The ideology manager whose name marked Stalinist culture
In September 1947, at the founding conference of the Cominform, he declared that world political forces had divided into 'two major camps: the imperialist and anti-democratic camp, and the anti-imperialist and democratic camp' — codifying the USSR's official Cold War worldview.
Stalin's close ally, Zhdanov rose to CC secretary and Leningrad party chief in 1934, signed execution lists as a Politburo member during the Great Terror, and directed the city's defense during the 1941–44 siege. Emerging after the war as the party's de facto second-in-command, he unleashed the Zhdanovshchina, a wave of ideological campaigns from 1946 against literature, music, and philosophy that defined postwar Soviet cultural life, and in 1947 founded the Cominform, codifying the 'two camps' worldview that became the USSR's official Cold War doctrine. He was the party's chief ideologue, co-authoring with Stalin and Kirov the 1934 guidelines on history teaching.
Career Timeline
- 1920sRises in the Nizhny Novgorod party organization as a Stalin-aligned regional official
- 1934–1944After Kirov’s murder, becomes Leningrad First Secretary and controls the city organization
- 1941–1944Oversees political mobilization and city leadership during the siege of Leningrad
- 1946–1948CC secretary driving campaigns against literature, music and philosophy
- 1947Helps found Cominform and articulate the two-camps line
- 1948Dies, leaving Zhdanovshchina as the name for postwar cultural control
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationFirst Secretary of Leningrad Party Committee
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeLeningrad Party Secretary
- 1939.11–1940.03The Winter WarLeningrad party chief, a driver of the warHe pushed the hard line toward Finland in the name of Leningrad's safety and, as a member of the military district war council, took part in launching and running the campaign.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarLeningrad party leaderHe led the party organization and defense of Leningrad throughout the 872-day blockade.
- 1947–1948The Marshall Plan and the Cold WarTwo camps and the CominformHe proclaimed the doctrine of two camps and founded the Cominform, institutionalizing the bloc conflict.
- 1949–1950The Leningrad AffairPatron of the networkPatron of the Leningrad cadres, whose death in 1948 left them exposed.
- 1952–1953The Doctors’ PlotA death used as pretextA denunciation over his 1948 death became the trigger for the case.
Zhdanovshchina: The Postwar Cultural Purge
In August 1946, Zhdanov drove the Central Committee decree on the Leningrad literary journals Zvezda and Leningrad and delivered the keynote speech himself. He branded Mikhail Zoshchenko 'scum of literature' (подонок литературы) and declared Anna Akhmatova's lyric poetry 'completely distant from the people,' publicly denouncing her as 'half nun, half harlot.' He simultaneously condemned Silver Age writers (Merezhkovsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Kuzmin, Andrei Bely, Gippius, and Sologub) as 'reactionary obscurantism and renegadism in politics and art.' In 1947 he directed the philosophical discussion that attacked Alexandrov's History of Western European Philosophy, and in early 1948 the campaign extended to music, targeting Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Khachaturian for 'formalism.' This cascade of purges entered Soviet cultural history under the name Zhdanovshchina (ждановщина). George Orwell remarked: 'If in ten years we are grovelling before someone like Zhdanov, it will mean that is exactly what we deserve.'