Spreading Scientific Literacy, Making Culture Popular: Late Stalinism’s Quest for Better Governance

• In Event: Mass Scientific and Cultural Literacy in the USSR and Russia: 1940s–1990s

Abstract

The paper will address the ideological campaigns of late Stalinism as attempts by the late Stalinist leadership of the USSR to find models of better governance of Soviet society. The proposed paper will focus on one particular campaign, the 1949 reorganization of the Society for Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge from an elitist into a mass organization, looking at it in the context of a more general effort on behalf of the Soviet authorities to make Soviet culture and science more “accessible” for the “broad masses” of Soviet society. While most of these campaign have been interpreted in terms of “tightening the bolts” on Soviet culture and intelligentsia, this paper will argue that, in implementing them, the Stalinist leadership was in fact searching for more effective models of social governance.

Author

• Alexey Golubev, U of Houston