This Soviet painting by Jury Raksha was entitled 'Slavic farewell'. It shows determined Red Army soldiers headed to the front leaving their families behind. The flaming area in the background

represents a village destroyed by a German air attack. This is hugely patriotic image without the Marxist overtones of Soviet propaganda before the German invasion. Notice the treatment of the

sky. This is done with obvious religious overtones.

THE SOVIET UNION AFTER 1945

-According to the poster propaganda Stalin had saved the Soviet Union from the Nazi invaders.

-Posters and postcards were produced to herald his commitment to the war effort, statues were raised to praise his role as “liberator”, articles and books placed Stalin in the pantheon of Great Russian Leaders such as Peter the Great.

-Within the Soviet Union less was known about the battles in the Pacific, North Africa or Western Europe after the D-Day (June 1944).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yOBCGwMpeo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgRyLz47liM

-The USSR emerged from WWII with territorial gains. (see map page on 136 and compare with the following)

ECONOMIC RECOVERY AFTER 1945

-The devastation suffered during the war meant that the recovery of the economy was a gargantuan task.

-John Fischer, as a member of the UN Relief and Reconstruction Agency, wrote about his experiences in Ukraine in 1946 in his book “The scared men in the Kremlin”.

-He asked any questions and mixed freely with ordinary people and party officials, he recognized the enormous hardship experienced in finding food, clothing and shelter in a region devastated by the war. (see sources F, G page 137)-Despite the difficulties of restoring infrastructure and repairing factories and mines (see source H page 137), the official claim was by 1950 the production was 75% higher than in 1940.

-The re-arming of the Red Army remained a priority as the Cold War took place.

DOMESTIC POLICIES AFTER 1945

-Stalin continued to push forward the “Russification”, he wanted to introduce Russian settlers into the Baltic states and impose Russian culture and language.

-A campaign called the Zhdanovshchina was carried out in order to remove western influence from music and literature. Prokofiev, Shostakovih and Anna Akhmatova were criticized, even Einstein’s theory was declared bourgeois and reactionary.

-The “Leningrad Affair” and the “Doctor’s Plot” (November 1952) were purges which targeted party members in Leningrad and Jewish doctors in the Kremlin accused of killing their patients.

TERROR AND PROPAGANDA AFTER 1945

-The purges of the 1930s were not repeated on the same scale.-Stalin feared the risk of knowledge of the outside world penetrating the walls of the Soviet Union, that’s why the POW, White Russians and Cossacks who returned to the country were often shot or sent to distant gulags.-2.8 million soldiers who were prisoners in German camps returned to the USSR to be arrested and interrogated by the NKVD, only around 500,000 were allowed to go home.-New labor camps were built to hold “bandits” (nationalists in Ukraine and in the Baltic States). By 1947 there were more tan 20 million prisoners in the gulags and 27 additional camps had been built.-The show trials and the purges were resurrected in Central and Eastern Europe.-Within the Soviet Union, gratitude for victory boosted Stalin’s popularity and the suffering undoubtedly led people to believe that whatever hardship came with peace.