The high title of a communist : postwar party discipline and the values of the Soviet regime / Edward Cohn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohn, Edward, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kommunisticheskai︠a︡ partii︠a︡ Sovetskogo Soi︠u︡za--Discipline--History.

Kommunisticheskai︠a︡ partii︠a︡ Sovetskogo Soi︠u︡za.

Kommunisticheskai︠a︡ partii︠a︡ Sovetskogo Soi︠u︡za--Purges.

Party discipline--Soviet Union.

Party discipline.

Soviet Union--Politics and government--1945-1991.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

DeKalb : Northern Illinois University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Between 1945 and 1964, six to seven million members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were investigated for misconduct by local party organizations and then reprimanded, demoted from full party membership, or expelled. Party leaders viewed these investigations as a form of moral education and used humiliating public hearings to discipline wrongdoers and send all Soviet citizens a message about how Communists should behave. The High Title of a Communist is the first study of the Communist Party's internal disciplinary system in the decades following World War II.Edward Cohn uses the practices of expulsion and censure as a window into how the postwar regime defined the ideal Communist and the ideal Soviet citizen. As the regime grappled with a postwar economic crisis and evolved from a revolutionary prewar government into a more bureaucratic postwar state, the Communist Party revised its informal behavioral code, shifting from a more limited and literal set of rules about a party member's role in the economy to a more activist vision that encompassed all spheres of life. The postwar Soviet regime became less concerned with the ideological orthodoxy and political loyalty of party members, and more interested in how Communists treated their wives, raised their children, and handled their liquor. Soviet power, in other words, became less repressive and more intrusive. Cohn uses previously untapped archival sources and avoids a narrow focus on life in Moscow and Leningrad, combining rich local materials from several Russian provinces with materials from throughout the USSR. The High Title of a Communist paints a vivid portrait of the USSR's postwar era that will help scholars and students understand both the history of the Soviet Union's postwar elite and the changing values of the Soviet regime. In the end, it shows, the regime failed in its efforts to enforce a clear set of behavioral standards for its Communists—a failure that would threaten the party's legitimacy in the USSR's final days.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations and Russian-language Terms

Acknowledgments

Note on Pseudonyms

Introduction

Chapter One The Communist Party and Its System of Internal Discipline in the Postwar Years

Chapter Two The Last Purge: The Expulsion of POWs and Communists Who lived on Occupied Territory

Chapter Three De-Stalinizing Party Discipline: Purging and Politics in Postwar Expulsion Cases

Chapter Four Policing the Party: Corruption, Administrative Misconduct, and Control from Above in Postwar Party Discipline

Chapter Five Sex and the Married Communist: Family Troubles and Marital Infidelity in the Postwar Communist Party

Chapter Six "We Talk a lot, but Take Very Few Measures": The Party's Struggle with Drunkenness among Its Members

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501757778

1501757776

9781609091798

1609091795

OCLC:

913817228