Stalin's Ability to Destroy Trust

Although Nadezhda and her husband faced many hardships during Stalin's time, I was most affected by the Russian people's mistrust of one another.   I couldn't imagine living in a world where everything I said could be reported to the authorities by people I considered my friends and colleagues.  To go even further, I simply couldn't fathom living in an environment where informing on one's friends was not only commonplace, but considered a perfectly acceptable way of ensuring one's own survival.  As Hope Against Hope taught me, it was hard to trust, even in the case of a friend who had never reported on you before, because one day that friend's life or the lives of that friend's family may be threatened and he or she will have no choice but to report on your activities and associations.  Mandelstam believed that "the loss of mutual trust is the first sign of the atomization of society in dictatorships of our type, and this was just what our leaders wanted" (96).  In other words, living under these conditions of widespread paranoia and disloyalty made friendships hard to maintain and made it virtually impossible for citizens to band together for a cause, thus cementing Stalin's regime.

Another way Stalin cemented his power was through his cycle of forced mass deportations.  By forcing out any potential opponents from the city centers into the desolate, poverty-stricken countryside, he ensured that there wouldn't be any uprisings and that the Russian people continued to live in fear of his authority.  As Mandelstam stated in her book, "every mass deportation-whether of whole classes or ethnic groups-was accompanied by waves of voluntary migration," which meant that every forced mass deportation to one remote area was followed by  less formal mass moves to other surrounding towns in the hope of finding employment, food and shelter (98).  So, the vast majority of countryside dwellers were too consumed with attending to basic needs to band together and revolt against Stalin.  Even their ability to connect with friends and family in the city centers was completely dependent on Stalin's government.  The government decided whether or not people would be granted the right to travel or, at times, to even post letters.  Stalin's cycle of mass deportations effectively broke ties and forced people to be at the government's mercy.

In a way, the constant threat of deportation further reinforced Russian society's mistrust of one another.  Since deportation often led to hunger and illness, most Russians would do anything to avoid it.  To avoid it, people had to make themselves invaluable to the government somehow and that usually meant informing on one's friends, colleagues and neighbors.  Sometimes this meant exaggerating or outright lying about the beliefs, writings and associations of others.  Lying about and/or outing others for one's own safety then perpetuated feelings of paranoia and distrust, which, as mentioned earlier, slowly eroded the foundation of Russian society.  Under such conditions of fear and disloyalty, in the words of Mandelstam, "can a man really be held accountable for his own actions?" (93)