Career
Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolshevik) in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934. He was an endorser of Socialist Realism in art.
Zhdanov was Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet from 20 July 1938–20 June 1947.
Though somewhat less active than Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich and Kliment Voroshilov, Zhdanov was a major perpetrator of the Great Terror and personally approved 176 documented execution lists.
In June 1940, he was sent to Estonia to supervise the establishment of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic and its annexation by the USSR.
During World War II, Zhdanov was in charge of the defence of Leningrad. After the cease-fire agreement between Finland and the USSR was signed in Moscow on 4 September 1944, Zhdanov directed the Allied Control Commission in Finland until the Paris peace treaty of 1947.
Zhdanov was appointed by Joseph Stalin to direct the Soviet Union's cultural policy in 1946. His first action (in December 1946) was to censor Russian writers such as Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko. He formulated what became known as the Zhdanov Doctrine ("The only conflict that is possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best").
During 1946–1947, Zhdanov was Chairman of the Soviet of the Union.
In 1947, he organized the Cominform, designed to coordinate the communist parties of Europe. In February 1948, he initiated purges among musicians, widely known as a struggle against formalism. Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian and many other composers were reprimanded during this period.
Zhdanov died on 31 August 1948 in Moscow of heart failure; Nikita Khrushchev recalled in Khrushchev Remembers that Zhdanov was an alcoholic, and that during his "last days", Stalin would shout at him to stop drinking and insist that he drink only fruit juice. Stalin had talked of Zhdanov being his successor but Zhdanov's ill health gave his rivals, Lavrentiy Beria and Georgy Malenkov, an opportunity to undermine him.
He was one of the accused during the U.S. House of Representatives' Kersten Committee investigation in 1953.
Read more about this topic: Andrei Zhdanov
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