-industrial complex (MIC), where the process of developing nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, missile systems, and new types of tank and aircraft equipment was going on.

In addition to the military-industrial complex, preference was also given to machine building, metallurgy, and the fuel and energy industry, the development of which accounted for 88% of all capital investments in industry. As before, the light and food industries did not satisfy the minimum needs of the population.

In total, during the years of the 4th five-year plan (1946-1950), 6,200 large enterprises were restored and rebuilt. In 1950, industrial production exceeded pre-war figures by 73% (and in the new union republics - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova - 2-3 times). True, reparations and products of joint Soviet-German enterprises were also included here.

The main creator of these successes was the people. With his incredible efforts and sacrifices, seemingly impossible economic results were achieved. At the same time, the possibilities of a super-centralized economic model, the traditional policy of redistributing funds from the light and food industries, agriculture and the social sphere in favor of heavy industry played their role. Reparations received from Germany (4.3 billion dollars) also provided significant assistance, providing up to half of the volume of industrial equipment installed in these years. The labor of almost 9 million Soviet prisoners and about 2 million German and Japanese prisoners of war also contributed to the post-war reconstruction.

Weakened out of the war, the country's agriculture, whose production in 1945 did not exceed 60% of the pre-war level.

A difficult situation developed not only in the cities, in industry, but also in the countryside, in agriculture. The collective farm village, in addition to material deprivation, experienced an acute shortage of people. A real disaster for the countryside was the drought of 1946, which engulfed most of the European territory of Russia. The surplus appraisal confiscated almost everything from the collective farmers. The villagers were doomed to starvation. In the famine-stricken regions of the RSFSR, Ukraine, and Moldavia, due to flight to other places and an increase in mortality, the population decreased by 5-6 million people. Alarming signals about hunger, dystrophy, and mortality came from the RSFSR, Ukraine, and Moldova. Collective farmers demanded to dissolve the collective farms. They motivated this question by the fact that “there is no strength to live like this anymore.” In his letter to P. M. Malenkov, for example, N. M. Menshikov, a student of the Smolensk Military-Political School, wrote: “... indeed, life on collective farms (in the Bryansk and Smolensk regions) is unbearably bad. So, almost half of the collective farmers on the Novaya Zhizn collective farm (Bryansk region) have not had bread for 2-3 months, and some do not even have potatoes. The situation is not the best in half of the other collective farms in the region ... "

The state, buying agricultural products at fixed prices, compensated the collective farms for only a fifth of the costs of milk production, a 10th for grain, and a 20th for meat. Collective farmers received practically nothing. Saved their subsidiary farm. But the state also dealt a blow to it: in favor of the collective farms in 1946-1949. cut 10.6 million hectares of land from peasant household plots, and taxes were significantly increased on income from sales in the market. Moreover, only peasants were allowed to trade on the market, whose collective farms fulfilled state deliveries. Each peasant farm is obliged to hand over to the state meat, milk, eggs, wool as a tax for a land plot. In 1948, collective farmers were “recommended” to sell small livestock to the state (which was allowed to be kept by the charter), which caused a mass slaughter of pigs, sheep, and goats throughout the country (up to 2 million heads).

The currency reform of 1947 hit hardest on the peasantry, who kept their savings at home.

The Roma of the pre-war period remained, restricting the freedom of movement of collective farmers: they were actually deprived of their passports, they were not paid for the days when they did not work due to illness, they did not pay old-age pensions.

By the end of the 4th five-year plan, the disastrous economic situation of the collective farms required their reform. However, the authorities saw its essence not in material incentives, but in another structural restructuring. It was recommended to develop a team form of work instead of a link. This caused the discontent of the peasants and the disorganization of agricultural work. The ensuing enlargement of the collective farms led to a further reduction in peasant allotments.

Nevertheless, with the help of coercive measures and at the cost of the enormous efforts of the peasantry in the early 50s. succeeded in bringing the country's agriculture to the pre-war level of production. However, the deprivation of the peasants of the still remaining incentives to work brought the country's agriculture to a crisis and forced the government to take emergency measures to supply the cities and the army with food. A course was taken to "tighten the screws" in the economy. This step was theoretically substantiated in Stalin's "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" (1952). In it, he defended the ideas of the predominant development of heavy industry, the acceleration of the full nationalization of property and forms of labor organization in agriculture, and opposed any attempts to revive market relations.

