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EPQ help- Stalin's cult of personality

I'm trying to ensure that I pull my EPQ together for the end of the Easter holidays, yet I'm still running low on sources. In terms of Stalin's cult of personality e.g his depiction in the media, the way in which the populace viewed him etc, does anyone have any good sources they could recommend?
I only do this at A Level but my first thought might be trying to look for some issues of Pravda, especially ones which feature things about the 5 year plans since they would heavily praise Stalin and I think should show the cult of personality. Another place to look could be letters or comments, one thing I saw in one of my textbooks was something called "marfa's letter" I think, and it's a woman in Magnitogorsk writing about why she thinks the targets of the 5 year plan isn't being met (she praises Stalin and blames the failure on others). Finally you might be able to use propaganda posters to show how Stalin was depicted. The SHP textbook does a nice progression of the Cult of Personality by showing how initially he was portrayed as quite modest, whereas by 1953 he was portrayed in god-like fashion. I don't currently have time to look for sources of the things I've mentioned, but I hope this helps.
Reply 2
Original post by AxSirlotl
I only do this at A Level but my first thought might be trying to look for some issues of Pravda, especially ones which feature things about the 5 year plans since they would heavily praise Stalin and I think should show the cult of personality. Another place to look could be letters or comments, one thing I saw in one of my textbooks was something called "marfa's letter" I think, and it's a woman in Magnitogorsk writing about why she thinks the targets of the 5 year plan isn't being met (she praises Stalin and blames the failure on others). Finally you might be able to use propaganda posters to show how Stalin was depicted. The SHP textbook does a nice progression of the Cult of Personality by showing how initially he was portrayed as quite modest, whereas by 1953 he was portrayed in god-like fashion. I don't currently have time to look for sources of the things I've mentioned, but I hope this helps.


This has been very helpful, thank you very much! Especially the letter to Marfa, I'm gonna use it as one of my primary sources. It's such an interesting topic, hope I'll manage to do it justice :biggrin:
Have you looked at Krushchev's secret speech? His ideas around de-Stalinisation were pretty much centred on removing the 'cult of personality'. This sounds like such a cool EPQ topic!

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