ПРАЗДНОВАНИЕ 70-ЛЕТИЯ ИОСИФА СТАЛИНА — 21 декабря 1949

JOSEPH STALIN'S 70TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION December 21, 1949 Chronicle    • ПРАЗДНОВАНИЕ 70-ЛЕТИЯ ИОСИФА СТАЛИНА — 21 ...   The cult of Stalin flourished especially vigorously, with his anniversaries, beginning with his 50th, being celebrated as national holidays—with a flood of speeches, congratulations, and gifts. The culmination of the celebrations came on the Generalissimo's 70th birthday in December 1949, when Stalin was already the leader not only of the Soviet people but of the entire socialist camp, which encompassed a fifth of the globe (the Communists had seized power in China the day before). In anticipation of the great anniversary, on December 2, a Committee for the Development and Organization of Events Related to Stalin's 70th Birthday was created. It included party leaders, leading industrialists, writers, directors, and athletes. At a regular meeting on December 17, the committee chairman and trade union leader Nikolai Shvernik announced a list of planned measures. It was proposed to hold a gala meeting at the Bolshoi Theater on the anniversary day, announce the creation of international Stalin Prizes (Union Prizes had already been established in 1939), and award the first of them to Stalin himself, simultaneously conferring upon him the Order of Lenin (in fairness, the leader declined the award bearing his own name). The torrent of praise grew daily. Every ministry, enterprise, and institute sought to honor the leader with some unprecedented award. The Union of Soviet Architects, for example, put forward a number of proposals, including building a grand avenue named after Stalin through the center of Moscow and crowning the new Moscow State University building with a colossal sculpture of the great generalissimo. The Moscow Architectural Institute advocated declaring the leader's birthday a national holiday and building a Palace of Comrade Stalin's Life in Moscow, as well as palaces of socialist culture named after Comrade Stalin in the capitals of the republics. The architects clearly hoped for lucrative commissions, but their hasty initiative was thwarted by the leader himself, who declared it "inappropriate." He also disapproved of the "surprise" proposed by the State Publishing House (Gosizdat), which had decided to publish a collection of poems by the young Joseph Dzhugashvili. Rumor has it that Lavrenty Beria was behind this idea. Translations of the poems were commissioned from such eminent poets as Boris Pasternak and Arseny Tarkovsky, but the project was abandoned. Stalin must have rightly considered his poems naive and far from perfect. On December 21, 1949, the scheduled gala evening took place at the Bolshoi Theater. Under a large portrait of Stalin, the leaders of the USSR and fraternal countries and parties (35 people in total spoke) praised him. Most world leaders congratulated the hero of the day—among the few who remained silent was US President Harry Truman. The newspapers during those days wrote exclusively about the anniversary. For example, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported: "For the 70th anniversary of Comrade Stalin's birth, the State Music Publishing House has published many songs dedicated to the great leader and teacher. These include 'Cantata about Stalin' by A. Alexandrov, 'Songs about Stalin' by M. Blanter, 'Stalin's Will Brought Us Together' by V. Muradeli, 'Cossack Thoughts about Stalin' by E. Kolesnikov, and 'Glorification of Stalin' by V. Zakharov." Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Tajik, Mordvin, and other folk songs about Comrade Stalin have also been published." Or: "A propaganda campaign by the capital's skiers took place. The athletes wore bright posters with the words: 'Glory to our dear Stalin!' and 'Long live Comrade Stalin!'" Museums were not far behind: "The Tretyakov Gallery opened an exhibition, 'Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in the Fine Arts.' It features approximately 200 works of painting, graphic art, and sculpture." And finally: "An unusual gift from India: a letter inscribed on an ordinary grain of rice..." This grain was the smallest of thousands of gifts received from all over the country and the world. The most impressive of these were displayed at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of the Revolution, which was planned to be transformed into a Museum of Gifts to Stalin. Boris Polevoy, author of "The Story of a Real Man," published an article about this exhibition in Pravda. He described a pipe carved from the wreckage of a German plane by sailors defending Stalingrad. He also described a feather headdress sent to Stalin by American Indians. He also described a luxurious malachite writing set, a gift from Ural Komsomol members. A mother whose daughter had been shot by the Nazis sent a hat—the only thing she had left to remember her child by. And the French Communists sent a heather bush from the grave of a fallen partisan. There were even more grandiose gifts: the highest mountain peaks of Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria were named after Stalin...