“It is necessary ... through gradual transitions ... to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, and commodity production ... to be replaced by a system of product exchange so that the central government ... can cover all the products of social production in the interests of society ... It is impossible to achieve either an abundance of products that can cover all the needs of society, nor transition to the formula "to each according to his needs", leaving in force such economic factors as collective-farm group ownership, commodity circulation, etc."

It was said in Stalin's article that under socialism the growing needs of the population will always overtake the possibilities of production. This provision explained to the population the dominance of a scarce economy and justified its existence.

Outstanding achievements in industry, science and technology have become a reality thanks to the tireless work and dedication of millions of Soviet people. However, the return of the USSR to the pre-war model of economic development caused a deterioration in a number of economic indicators in the post-war period.

The war changed the socio-political atmosphere that prevailed in the USSR in the 1930s; broke through the "iron curtain" by which the country was fenced off from the rest of the "hostile" world. Participants in the European campaign of the Red Army (and there were almost 10 million of them), numerous repatriates (up to 5.5 million) saw with their own eyes the world that they knew about only from propaganda materials that exposed its vices. The differences were so great that they could not but sow many doubts about the correctness of the usual assessments. The victory in the war gave rise to hopes among the peasants for the dissolution of collective farms, among the intelligentsia - for the weakening of the policy of diktat, among the population of the Union republics (especially in the Baltic states, Western Ukraine and Belarus) - for a change in national policy. Even in the sphere of the nomenklatura, which had been renewed during the war years, an understanding of the inevitable and necessary changes was ripening.

What was our society like after the end of the war, which had to solve the very difficult tasks of restoring the national economy and completing the construction of socialism?

Post-war Soviet society was predominantly female. This created serious problems, not only demographic, but also psychological, developing into the problem of personal disorder, female loneliness. Post-war "fatherlessness" and the child homelessness and crime it generates come from the same source. And yet, despite all the losses and hardships, it was thanks to the feminine principle that the post-war society turned out to be surprisingly viable.

A society emerging from a war differs from a society in a "normal" state not only in its demographic structure, but also in its social composition. Its appearance is determined not by the traditional categories of the population (urban and rural residents, factory workers and employees, youth and pensioners, etc.), but by the societies born of wartime.

The face of the post-war period was, first of all, "a man in a tunic." In total, 8.5 million people were demobilized from the army. The problem of the transition from war to peace most concerned the front-line soldiers. Demobilization, which was so dreamed of at the front, the joy of returning home, and at home they were waiting for disorder, material deprivation, additional psychological difficulties associated with switching to new tasks of a peaceful society. And although the war united all generations, it was especially difficult, first of all, for the youngest (born in 1924-1927), i.e. those who went to the front from school, not having time to get a profession, to gain a stable life status. Their only business was war, their only skill was the ability to hold weapons and fight.

Often, especially in journalism, front-line soldiers were called "neo-Decembrists", referring to the potential for freedom that the victors carried in themselves. But in the first years after the war, not all of them were able to realize themselves as an active force of social change. This largely depended on the specific conditions of the post-war years.

First, the very nature of the war of national liberation, just presupposes the unity of society and power. In solving the common national task - confronting the enemy. But in peaceful life a complex of "deluded hopes" is formed.

Secondly, it is necessary to take into account the factor of psychological overstrain of people who have spent four years in the trenches and need psychological relief. People, tired of war, naturally strove for creation, for peace.

After the war, there inevitably comes a period of “healing of wounds” - both physical and mental, - a difficult, painful period of returning to civilian life, in which even ordinary everyday problems (home, family, lost during the war for many) sometimes become insoluble.

Here is how one of the front-line soldiers V. Kondratiev spoke about the painful situation: “Everyone somehow wanted to improve their lives. After all, you had to live. Someone got married. Someone joined the party. I had to adapt to this life. We didn't know any other options."

Thirdly, the perception of the surrounding order as a given, forming a generally loyal attitude towards the regime, in itself did not mean that all front-line soldiers, without exception, considered this order as ideal or, in any case, fair.

“We did not accept many things in the system, but we could not even imagine any other,” such an unexpected confession could be heard from the front-line soldiers. It reflects the characteristic contradiction of the post-war years, splitting the minds of people with a sense of the injustice of what is happening and the hopelessness of attempts to change this order.

