Personality Cult – Mussolini
A Mussolini personality cult was at the centre of the Fascist propaganda campaign. He was depicted as a superman. No adverse comment could be made about him and Mussolini ha sempre ragione (Mussolini is always right) became one of the catchphrases of the regime, while another, stencilled on walls everywhere, was ‘Believe, obey, fight’. Denis Mack Smith goes so far as to say that Mussolini’s ‘...most important quality was that of being a stupendous poseur. His mixture of showmanship and vulgarity appealed to the common people.’
After 1926, there was an ever-increasing propagation of the cult of the all-knowing Il Duce (leader). Mussolini fostered this cult not only from vanity but also as an instrument of power. Those surrounding him realised that without him they were nothing: the greater he was, the greater they would be. But the most enthusiastic supporter of Mussolini’s invincibility was his brother, Arnoldo, who, day after day in the newspaper Il Popolo d’ltalia, described the Duce as the greatest statesman in Europe who had placed his wisdom, heroism and intellect at the service of his people.
The press was enlisted in depicting the Duce in a diverse range of activities: fencing, riding, driving and even playing the violin. He was compared to great thinkers like Aristotle, Kant and St Thomas Aquinas. He was described as the greatest genius in Italian history, greater even than Dante or Michelangelo. Mussolini’s picture was displayed (often in heroic pose) on all public buildings, and many people had his photograph printed on the head of their writing paper.
As well as censorship of newspapers, the state also controlled broadcasting. Radios were becoming more and more popular and proved an effective method of propaganda. Likewise, Mussolini showed a keen interest in the cinema. Although most films were light entertainment, a number were produced glorifying Fascism and its successes. One of these successes was the Dopolavoro (‘after-work’ leisure facilities), which offered mass recreation and were very popular.
The youth of Italy were key targets in Mussolini’s indoctrination process. It was compulsory to join a Fascist youth organisation. At the age of four, boys became Sons of the She-Wolf. From this, they would progress to the Balilla at eleven and eventually the Avantguardisti at 14. Pre-military training accompanied the Fascist indoctrination process. In schools, Fascist text-books became the norm. By the time they left primary school, they had learned how Fascism saved Italy from Communism. Teachers were ordered to magnify Mussolini, to stress his courage and brilliant mind, and to teach that to obey him was the highest virtue. Teachers who were anti-Fascist lost their jobs and university professors had to take an oath of loyalty to ‘the Fascist Regime.’
Personality Cult – Stalin
The cult of Stalin began in earnest at the end of 1929 with the celebration of his 50th birthday. At party conferences and other large gatherings, it became customary for Communists to greet Stalin's entrance with wild applause. But Stalin (keeping in mind Lenin's example) appeared to dislike such enthusiasm; and his position as General Secretary remained unchanged. To contribute to the worship of the leader (which now became commonplace), the ban on factions that had existed in theory since 1921 now existed in practice in 1929. Factions now became ‘conspiracies’.
After 1929, open disagreements on policy were rare at party congresses. The party leadership was increasingly secretive about its meetings, and the minutes of Central Committee meetings were no longer circulated to rank-and-file party members. Economic achievements were announced in the press through blatant distortions of reality and manipulation of statistics. Failures were ignored; for instance, news of the 1932-3 famine was kept out of the papers altogether! The newspapers no longer carried Western-style advertisements before films nor reported ‘negative’ news stories such as street accidents, rapes, and robberies.
In architecture and town planning, the domain of public art where the state was client, patron, and supplier of labour and materials, absolute control was imposed without any thought for private vision. As in other fields, radicals and militants were ignored in the first Piatiletka’s closing years. They were replaced by exponents of ‘Stalinist baroque’,’ the ‘wedding cake’ style which swept the capital and reached its climax with Moscow University, rebuilt after 1945.
Lenin’s tomb became the focus of a massive building programme. Work started in 1931 and peaked three years later. Officially, all the disturbance was designed to ease traffic flow, but the real reason for levelling whole districts and widening streets was to make room for what historian Vladimir Paperny calls ‘sacred processions and marching soldiers.’ Arranged by specialists who choreographed every movement, banner and slogan on 1 May and 7 November, these displays climaxed in front of the Mausoleum, the stage where Stalin appeared to the crowds over the mummified corpse of Lenin.
As public festivals changed into Stalinist tributes, the ‘cult of personality’ invaded all other fields of intellectual endeavour. Accolades to ‘Lenin’s closest friend and disciple’ and the ‘greatest genius of all time’ flooded the country. Vast statues arose everywhere, even in remote districts. In a village on Siberia’s Enisei River where Stalin was exiled, a huge marble statue was built next to his hut. Operas, paintings and films magnified Stalin as the Civil War’s chief hero; poems told of his ‘perfect’ childhood; novels and folk tales celebrated his unique historical role. In Marfa Kriukova’s The Tale of Lenin, Lenin appears as the red sun, Stalin as light and Trotsky as the dark villain. The story ends with the dying red sun sending light out into the world to defeat darkness.
In comparison with the arts, science was initially immune from Stalinist ideology. Yet in the 1930s, in line with the general purges, anti-Soviet ‘bourgeois elements’ were ‘discovered’ in almost every laboratory. By the mid-1930s few theories could safely be put forward unless they had received Stalin’s approval. The most famous example of party meddling occurred in plant biology, where Trofim Lysenko tried to persuade party leaders to adopt his quack ‘peasant remedies’ for plant breeding. As he became popular in the party, discrimination against his opponents began in 1932.
Lysenko became head of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the leading figure of what the party called ‘proletarian science.’ Many rival institutes were closed and their researchers imprisoned or banned from attending international conferences. In 1940, following the arrest of its director, Lysenko took over the elite Institute of Genetics. It is interesting to note that it was not until the late 1950s that the USSR produced scientists with international reputations in the field of genetics (such was Lysenko’s destructive legacy).