15 August 1946 year
The chief ideologist and propagandist of the USSR Andrey Zhdanov declared war on "groveling before the West."
Is it fitting for us, representatives of progressive Soviet culture, Soviet patriots, to be worshippers of bourgeois culture or disciples?! Where will you find a people and a country like ours?
With these words, Zhdanov, the second person in the Central Committee after Stalin, spoke in Leningrad to writers and party activists.
The reason was a resolution of the organizing bureau, adopted the day before in a closed session: in it, the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" were accused of publishing the works of a "vulgarian" Mikhail Zoshchenko and "salon poetess" Anna Akhmatova.
Zoshchenko recalled the story "The Adventures of a Monkey," in which an animal, frightened by the bombing, escapes from a zoo and wanders the Soviet streets.
The work is poisoned with the venom of a zoological hostility toward the Soviet system. Zoshchenko, as a libelist and vulgarian alien to Soviet literature, is accustomed to mocking Soviet life, Soviet customs, and Soviet people.
Zhdanov accused Akhmatova of “poetry lacking ideas,” alien and distant from the people.
The range of her poetry is wretchedly limited—the poetry of a frenzied lady, rushing between the boudoir and the prayer room. Her main motifs are erotic and amorous.
Akhmatova and Zoshchenko were expelled from the Writers' Union, their books were removed from libraries and stores. Leningrad magazine was closed, and Zvezda saw a change in management.
The USSR's ideological campaign after August 1946 was called "Zhdanovshchina": it was a response to Churchill's Fulton speech about the beginning of the "Cold War".
"Courts of honor" and the fight against "cosmopolitanism" began. Creativity came under attack. Ilf и Petrov, Green, Tvardovsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian.
Genetics and cybernetics were banned. Medicine and academics Parina, who was sent to the United States to deliver an ampoule of a cancer drug discovered by Soviet scientists, was sentenced to 25 years for "treason."
The ruling was deemed erroneous and was only overturned in 1988.