Such sentiments were typical not only for front-line soldiers (primarily for repatriates). Aspirations to isolate the repatriated, despite the official statements of the authorities, took place.

Among the population evacuated to the eastern regions of the country, the process of re-evacuation began in wartime. With the end of the war, this desire became widespread, however, not always feasible. Violent measures to ban the exit caused discontent.

“The workers gave all their strength to defeat the enemy and wanted to return to their native lands,” one of the letters said, “and now it turned out that they deceived us, took us out of Leningrad, and want to leave us in Siberia. If it only works out that way, then we, all the workers, must say that our government has betrayed us and our work!”

So after the war, desires collided with reality.

“In the spring of forty-five, people are not without reason. – considered themselves giants,” the writer E. Kazakevich shared his impressions. With this mood, the front-line soldiers entered civilian life, leaving, as it then seemed to them, beyond the threshold of war, the most terrible and difficult. However, the reality turned out to be more complicated, not at all the same 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 of it painted in rainbow colors. We did not always imagine the size of the destruction, the scale of the work that would have to be carried out in order to heal the wounds inflicted by the Germans. “Life after the war seemed like a holiday, for the beginning of which only one thing is needed - the last shot,” K. Simonov continued this thought, as it were.

"Normal life", where you can "just live" without being exposed to every minute danger, was seen in wartime as a gift of fate.

“Life is a holiday”, life is a fairy tale,” the front-line soldiers entered a peaceful life, leaving, as it then seemed to them, the most terrible and difficult beyond the threshold of war. long. did not mean, - with the help of this image, a special concept of post-war life was also modeled in the mass consciousness - without contradictions, without tension. There was hope. And such a life existed, but only in movies and books.

Hope for the best and the optimism it nourished set the pace for the beginning of post-war life. They did not lose heart, the war was over. There was the joy of work, victory, the spirit of competition in striving for the best. Despite the fact that they often had to put up with difficult material and living conditions, they worked selflessly, restoring the destruction of the economy. So, after the end of the war, not only the front-line soldiers who returned home, but also the Soviet people who survived all the difficulties of the past war in the rear, lived in the hope that the socio-political atmosphere would change for the better. The special conditions of the war forced people to think creatively, to act independently, to take responsibility. But hopes for changes in the socio-political situation were very far from reality.

In 1946, several notable events took place that in one way or another disturbed the public atmosphere. Contrary to the fairly common belief that at that time public opinion was exceptionally silent, the actual evidence suggests that this statement is far from being entirely true.

At the end of 1945 - beginning of 1946, a company was held for elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which took place in February 1946. As expected, at official meetings, people mostly spoke “For” the elections, supporting the policy of the party and its leaders. On the ballots one could meet toasts in honor of Stalin and other members of the government. But along with this, there were opinions that were completely opposite.

People said: “It won’t be our way anyway, they will vote for whatever they write”; “the essence is reduced to a simple “formality - the registration of a pre-planned candidate” ... etc. It was a "stick democracy", it was impossible to evade elections. The impossibility of expressing one's point of view openly without fear of sanctions from the authorities gave rise to apathy, and at the same time subjective alienation from the authorities. People expressed doubts about the expediency and timeliness of holding elections, which cost a lot of money, while thousands of people were on the verge of starvation.

A strong catalyst for the growth of discontent was the destabilization of the general economic situation. The scale of grain speculation increased. In the lines for bread there were more frank conversations: “Now you need to steal more, otherwise you won’t live,” “Husbands and sons were killed, and instead of easing our prices they raised prices”; “Now it has become more difficult to live than during the war years.”

Attention is drawn to the modesty of the desires of people who require only the establishment of a living wage. The dreams of the war years that after the war "there will be a lot of everything", a happy life will come, began to devalue rather quickly. All the difficulties of the post-war years were explained by the consequences of the war. People were already beginning to think that the end of peaceful life had come, war was approaching again. In the minds of people, the war will be perceived for a long time as the cause of all post-war hardships. People saw the rise in prices in the autumn of 1946 as the approach of a new war.

However, despite the presence of very decisive moods, they did not become predominant at that time: the craving for a peaceful life turned out to be too strong, too serious fatigue from the struggle, in any form. In addition, most people continued to trust the leadership of the country, to believe that it was acting in the name of the people's good. It can be said that the policy of the leaders of the first post-war years was built solely on the credit of trust from the people.

