Nazi-Soviet Pact

1. The treaty was signed on August 23rd, 1939. Hitler’s Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1st shortly after. This pact was the final step the Nazi’s had to pursue in order to execute their expansionist agenda. Hitler knew if he had to fight a two front war, he would undoubtedly lose.

2. The treaty does not only take into consideration the emphasis on the non-violence/aggression aspects that were very important to avoiding a two front war, but considered the possibility of inadvertent war as a product of alternative foreign pacts.

3. The secret aspect of the treaty is the most significant aspect to understanding the motives behind its mutual signing. With a wink and a nod, the Russian’s signed this treaty with the secret hopes that they would regain territory in Poland and south east European nations. Germany would also gain Baltic lands and a portion of Europe as well.

Two questions

1. What could have been a potential result of World War II, had the Nazi’s not broken the pact by invading Russia in 1941?

2. Should Russia be held more liable for the invasion of Poland due to their acceptance of the Treaties obvious intentions?

It is interesting to think about how the two nations put aside their rivaling political ideologies in order to gain land. Would Russia rather have national socialism expand at the same time communism did than democracy?

Shrinkage of the Aral Sea: Detrimental Effects

Elizabeth Lowman

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, their rule was marked by the desire to control everything, including nature. What resulted is what demographers Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly referred to as “a sixty-year pattern of ecocide by design.”[1] Ecocide is the practice of destroying an environment’s ecosystems. Alternatively, sustainability is the practice of taking no more from the environment than can later be replaced. The Soviet Union abandoned the idea of giving back to the earth by taking as much as they could to make a profit.

Over-irrigation from the Aral Sea was one of the worst instances of Soviet environmental control.  During the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union embarked on the “Virgin Lands Campaign,” which plowed untamed lands to grow food for the Soviet Union.  The Soviets realized that the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan could be used for growing cotton.  Officials called cotton “white gold” and were pleased when the USSR became the second largest cotton producer in the world by the 1980s.[2]

Located between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan lays the Aral Sea, which was the fourth largest sea in the early 1960s.[3]  Two rivers act as tributaries, feeding the sea with water that the Soviet government then used to irrigate cotton.  However, since irrigation systems were not designed properly, less and less water began to reach the sea.[4]  The result was the Aral Sea shrinking by 44 percent.[5]  Fertilizers and pesticides the Soviets fed used on the cotton also contributed to the sea’s shrinkage.

The Soviet Union’s irresponsible cotton growing campaign harmed Central Asia on multiple levels.  The shrinkage of the sea destabilized the environment and ecosystem.   Public health in Central Asia still is deeply threatened by multiple environmental and social factors introduced by the cotton campaign. Russia’s exploitation of Central Asia caused the Central Asians to believe they were treated as second-class Soviet citizens, leading to political unrest in the region.

The shrinkage of the Aral Sea had devastating consequences for the surrounding environment.  These consequences included the destruction of the sea itself, land and water pollution, and increased wind erosion.

Poor Soviet irrigation methods took their toll on the sea, draining it to one third of its former volume.  In addition to that, the chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers fed to the cotton by the Soviets contaminated the remaining water as well as the miles of sand serving as a reminder of the Aral Sea’s former breadth.[6]

The water pollution introduced by these chemicals had a wide range of affects. The salinity of the water is now equivalent to that of an open ocean,[7] six times the limit set forth by the World Health Organization. This affects the quality of drinking water available to those living around the sea. Scientists still are uncertain whether foul tasting water has any detrimental health effects that extremely high salinity can potentially cause,[8] which will be addressed later.

High salinity is not the only problem with the water. Sixty-five percent of the water in Karkalpakstan, a republic in Uzbekistan, does not meet health regulations for pollution.[9]  The sea also has high levels of lead and cadmium.[10]  While the pollution is most likely harmful to humans, it has definitely proven harmful to fish.  All twenty of the important fish species of the Aral Sea have died.[11]  Fish kills signify the potential danger of the water but also eliminated a source of food and income to the people inhabiting the area around the sea.

Another environmental problem present in this region, wind erosion, spreads 43 million metric tons of the contaminated sand and silt from around the Aral Sea to the surrounding lands, inhibiting plant growth.[12]  The wind erosion has worsened since the 1970s, when the Soviet government forced Central Asian peasants to cut down trees to make room for cotton.[13]  With nothing to hold down the soil, wind erosion continues to take its toll on the land.

