Anglo-American Conference of Historians 2009: Cities
Institute of Historical Research, 2 - 3 July 2009
Soviet cities and urban life in the era of reconstruction 1943-1953
Chair: Professor Andreas Schonle (Queen Mary, University of London)
The Soviet Union won the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) at a terrible cost. Leaving aside the terrifying death toll and the disappearance of many thousands of factories, towns and villages, whole sections of Soviet cities were laid to waste. This panel aims to compare and contrast the impact of the war upon three very different Soviet cities: Sevastopol, Rostov-on-Don and Leningrad. It offers a twenty minute paper on each city and then aims to encourage questions and comment about the similarities and differences between the papers and the cities they discuss. All three papers are interested in the material conditions of Soviet cities in the period of post-war reconstruction, and how individuals and social groups lived in these urban spaces. The papers have a shared interest in the transformations created by the war, and the new social and political relationships they created. The new dynamic in relations between Moscow and the local authorities in Sevastopol feature prominently in Karl D. Qualls’ paper. Jeffrey W. Jones examines the antagonist relationship between party officials and ordinary citizens in Rostov-on-Don. Robert Dale’s paper centres upon the complicated relationship between demobilised soldiers and civilians in housing allocation and disputes.
The thematic focus on cities of the 2009 Anglo-American Conference provides an exciting opportunity for members of the panel to meet, share ideas and collaborate, but also to contextualise our research within the broader context of urban and metropolitan history.
Abstracts
Bringing life to the rubble in Sevastopol, 1944–53
Karl D. Qualls (Dickinson College)
This paper will address attempts by local officials to accommodate a rapidly increasing population amid the rubble of Sevastopol in the decade after WW II. As planning battles raged in Moscow, local leaders were able to change some of Moscow’s failed social policies by advocating residents’ needs. Officials who lived and worked in the remains of Sevastopol quickly realized that Moscow had ignored the primary task of immediate reconstruction. The health and welfare of a desperate and rapidly growing population deteriorated. As evacuees returned and volunteers and conscripts flooded the city, they placed heavy strains on the devastated urban infrastructure. Much of the local party, government, and specialist communities worked to protect and provide for residents. Accommodation in city services and housing planned to improve the standard of living of the population thereby avoiding urban unrest. More importantly, improved provisioning proved that Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism could provide the best possible life for people. The revolution’s true believers had not seen yet the fulfillment of the social(ist) contract: if the state provides for the population’s welfare, the latter will work and sacrifice for the creation of the communist society. Vera Dunham’s “big deal” posited the inverse, too: if one worked hard, one would be rewarded. Neither promise was realized. The struggle for survival continued into the early 1950s as massive reconstruction projects throughout the USSR vied for scarce material and labor resources.
The central regime continued to make promises and local officials and residents demanded their fulfillment. Food, housing, and health care all appeared at the center of local concerns. As with urban planning, local officials had to carefully negotiate their way through Moscow’s failures. City officials enticed collective farmers to the city, slowly improved the distribution of goods, and tried to protect the quality and safety of food. Inadequate housing forced workers to become squatters in bombed out buildings, but factory bosses also built barracks in order to prevent their workers from fleeing. Although unplanned construction and labor flight were both illegal, local judicial officials rarely prosecuted offenders. The judiciary knew that central authorities were not meeting residents’ daily needs. Epidemics were an unavoidable part of daily life. With raw human, animal, and industrial waste flowing freely into the city’s bays, outbreaks in summer were ever present.
Teachers, physicians, architects, party officials and others simply ignored the law and did what they needed to in order to provide for a stable and contented population. It took time for local officials to convince Moscow that Sevastopol and its essential naval base needed to be accommodated. Stalin eventually recognized this and in a telegram to Malenkov he stated that the “local population would judge [them] harshly” without greater attention to Sevastopol. Immediately following the telegram, Sevastopol was raised to all-Union status and many of the hopes and plans of local officials became realities in the late-1940s and 1950s as long overdue increases in goods, labor, and money poured into the city.