In 1946, the commission for the preparation of the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR completed its work. In accordance with the new Constitution, direct and secret elections of people's judges and assessors were held for the first time. But all power remained in the hands of the party leadership. In October 1952, the 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks took place, which decided to rename the party into the CPSU. At the same time, the political regime became tougher, and a new wave of repressions grew.

The Gulag system reached its apogee precisely in the post-war years. To the prisoners of the mid-30s. Millions of new "enemies of the people" have been added. One of the first blows fell on prisoners of war, many of whom, after being released from fascist captivity, were sent to camps. “Foreign elements” from the Baltic republics, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were also exiled there.

In 1948, special regime camps were set up for those convicted of "anti-Soviet activities" and "counter-revolutionary acts", in which particularly sophisticated methods of influencing prisoners were used. Unwilling to put up with their situation, political prisoners in a number of camps raised uprisings; sometimes under political slogans.

The possibilities of transforming the regime in the direction of any kind of liberalization were very limited due to the extreme conservatism of ideological principles, due to the stability of which the defensive line had unconditional priority. The theoretical basis of the “hard” course in the field of ideology can be considered the resolution of the Central Administration of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted in August 1946 “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad”, which, although it concerned the field of artistic creativity, was actually directed against public dissent as such. However, the matter was not limited to one "theory". In March 1947, at the suggestion of A. A. Zhdanov, a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was adopted “On the courts of honor in the ministries of the USSR and central departments”, according to which special elected bodies were created” to combat misconduct, dropping the honor and dignity of the Soviet worker ". One of the most high-profile cases that went through the “court of honor” was the case of professors Klyucheva N. G. and Roskin G. I. (June 1947), authors of the scientific work “Ways of Cancer Biotherapy”, who were accused of anti-patriotism and cooperation with foreign firms. For such a "sin" in 1947. they still issued a public reprimand, but already in this preventive campaign the main approaches of the future struggle against cosmopolitanism were guessed.

However, all these measures at that time had not yet had time to take shape in the next campaign against the "enemies of the people." The leadership "wavered" supporters of the most extreme measures, "hawks", as a rule, did not receive support.

Since the path of progressive political change was blocked, the most constructive post-war ideas were not about politics, but about the economy.

D. Volkogonov in his work “I. V. Stalin. A political portrait writes about the last years of I. V. Stalin:

“The whole life of Stalin is shrouded in an almost impenetrable veil, similar to a shroud. He constantly watched all his associates. It was impossible to be wrong either in word or deed: “The comrades-in-arms of the “leader” were well aware of this.

Beria regularly reported on the results of observations of the environment of the dictator. Stalin, in turn, followed Beria, but this information was not complete. The content of the reports was oral, and therefore secret.

In the arsenal of Stalin and Beria, there was always a version of a possible "conspiracy", "assassination", "act of terrorism" at the ready.

The closed society begins with leadership. “Only the smallest fraction of his personal life was indulged in the light of publicity. In the country there were thousands, millions, portraits, busts of a mysterious man whom the people idolized, adored, but did not know at all. Stalin knew how to keep secret the strength of his power and his personality, betraying to the public only that which was intended for rejoicing and admiration. Everything else was covered by an invisible shroud."

Thousands of "miners" (convicts) worked at hundreds, thousands of enterprises in the country under the protection of a convoy. Stalin believed that all those unworthy of the title of "new man" had to undergo a long re-education in the camps. As is clear from the documents, it was Stalin who initiated the transformation of prisoners into a constant source of disenfranchised and cheap labor. This is confirmed by official documents.

On February 21, 1948, when “a new round of repressions” had already begun to “unwind”, the “Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR” was published, in which “orders of the authorities were sounded:

"one. To oblige the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR to all spies, saboteurs, terrorists, Trotskyists, rightists, leftists, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, white émigrés and other persons serving a sentence in special camps and prisons, after the expiration of to send the terms of punishment according to the appointment of the Ministry of State Security to exile in settlements under the supervision of the bodies of the Ministry of State Security in the Kolyma regions in the Far East, in the regions of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Novosibirsk Region, located 50 kilometers north of the Trans-Siberian Railway, in the Kazakh SSR ... "

The draft Constitution, which was sustained by and large within the framework of the pre-war political doctrine, at the same time contained a number of positive provisions: there were ideas about the need to decentralize economic life, to provide greater economic rights locally and directly to people's commissariats. There were suggestions about the elimination of special wartime courts (primarily the so-called "line courts" in transport), as well as military tribunals. And although such proposals were classified by the editorial committee as inappropriate (reason: excessive detailing of the project), their nomination can be considered quite symptomatic.

