Issue ? 50. June 2015

The 'Military Alert' of 1927 and Public Moods in the Soviet Union

Ph.D., professor, School of Public Administration, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation.
E-mail: livshin@spa.msu.ru

One of the most intriguing problems dealing with the history of Soviet Russia in the 1920s is the variety of ways the Soviet political regime has been communicating with the people, using different means of coercion, persuasion and social mobilization. The reactions to the “Military Alert of 1927” ― one the major international developments which occurred in the 1920s ― demonstrate the complexity of transformative processes Soviet public mood has been undergoing in that time period. The “Military Alert of 1927” has revealed a few very important aspects of the popular opinion dynamics. Apparently, one of these was the growth of militant revolutionary radicalism, associated, on the one hand, with disillusionment about NEP, and on the other ― with the process of the new Soviet generation which had been socializing after 1917, entering public life and becoming more active. However such radical and militant attitudes resulted not only from generational change in the USSR but also from propaganda’s efforts to achieve the goals of social mobilization and, simultaneously, to establish the relationship of trust between the regime and the society. At the same time the society in the late 1920s remained too diverse and far less coherent than the regime was willing it to be. Trust wasn’t necessarily falling along the lines of social mobilization but was rather the matter of finding a compromise of interests and goals both the government and the people have been pursuing. And for many people a cautious foreign policy reflecting the lack of desire to go to war with “imperialists” was a dominant mood and political emotion.

Keywords

Soviet Union, Stalin, public mood, political emotions, social mobilization, “military alert”.