Intense dust and salt storms are another consequence of wind erosion.  In the 1980s, between 90 and 140 million tons of salty sand were carried as far as Belorussia and Afghanistan annually.[14]  As will be discussed later, the frequent storms may be causing increasing cases of respiratory problems in the population.[15]

Between poor irrigation, polluting the land and water, and deforestation, the Soviets caused extreme damage to the environment in the pursuit of cotton.

These environmental effects closely tie in with the adverse health affects seen in the population.  These health effects include disease outbreaks, contaminated breast milk, and respiratory problems.  In the 1980s, many of these problems could be directly attributed to the destruction of Aral Sea, but today, data is inconclusive as to the extent of damage being done to people’s health.

In the past, the drinking water for those that live around the Aral Sea was unfit for human consumption.   In the 1980s, “Turkmenistan’s health minister described the Turkmen canal, a major source of drinking water, as an open sewer after finding impermissibly high bacteria counts in 60 to 98 percent of all water samples taken from it.”[16]  In addition to pesticides, fertilizer runoff introduced bacteria into the water.   Diseases such as hepatitis, typhoid, dysentery, and cancer plagued the population. According to some counts, “hepatitis…afflicted seven out of every ten inhabitants.”[17] These diseases were either caused by waterborne bacteria and viruses, or by heavy metal deposits found in the water.

As discussed earlier, scientists today are unsure if the drinking water is still dangerous to humans, although they find it quite possible.  However, scientists do know that Central Asia has an extremely high infant mortality rate, with infants dying of upper respiratory infections, diarrhea, tuberculosis, and malnutrition.  Contaminated water is a likely suspect for outbreaks of diarrhea.  The World Health Organization also expressed concern that the Aral Sea region lacks a steady and safe water supply, which is unsafe for children.[18]

High infant mortality could also be a result of contaminated breast milk in mothers.  Scientists found the milk to be contaminated with PCBs and other pesticides the Soviets used on the land after a study they performed in Kazakhstan.  Scientists hypothesize women come into contact with these chemicals by eating fish from areas of high water pollution, as well as through agricultural products that are grown with pesticides.[19]  However, the amount of PCBs and other pesticides detected were still less than amounts found in industrialized nations, with the exception of in Atyrau, a city in Kazakhstan, where the amount of pesticides were found to be the same as in industrialized nations.[20]    Currently, the toxicity of the breast milk is inconclusive, but in the late 1980s, doctors warned Turkmen mothers against breast-feeding because of toxic milk.[21]  Today, many Central Asian women are reluctant to breast-feed their infants.

As previously mentioned, the frequent dust storms seen in Central Asia can have ill effects on people’s health.  The Aral Sea Dust and Respiratory Disease Project sought to find a correlation between the environment and public health.  Respiratory diseases are responsible for many illnesses and deaths in Central Asia.  In fact “fifty percent of all illnesses in children are respiratory.”[22]  From 2000-2001, researchers discovered that dust inhalation in Central Asia was dramatically beyond the guidelines of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.  Overall, the results were inconclusive, as more respiratory infections occurred farther from the Aral Sea, possibly caused by other sources or by the ability of dust to travel.  Researchers hypothesized that not all dust was from the Aral Sea, but most of the dust in the late summer dust storms was likely from this region.[23]

The link between environmental damage and public health disasters was strongly established in the 1980s as chemicals, pesticides, and bacteria poisoned many Central Asians.  While this link is not as clear today, many researchers believe Central Asians are still suffering because of the environment.

