Beyond the Zhdanov Doctrine: Soviet Postwar Cultural Policy as a Dialogue with an Imagined West

The postwar cultural policies of the Soviet government, associated with the name of Andrei Zhdanov, are often remembered as a period of stagnation and repression. What was the context of the ideological campaigns that would later be known as the Zhdanov Doctrine? After the war, when the need to mobilize the population for the construction and safeguarding of socialism was no longer pressing, the state faced the challenge of rebuilding the discourse of social realism. In her book, Tatyana Shishkova suggests viewing the events of those years as an attempt to subordinate art and culture to the new expansionary goal: creating and presenting an “accurate” image of the USSR to the outside world. The author examines how the criticism of figures like Mikhail Zoshchenko, Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitry Shostakovich, and others targeted by Zhdanov’s directives was influenced by the onset of the Cold War, and why rethinking relations with the West led to consequences that ultimately proved detrimental to the entire Soviet project.

Moscow: New Literary Review, 2023.