Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov ' onMouseout='HidePop("29956")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Mariupol">Mariupol
Mariupol or, sometimes, Mariupolis , formerly known as Zhdanov , is a port city in southeastern Ukraine. It is located on the coast of the Azov Sea, at the mouth of the Kalmius River. Mariupol is the largest city in Priazovye - a geographical region around Azov Sea, divided by Russia and Ukraine -...
– August 31, 1948,
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
) was a
SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
politician.
Life
Zhdanov joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labour PartyThe Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, or RSDLP , also known as the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party and the Russian Social-Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...
(bolsheviks)The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903...
in 1915 and rose through the party ranks, becoming the
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)All-Union Communist Party , abbreviated ВКП) is a political party operating in the former Soviet Union. ВКП was formed in 1995, following a split from the All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks . The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the party is Alexander Lapin.The central publication of...
leader in
LeningradSaint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd and Leningrad...
after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934. He was a strong supporter of
socialist realismSocialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
in
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
.
Zhdanov was Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet July 15, 1938–June 20, 1947.
Though somewhat less active than
MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
, Stalin,
KaganovichLazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and a close associate of Joseph Stalin.-Beginning:...
and
Voroshilovor Klyment Voroshylov , popularly known as Klim Voroshilov was a Soviet military commander and politician.-Early life and Russian Revolution:...
, Zhdanov was a major perpetrator of the Great Terror, who personally approved 176 documented execution lists.
In June 1940, he was sent to
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
to supervise the establishment of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic and its annexation into the USSR.
During the
Great Patriotic WarThe Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of war between the European Axis powers, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland , and the Soviet Union which encompassed central and eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9...
, Zhdanov was in charge of the
defence of LeningradThe Siege of Leningrad, also known as The Leningrad Blockade was an unsuccessful military operation by the Axis powers to capture Leningrad during World War II. The siege started at 8 September 1941, when the last land connection to the city was severed...
. After the
cease-fire agreementFinland and the Soviet Union signed the Moscow Armistice on September 19, 1944, ending the Continuation War. The Moscow Armistice should not be confused with the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940, which ended the earlier Winter War between the two states....
between
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
and the Soviet Union was signed in Moscow on 4 September 1944, Zhdanov headed the Allied Control Commission in
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
until the
Paris peace treatyThe Paris Peace Conference resulted in the Paris Peace Treaties signed on February 10, 1947. The victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland .The treaties allowed Italy,...
of 1947.
In 1946, Zhdanov was put in charge of the Soviet Union cultural policy by
Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953...
. His first action (in December 1946) was to censor Russian writers such as
Anna AkhmatovaAnna Akhmatova was the pen name of Anna Andreëvna Gorenko , a Russian/Soviet poet credited with a large influence on Russian poetry....
and
Mikhail ZoshchenkoMikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was a Ukrainian author and the foremost Russian satirist of the Soviet period....
(Zhdanov Doctrine).
1946–1947 Zhdanov was Chairman of the
Soviet of the UnionSoviet of the Union , was one of the two chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot in accordance with the principles of Soviet democracy, and with the rule that there be one deputy for...
.
In 1947, he organized the
CominformCominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
, designed to coordinate the communist parties of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
. In February 1948, he initiated purges in the musical area, widely known as a struggle against formalism.
Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Russian composer of the Soviet period and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
,
Sergei ProkofievSergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.-Biography:...
,
Aram KhachaturianAram Khachaturian was a Soviet-Armenian composer whose works were often influenced by Armenian folk music.-Life:...
and many other composers were reprimanded during this period.
He died in 1948 in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
of heart failure;
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
recalled in
Khrushchev Remembers that Zhdanov could not control his drinking, and that in his "last days", Stalin would shout at him to stop drinking and insist that he drink only fruit juice. Simon Sebag-Montefiore and others allege that Stalin himself was responsible for Zhdanov's death, citing Zhdanov's inability to coordinate a Communist takeover in Finland as cause. Stalin had talked of Zhdanov being his successor but Zhdanov's ill health gave his rivals, Beria and Malenkov, an opportunity to undermine him.
His son,
YuriYuri Andreyevich Zhdanov - was a Russian chemistry professor and rector of the University of Rostov...
(1919-2006), married Stalin's daughter,
Svetlana AlliluyevaSvetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva is the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva...
, in 1949. The marriage was brief and ended in divorce in 1950. They had one daughter, Ekaterina.
He was one of the main accused people during the U.S. House of Representatives' Kersten Committee investigation in 1953.
Ideology
Until the late 1950s, Zhdanov's ideological code, known as Zhdanovism or zhdanovshchina, defined cultural production in the Soviet Union. Zhdanov intended to forge a new philosophy of art-making for the entire world. His method reduced the whole domain of culture to a straightforward, scientific chart, where a given symbol corresponded to a simple moral vlate 1950s, Zhdanov's ideological code, known as
ZhdanovismThe Zhdanov Doctrine was a Soviet cultural doctrine developed by the Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov in 1946. It proposed that the world was divided into two camps: the imperialistic, headed by the United States; and democratic, headed by the Soviet Union...
or
zhdanovshchinaalue.
Roland BarthesRoland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes's work extended over many fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism and post-structuralism.-Life:Roland...
summed up the core doctrine of Zhdanovism this way: "Wine is objectively good... the artist deals with the goodness of wine, not with the wine itself." Zhdanov and his associates further sought to eliminate foreign influence from Soviet art, proclaiming that "incorrect art" was an ideological diversion.
In the 1950s, following Zhdanov's death, there was a creative explosion in Soviet art—abstract and formal work.
The City of Zhdanov
His birth-place,
MariupolMariupol or, sometimes, Mariupolis , formerly known as Zhdanov , is a port city in southeastern Ukraine. It is located on the coast of the Azov Sea, at the mouth of the Kalmius River. Mariupol is the largest city in Priazovye - a geographical region around Azov Sea, divided by Russia and Ukraine -...
, was re-named Zhdanov at
StalinJoseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953...
's instigation in 1948, and a monument of Zhdanov was erected in the central square of the city in his honor. In 1989 the name reverted to Mariupol, and the monument was dismantled in 1990.
External links