Because of the damage being done to their land and their health, Central Asians began to resent Russia, causing political issues.  Moscow’s complete disregard for the region’s plight was “a measure of the second class status” of the predominately Muslim Central Asian states.[24]  Because Central Asia is religiously and ethnically different from Eastern Europe, the Soviet government cared little about the issues Central Asia faced.  As well as destroying the land for profit, the Soviet government refused to give Central Asians adequate medical care.  “In the four [Central Asian] republics together in 1987 there were, on average, fewer than 14 pediatricians for every 10,000 children,” a fraction of what was seen in the rest of the Soviet Union.[25]

At first, Central Asians cooperated, but they soon began to defend their rights as Soviets.  Spokespeople accused Moscow of genocide.  Nationalists demanded Moscow redirect Siberian rivers to Central Asia to provide clean drinking water.  Uzbek nationalist groups, originally concerned with promoting the Uzbek language, expanded their campaigns to include environmental reforms.  Journalists wrote of malnourished children. In an attempt to pacify what they perceived as a potential revolt, the government would make promises and send aid.  However, the promises were not kept and the aid was unsubstantial.    Although the republics of Central Asia declared their independence in 1991, relations with Russia still remain icy, in part due to the Virgin Lands Campaign.[26]

Some progress has been made in recent years to rehabilitate the Aral Sea.  In 1999, the World Bank launched a project in which it built a 13-kilometer dike in one of the Aral Sea’s tributaries to raise sea level and decrease salinity.  The project went even better than expected, with the tributary reaching the intended level within only seven months, as well as the its capacity doubling to 700 cubic meters per second.  The next goal, set forth by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, is to raise the sea level of the northern sea four to six more meters.[27]  For the first time in decades, the world is feeling more optimistic about the plight of the Aral Sea.

The Soviet Union’s fierce desire to control nature with no regard to sustainability destroyed the environment, the health of Soviet citizens, and Russian-Central Asian relations.  Though optimism about the region is growing, it is unlikely the Aral Sea will ever return to its former glory. The Soviet Union ruthlessly exploited the land for profit, and decades later; Central Asians are still paying the price.

 Notes


     1.Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr.  Ecocide in the USSR:  Health and Nature under Siege (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 75.

2. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 74.

3. Kerstin Lindahl Kiessling. “Conference on the Aral Sea: Women, Children, Health and Environment,” Ambio 27, no. 7 (1998): 560.

4. Ian Small, J. van der Meer and R.E.G. Upshur. “Acting on Environmental Health Disaster: The Case of the Aral Sea,” Environmental Health Perspectives 109, no. 6 (2001): 547.

5. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 74.

    6. Kiessling “Conference on the Aral Sea, “ 560.

    7. Kiessling “Conference on the Aral Sea,” 560.

8. Small, et al., “Acting on Environmental Health Disaster,” 548.

   9. Small, et al., “Acting on Environmental Health Disaster,” 548.

   10. Giles F.S. Wiggs, Sarah L. O’hara, Johannah Wegerdt, Joost Van Der Meer, Ian Small and Richard Hubbard. “The Dynamics and Characteristics of Aeolian Dust in Dryland Central Asia: Possible Impacts on Human Exposure and Respiratory Health in the Aral Sea Basin,” The Geographical Journal 169, no. 2 (2003): 143.

    11. Small, et al., “Acting on Environmental Health Disaster,” 548.

    12. Kiessling, “Conference on the Aral Sea,” 560.

    13. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 77.

    14. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 75.

15. Wiggs, et al., “The Dynamics and Characteristics of Aeolian Dust,” 143.

    16. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 76-77.

17. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 77.

    18. Kiessling, “Conference on the Aral Sea,” 563.

    19. Kim Hooper, Myrto X. Petreas, Jianwen She, Pat Visita, Jennifer Winkler, Michael McKinney, Mandy Mok, Fred Sy, Jarnail Garcha, Modan Gill, Robert D. Stephens, Gulnara Semenova, Turgeledy Sharmanov and Tamara Chuvakova. “Analysis of Breast Milk to Assess Exposure to Chlorinated Contaminants in Kazakhstan: PCBs and Organochlorine Pesticides in Southern Kazakhstan,” Environmental Health Perspectives 105, no. 11 (1997): 1250.

   20. Hooper, et al., “Analysis of Breast Milk,” 1254.

   21. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 73.

   22. Wiggs, et al., “The Dynamics and Characteristics of Aeolian Dust,” 143.

   23. Wiggs, et al., “The Dynamics and Characteristics of Aeolian Dust,” 152-155.

   24. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 75.

   25. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 81.

   26. Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 83-88.

   27. Christopher Pala, “Once a Terminal Case, the North Aral Sea Shows New Signs of Life,” Science 312, no. 6 (2001): 183.