'Right now you can’t get anything done without a bribe':
problems in and perceptions of the Rostov Communist Party organisation,
1943–48
Jeffrey W. Jones (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
This paper looks at the party organization of Rostov-on-Don, a major industrial center in southern Russia, between 1943 and 1948. Specifically, I look at how the local party branch functioned, as well as how it was perceived by the population at large during this five-year period. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union as Lenin conceived it was a tightly-knit, highly-disciplined vanguard of ideologically enlightened individuals. This notion does not allow for a gap between the party and the workers it represents—the “vanguard” is synonymous with the working class, and by definition always acts in the best interests of the working class. Although the nature and function of the party had evolved tremendously since Lenin’s day, party texts in the 1940s still held to this idealized Leninist image.
The party apparatus was undergoing tremendous changes during and after the war. Following the decimation of the party leadership during the purges of the late 1930s, when many of Rostov’s highest leaders fell victim, the war also took its toll on the local party leadership. In the 1940s party membership grew steadily, with many demobilized soldiers brought into the ranks, such that by 1947 there were twice as many members in the city than on the eve of the war. There is a relative decline of women and factory workers within the party while the overall percentage of white-collar male members increases.
In this paper I examine Rostov’s party apparatus from different vantage points based on three distinct types of sources. I start with the party press (the local organ Molot (Hammer)), material intended for mass consumption. Second, I examine the private discussions of local and central party leaders, specifically the minutes of closed meetings and the reports of party leaders. Third, I examine popular views through citizens’ questions at open meetings, their comments noted by informants in svodki, and several interviews I conducted. Taken together the various sources examined here expose a gap between official rhetoric and popular perception of the party, between the ideological basis of Soviet power and the reality of everyday life for most Soviet citizens.
Homes for heroes: housing provision for demobilised troops and the housing crisis in Leningrad, 1944–50
Robert Dale (Queen Mary University of London)
The siege of Leningrad placed the Soviet Union’s second city on the frontlines of the Great Patriotic War. Mass death and mass destruction transformed Leningrad and the lives of Leningraders. Destruction and dilapidation had rendered sections of the city and many individual buildings unrecognizable. Ex-servicemen and women frequently grumbled about the changes wrought on Leningrad, and the difficulties of everyday life. Amongst the most profound and long-lasting impacts was a post-war housing crisis. The extent of war-time damage to housing is difficult to document, but my research suggests that scholars have tended to underestimate the problem. Wartime losses to housing stock, combined with underinvestment in repairs, the slow pace of reconstruction, the rapid return of soldiers and evacuees, and rural immigration created a genuine crisis.
This paper examines the profound impact of this housing crisis upon the success of demobilisation and the lives of demobilised soldiers in Leningrad. During the late-Stalinist period veterans’ housing was abysmal. Housing blocks were overcrowded, dirty, damp, and depressing. Many young and single veterans were forced to live in hostels or workers’ barracks. Older veterans with an established family life considered themselves fortunate to occupy a cramped room in a communal apartment. Others stayed with friends and family while attempting to resolve long-running housing disputes. Returning ‘heroes’ expected better.
Some scholars have regarded demobilised soldiers as an entitlement group with privileged access to housing. Propaganda campaigns and demobilisation legislation only served to heighten expectations and subsequent disappointment. Other groups also had similar theoretical entitlements. To suggest that soldiers consistently fared better than civilians in housing disputes is a gross simplification, and certainly not how it appeared to many veterans. Success in obtaining accommodation depended on a complicated web of factors.
The paper is based on four main types of source. Firstly, indications of the public debate surrounding housing published in newspapers, journals and books. Secondly, reports about housing produced by the Leningrad Party and city Soviet. Thirdly, indications of the attitudes of demobilised veterans towards the housing crisis contained in public opinion sources, such as svodki and military censor reports. Finally, administrative re-settlement files contained in the archive of the Leningrad city procuracy, which detail the winners and losers in lengthy and complicated housing disputes.
The research for this paper is the product of an academic year spent researching in archives in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and represents just one of the thematic strands of my thesis, which explores the difficulties and complexities of post-war adaptation for demobilised soldiers in Leningrad and the surrounding region.
