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Topic

Terror and the New Man: Belief, Performance, and Atomization in Stalin’s Soviet Union

Department of History

Date & location

• Wednesday, August 28, 2024
• 10:00 A.M.
• Clearihue Building, Room B007

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk, Department of History, ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø (Supervisor)
• Dr. Kristin Semmens, Department of History, UVic (Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Lynne Viola, Department of History, University of Toronto

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Abdul Roudsari, School of Health Information Science, UVic

Abstract

When the Bolshevik Party of the Soviet Union came to power following the 1917 October Revolution, the revolutionaries aimed not only to reinvent the political and economic systems of what had been the Russian Empire, but also to reshape the people into ideologically committed “New Men”; a reshaping which took place against a backdrop of extreme violence. In this thesis, I examine the popular reaction to three instances of terror during the Stalinist period — the 1928–1932 Dekulakization campaign; the 1936–1938 Great Terror, and the 1953 Doctors’ Plot — to determine whether or to what extent such a transformation occurred and, more broadly, analyze the nature of the Soviet experience under Stalin. Using letters, diaries, newspaper articles, and government and police reports from the era, as well as memoirs and oral histories produced after the fact, I will argue that the reaction to each instance of terror was defined by the interaction between three interconnected factors: belief, atomization, and performance. While the Bolsheviks never succeeded in transforming the whole of Soviet society into New Men and many citizens accepted the official discourse only in part — most often because its elements contradicted either their existing beliefs and prejudices or their lived experiences — these periods of intense and often arbitrary repression had an atomizing effect as expressing one’s true opinions carried a significant risk of denunciation, arrest, and imprisonment or execution. Under these circumstances, the Soviet people learned to perform as New Men for their own protection, a practice which in turn produced further atomization and prevented concerted resistance.