Works Cited:

bibliography russian history

Aral_Sea_1989-2008 Aral Sea dust storm from space (NASA)

AralShip  Ship on the remains of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan (Wikipedia Commons)

 

Aral_Sea moving map Moving map showing the shrinkage of the Aral Sea (Wikipedia Commons)

Video:

http://vimeo.com/69743521

Working Women in Russia

The women’s double burden of simultaneously juggling their working life with their domestic lives has not improved much since 1936 in Russia. Up until the late 1970s, women practically had twice the workload as men. In the 1930s, the Soviet state basically falsely advertised women’s emancipation by massively increasing women’s participation in the workforce while undermining their facade by cutting wages in half and reversing the importance of the states role in child raising and placed it on the Russian family.

In the United States in the 1950’s, you see a more complete split in the working and domestic spheres with gender roles. The stereotypical nuclear family, such as ones that can be recognized on the popular television show “Mad Men”, would have a man in the workforce, with the women taking care of the domestic chores and child raising. In modern American society, where women have a much larger share of high paying jobs than they did roughly 70 years ago, there are more male figures which are involving themselves more heavily in the domestic environment, where the women make most of the income.

One things which fascinated me about women’s jobs in Soviet Russia throughout the 20th century is that they consistently dominated teaching and education. How revered were teachers in the Soviet Union compared to the United States? What about in compared to a culture which places a higher emphasis in education? Such as China or Korea?

Shhhh…It’s a Secret Speech

Khrushchev’s secret speech, given to party officials but not published for the general public, showed his desire for de-Stalinization.  Basically, Khrushchev has the same criticisms about Stalin that the rest of the world had: he was paranoid, rude, and killed too many people. Khrushchev believed that Stalin had given the world a bad example of socialism.  He also stated that many innocent lives had been lost.

When Khrushchev is speaking, he is careful to maintain the language of the party.  He emphasizes the point that Lenin didn’t like Stalin.  If Lenin, who cannot be wrong, disliked Stalin, than logically this must mean that Stalin was a bad person. Since Lenin expressly stated he did not want Stalin to be the next leader of the USSR, then Stalin’s reign could be viewed as a mistake and a break away from communism.  Khrushchev makes it seem as though a communist must choose between Lenin and Stalin.  And a good communist will always choose Lenin.

My questions after reading the speech were these: Did Khrushchev dislike Stalin because Lenin disliked him? Or was this speech, as I suspect, a cleverly designed mask for deeper feelings? Did Khrushchev dislike Stalin for the obvious, ethical reasons? Or personal reasons? Whatever the reason, conditions in the Soviet Union began to improve under de-Stalinization.

Soviet Union ideologies in a post WWII era.

In post World War II Soviet society, the Party’s power seized the reigns on cultural movements including arts and sciences. Through his prior connections with Stalin, Zhdanov ascended to power in an autocratic, post war environment, where he would constrict ideological parameters. Zhdanov’s imposition in the scientific sphere ultimately led to the repression of Soviet genetics research, which remained postponed until the 1960’s. This was because Stalin and other Party officials saw Lysenkoism, a farming method in which the seed is conditioned with cold water in order to maximize production, as more important than genetics research, despite the method’s lack of evidence. This had a disastrous long-term effect on the progress of genetics research and the biological discipline as a whole. Zhdanov’s suppression of cultural progress manifested itself in the form of vehement anti-cosmopolitanism, which simultaneously pressured artists into creating more ideologically friendly pieces and in turn diminishing potential artistic transcendence. Another method Zhdanov used to perpetuate his strict ideologies was his creation of “Cominform”, a propaganda machine that used periodicals as the means to further the Party’s influence. Zhdanov’s abrupt death in 1948 led to instability in the political ring. The Leaders of Leningrad and Russian Federation executed a mass purge of thousands of Party officials as a result of the insecurity in the political atmosphere.

I imagine that this would create drag for the Soviet Union in the competition that emerged between the USSR and the United States after World War II, where they were the two remaining super powers, and ultimately had an impact on the Cold War down the stretch. It also portrays the lack of inner stability and further fear in the Soviet Union, which was most likely a residual effect, left by Stalin and mixed with Zhdanov’s fervor.

