Young Zhdanov (1896–1918)

Abstract

Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov's entry into the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1915 was the act of an insecure teenager at war with the world. After the death of his father, a government school inspector, in 1909, the tsarist authorities had provided for Andrei's mother and her four children, and had paid for his secondary schooling in Tver. Even though he was thus one of the select beneficiaries of the tsarist social-support system, Zhdanov chose to join the Marxists who called for the Old Regime's abolition. Zhdanov's political convictions may have continued to waver for some time after 1915, contrary to the subsequent official version of his conversion. In 1916, he completed training as an army ensign without demur. He was awaiting dispatch to the front when the tsar abdicated. Then, presented with an opportunity, Andrei Zhdanov decided definitively to throw in his lot with Lenin's followers, the self-assured Bolsheviks. Once the Revolution unfolded, Zhdanov clearly could thank his lucky stars. Within the year, the determined RSDLP faction he supported gained in Russia. He probably did not always identify himself as a Social-Democrat in March 1917, but he undoubtedly considered himself to be one by early 1918. Leading a small Bolshevik group, he introduced Soviet power to a little town just east of the Ural mountains in January 1918, three months after Lenin and Trotsky had organized the coup in Petrograd.1 In June of the same year, under threat of the approach of anti-Bolshevik forces, Zhdanov revamped to Ekaterinburg. The Civil War would force him to leave the Urals, and in the spring of 1919 he arrived in his old stamping ground of Tver'. From there would commence in earnest his rise to the highest echelons of in the USSR. From 1919 to 1922, he was one of the up-and-coming leaders of Tver' province. A dozen years in Nizhnii Novgorod (Gor'kii) followed, ten years of which he served as provincial first secretary of the Communist Party.2 In 1934 he became a junior secretary of the Party's Central Committee, a position that he would combine for ten years with that of head of the Leningrad city and province Party organizations (as S.M. Kirov's successor). From 1944 until his death in 1948, Zhdanov joined Stalin and Molotov as one of the three most visible leaders, pronouncing publicly on foreign affairs and culture. His prominence inspired speculations that he was to be Stalin's successor.3 Although Zhdanov was a pivotal figure in history, instrumental in constructing the Stalinist edifice during the 1930s and 1940s, neither in Russian nor in Western languages has his life been the subject of systematic study.4 His youth and first steps as a (minor) leader present us with some key insights into his later behaviour as a leader. He would be Stalin's deputy in the 1940s despite his brief stint as an officer in the tsarist army or his rearing in a bourgeois milieu, according to Marxist criteria. These non-proletarian antecedents helped to make Andrei Zhdanov an exceedingly cautious Bolshevik, even though, ironically, his middle-class, intelligentnyi, background recommended him to Stalin in the 1930s, for Zhdanov seemed well-equipped to deal with matters of science, philosophy, and culture. Attentive parents and rigorous schooling helped to develop in the young man an indefatigable attitude toward work, another quality that Stalin would come to appreciate. As a teenager, Zhdanov joined a social-democratic network of young acquaintances who would rise with him through the Communist Party's ranks to reach the highest bodies of Party and state in the 1920s and 1930s. The devastating blow of his father's death when Zhdanov was thirteen contributed to the boy's sense of social and psychological insecurity, and induced resentment toward those more affluent whom he suspected to be looking down on him. One could suggest that the uncertainty that resulted from the disappearance of the adored authority figure of his father drew Zhdanov to the monistic Marxist workers' party in 1915 and then to the Bolsheviks with their peculiar leadership cult in 1917. …