Ideas similar in direction were also expressed during the discussion of the draft Party Program, work on which was completed in 1947. These ideas were concentrated in proposals for expanding intra-party democracy, freeing the party from the functions of economic management, developing principles for the rotation of personnel, etc. Since neither the draft Constitution, neither the draft program of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was published and they were discussed in a relatively narrow circle of responsible workers, the appearance in this environment of ideas that were quite liberal for that time testifies to the new moods of some of the Soviet leaders. In many ways, these were really new people who came to their posts before the war, during the war, or a year or two after the victory.

The situation was aggravated by open armed resistance to the "crackdown" of the Soviet authorities in the Baltic republics and the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, annexed on the eve of the war. The anti-government partisan movement drew into its orbit tens of thousands of fighters, both convinced nationalists who relied on the support of Western intelligence services, and ordinary people who suffered a lot from the new regime, lost their homes, property, and relatives. The rebellion in these areas was put an end to only in the early 50s.

Stalin's policy in the second half of the 1940s, starting from 1948, was based on the elimination of symptoms of political instability and growing social tension. The Stalinist leadership took action in two directions. One of them included measures that, to one degree or another, adequately met the expectations of the people and were aimed at activating the socio-political life in the country, developing science and culture.

In September 1945, the state of emergency was lifted and the State Defense Committee was abolished. In March 1946, the Council of Ministers. Stalin declared that victory in the war means, in essence, the completion of the transitional state, and therefore it is time to put an end to the concepts of “people's commissar” and “commissariat. At the same time, the number of ministries and departments grew, and the number of their apparatus grew. In 1946, elections were held to local councils, the Supreme Soviets of the Republics and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as a result of which the deputies corps was renewed, which did not change during the war years. In the early 1950s, sessions of the Soviets began to be convened, and the number of standing committees increased. In accordance with the Constitution, direct and secret elections of people's judges and assessors were held for the first time. But all power remained in the hands of the party leadership. Stalin thought, as D. A. Volkogonov writes about this: “The people live in poverty. Here the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs report that in a number of areas, especially in the east, people are still starving, their clothes are bad.” But according to Stalin's deep conviction, as Volkogonov argues, “the security of people above a certain minimum only corrupts them. Yes, and there is no way to give more; it is necessary to strengthen the defense, to develop heavy industry. The country must be strong. And for this, you will have to tighten your belt in the future.”

People did not see that, in conditions of severe shortages of goods, price-cutting policies played a very limited role in increasing welfare at extremely low wages. By the beginning of the 1950s, the standard of living, real wages, barely exceeded the level of 1913.

“Long experiments, coolly “mixed up” in a terrible war, did little to give the people from the point of view of a real rise in living standards.”

But, despite the skepticism of some people, the majority continued to trust the leadership of the country. Therefore, difficulties, even the food crisis of 1946, were most often perceived as inevitable and someday surmountable. It can be definitely stated that the policy of the leaders of the first post-war years was based on the credibility of the people, which after the war was quite high. But if the use of this loan allowed the leadership to stabilize the post-war situation over time and, on the whole, to ensure the transition of the country from a state of war to a state of peace, then, on the other hand, the trust of the people in the top leadership made it possible for Stalin and his leadership to delay the decision of vital reforms, and subsequently actually block the trend of democratic renewal of society.

The possibilities of transforming the regime in the direction of any kind of liberalization were very limited due to the extreme conservatism of ideological principles, due to the stability of which the defensive line had unconditional priority. The theoretical basis of the “cruel” course in the field of ideology can be considered the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted in August 1946 “On the journals Zvezda and Leningrad”, which, although it concerned the region, was directed against public dissent as such. "Theory" is not limited. In March 1947, at the suggestion of A. A. Zhdanov, a resolution was adopted by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On courts of honor in ministries of the USSR and central departments,” which was discussed earlier. These were already the prerequisites for the approaching mass repressions of 1948.