 

 

Dizzy with Success

In “Dizzy with Success” (1930) Stalin discusses the need to temper growing enthusiasm in the socialist state and the socialist system. It is interesting to note that this was necessary. In America, students are still raised on ideas born of the Cold War: communism is evil; the people are never happy under communism. This piece contradicts these foundational American ideas.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet citizens were ecstatic in the changes to their economy. The economy was growing at an unbelievable rate and the people were glad to see their living conditions quickly improving. This happiness went hand-in-hand with an eagerness to continue. Many people wanted to help push the economy even further. It was this idea that Stalin cautions against in this piece. He did not want the people to become so “dizzy with success” that they forgot themselves, their country’s position in the world, or the power of its enemies. He warns that many, once they taste the first fruits of success, want to capture the feeling. Many would do anything to protect their new advances, but they also become careless–they believe that since they have already succeeded, the success will continue. With this perspective, they continue to push themselves, but not to the same level and not with the same need to strive beyond the success of others.
This piece was written in 1930 when collectivization was in its first few years. Stalin needed to prove that his plans for the economy were more profitable than those first begun under Lenin. Platanov’s The Foundation Pit highlighted the difficulties associated with collectivization and its counterpart, dekulakization. On what level was “dizzy with success” a piece of propaganda? Were the statistics from the program truly reflective of the changes in the economy? Stalin encouraged Stakanovites to work past their quotas to achieve more for the state. Why did this same principle not apply to collective farming?

Stalin’s New Collectivation

In Joseph Stalin’s Industrialization of the Country, 1928, the main argument of the article is to push forward the ideology of communism through the agrarian ways of the Soviet 1920s. It commonly sites the failures of capitalism to fairly protect the farmers, as well as the previous Tsarist government to modernize in technology and political rule over the 1920s and 1930s. In Stalin’s piece he goes over the failure of the new agricultural policy in an attempt to reform it within collectivization and the new Soviet style. Beyond that it continues to disregard and downplay capitalism as a failing technique and further builds our new historiographic world.

In his work one sentence I found most interesting was one on changing social classes’ and the economy.

“If that were the case, the capitalist encirclement could not be so serious a danger as it is now, the question of the economic independence of our country would naturally recede into the background, we could integrate ourselves into the system of more developed proletarian states, we could receive from them machines for making our industry and agriculture more productive, supplying them in turn with raw materials and foodstuffs, and we could, consequently, expand our industry at a slower rate.”

In this piece I see a respect for all industries but the capitalist groups even in Russia continually achieve and receive more wealth and time than the non capitalist groups. If natural integration between social groups were possible during the 1930s and 40s I believe that not only would the Cold War would have been less active, but also that the action between East and West forces would have been naturally more calm.

However after the destruction caused by the collectivization done by Stalin in this work is very telling about the worth of human life to Soviet leadership. The idea of backwardness of the economy takes a seat in order for the state to push for further self independence. I have to ask how true the actors of the time, specific to districts or towns would readily agree to these comments. As well as how at the same time how much they could agree that the local populace would be to them as well.

 

 

Shrinkage of the Aral Sea

My final report is about the shrinkage of the Aral Sea.  I will be concentrating on four points.    The first point is the cause of the shrinkage of the Aral Sea.  I will discuss how the Soviets in Moscow wanted to harvest great quantities of cotton from Central Asia.  In order to do this, they used the Aral Sea for irrigation to such an extent that the sea’s area shrank by 44%.  This caused many health and environmental consequences for Central Asia.

The environmental consequences that I will discuss include flooding due to poor drainage systems, the poisoning of water and soil by pesticides used to grow the cotton, dust storms, and deforestation. The health consequences I plan on discussing include starvation, infant mortality, contaminated breast milk, and the prevalence of water-born illnesses such as typhoid, hepatitis, and dysentery.

The final point of discussion will be the possibility of rebuilding the Aral Sea, along with the successes that have occurred since the collapse of the USSR.

I will need to continue doing more research for my report.  I am anticipating that the most challenging part of the project for me will not be the material, but the technological aspect of creating a website.  This is the part that I will need to dedicate the most time to, as I have never done anything like it before.

So far, I have learned the importance of examining sources on multiple levels.  First, getting articles from reliable databases, such as JSTOR, helps. Also, the fact that some of the authors I cited were cited in other scholarly articles gives more credibility to the authors. It is also important to have articles written by professionals, such as historians and scientists, and not university students or bloggers. The author’s credentials separate a scholarly article from an unscholarly article.

I also had to make sure, especially in the scientific texts, that I understood the point of the article. If an article is too difficult to comprehend, then it is pointless to cite it.

As for my critique of Evernote, my only issue was that it changed the format of the bibliography.  I found it easier to use Microsoft Word.

Here is my annotated bibliography:

annotated bibliography HIST 254

Mussolini, “What is Fascism”

Benito Mussolini’s “What is Fascism” (1932) outlines that basic principles and guiding ideals of Fascism as he perceived and created this political ideology. He maintains throughout this piece that Fascism and Marxism (specifically Marxian Socialism) are “complete opposite[s].” In many ways this is true. These two ideologies have opposing beliefs and ideals, but each is underlined by many of the same opinions as well.

The Foundation Pit by Andrei Platonov is a novel based in the USSR during the early 1920s. This book centers on a construction project that was meant to assist in the country’s industrial aspirations. Throughout much of the novel, the protagonist and other characters are consumed by the idea of finding the true meaning of communism. They want to become the best citizens, the best workers and the best communists. Throughout the novel, the characters work tirelessly for the benefit of the state so that they may prove their loyalty and commitment to the communist cause.

While the goals of communism and Fascism are different: one strives for the party and the ideology; the other strives for the state and the country; each places a duty on the people to work tirelessly towards this goal. In working for the party and communist ideology, Soviet citizens bettered the state. By sacrificing for the state, Italians improved the power of Fascist ideology. The rhetoric in each movement and culture reads very similarly: “[the Fascist] rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others—those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after…” This sentiment is very similar to the way in which propaganda promoted working for communism in the USSR, especially in the use of the Stakanovite figure.

There are similarities in how Fascism and communism were presented and understood during this period. How does democratic, Nazi and other political rhetoric follow similar patterns?

Beating the System: Socialist Realism

During the Soviet Union, especially the Stalin era, the state controlled members of all professions- including artists, architects, writers, musicians, and directors.  Members of these professions were forced to join unions and would be expelled from the unions if they did not follow their strict rules.  Basically, the rules stated that all art had to glorify the state.  Artists who wrote about other topics were expelled from the unions and their careers were ruined.  Artists who dared criticize the state were sent to the gulags.

This basically led to mainstream Soviet art featuring only socialist themes.  Art from this period included portraits of Lenin and Stalin appearing as religious figures, sculptures of laborers, and military marches.  Films, such as the movie Circus (directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and Isidor Simkov), were first and foremost propaganda films.

Circus is an entertaining movie, both due to the fun circus scenes, and the interesting look at Stalinist propaganda.  The reason why Circus was such a success as a propaganda film was that it used truths about American culture at that time to show the USSR as superior to the US.  The scene at the beginning in which angry Kansas farmers chase the heroine and her biracial child onto a train was no exaggeration.  The US-especially the South- was not an enlightened place in the 1930s.  The Soviet Union used these sad truths about America to their own advantage.  (Although, the US certainly should have been called under attack for their treatment of race.)

Where the film becomes unrealistic is its portrayal of the Soviet Union as a utopia where everyone loves each other and is a big happy family.  At the end of the movie, a famous Jewish actor sings to the baby in Yiddish.  In real life, this actor died under suspicious circumstances, most likely because he had begun to speak out against anti-Semitism in the USSR.  Clearly, the Soviet Union was not the hippie love nest the movie proclaimed it to be.

Critics say that socialist realism caused the death of creativity for Soviet artists.  However, I believe that it enhanced creativity for certain artists who tried to beat the system.  Dmitri Shostakovich composed many official pieces for the government.  He also would sneak messages into his songs.  Towards the end of his life, he wrote “String Quartet No. 7.”  This piece features three beats, symbolizing an officer knocking on the door to the beats “K-G-B.”  This work in considered one of Shostakovich’s finest.

Socialist realism resulted in some interested propaganda, at its worst, and at its best, unknowingly challenged artist to work around the rules.