As you know, the beginning of the repressions fell primarily on those who were serving their sentences for the "crime" of the war and the first post-war years.

By this time the path of progressive political changes had already been blocked, having narrowed down to possible amendments to liberalization. The most constructive ideas that appeared in the first post-war years concerned the sphere of economy The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks received more than one letter with interesting, sometimes innovative thoughts on this subject. Among them there is a noteworthy document of 1946 - the manuscript "Post-war domestic economy" by S. D. Alexander (non-partisan, who worked as an accountant at one of the enterprises of the Moscow region. The essence of his proposals was reduced to the basics of a new economic model built on the principles of the market and partial denationalization of the economy The ideas of SD Alexander had to share the fate of other radical projects: they were classified as “harmful” and written off to the “archive.” The Center remained firmly committed to the previous course.

Ideas about some kind of “dark forces” that “deceive Stalin” created a special psychological background, which, having arisen from the contradictions of the Stalinist regime, in essence its denial, at the same time was used to strengthen this regime, to stabilize it. Taking Stalin out of criticism saved not only the name of the leader, but also the regime itself, animated by this name. Such was the reality: for millions of contemporaries, Stalin acted as the last hope, the most reliable support. It seemed that if there were no Stalin, life would collapse. And the more difficult the situation inside the country became, the more the special role of the Leader became stronger. It is noteworthy that among the questions asked by people at lectures during 1948-1950, in one of the first places are those related to concern for the health of “Comrade Stalin” (in 1949 he turned 70 years).

1948 put an end to the leadership's post-war hesitation about choosing a "soft" or "hard" course. The political regime became tougher. And a new round of repression began.

The Gulag system reached its apogee precisely in the post-war years. In 1948, special regime camps were set up for those convicted of "anti-Soviet activities" and "counter-revolutionary acts." Along with the political prisoners, many other people ended up in the camps after the war. Thus, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 2, 1948, local authorities were granted the right to evict to remote areas persons who “maliciously evade labor activity in agriculture.” Fearing the increased popularity of the military during the war, Stalin authorized the arrest of A. A. Novikov, Air Marshal, Generals P. N. Ponedelin, N. K. Kirillov, a number of colleagues of Marshal G. K. Zhukov. The commander himself was charged with putting together a group of disgruntled generals and officers, ingratitude and disrespect for Stalin.

The repressions also affected some of the party functionaries, especially those who aspired to independence and greater independence from the central government. Many party and statesmen were arrested, nominated by the member of the Politburo who died in 1948 and secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. A. Zhdanov from among the leading workers of Leningrad. The total number of those arrested in the "Leningrad case" amounted to about 2 thousand people. Some time later, 200 of them were put on trial and shot, including Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia M. Rodionov, member of the Politburo and Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR N. A. Voznesensky, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. A. Kuznetsov.

The "Leningrad case", reflecting the struggle within the top leadership, should have been a stern warning to everyone who thought at least in some way other than the "leader of the peoples."

The last of the trials being prepared was the "case of doctors" (1953), accused of improper treatment of top management, which resulted in the death of the poison of prominent figures. Total victims of repression in 1948-1953. 6.5 million people became.

So, I. V. Stalin became General Secretary under Lenin. During the period of 20-30-40s, he sought to achieve complete autocracy, and thanks to a number of circumstances within the socio-political life of the USSR, he achieved success. But the domination of Stalinism, i.e. the omnipotence of one person - Stalin I.V. was not inevitable. The deep mutual intertwining of objective and subjective factors in the activities of the CPSU led to the emergence, establishment and most harmful manifestations of the omnipotence and crimes of Stalinism. Objective reality refers to the multiformity of pre-revolutionary Russia, the enclave nature of its development, the bizarre interweaving of remnants of feudalism and capitalism, the weakness and fragility of democratic traditions, and the unbeaten paths towards socialism.

Subjective moments are connected not only with the personality of Stalin himself, but also with the factor of the social composition of the ruling party, which included in the early 1920s the so-called thin layer of the old Bolshevik guard, largely exterminated by Stalin, the remaining part of it, for the most part moved to Stalinism. Undoubtedly, Stalin's entourage, whose members became accomplices in his actions, also belongs to the subjective factor.