Eminent, clearly intelligent and relatively civilized. From his personal qualities, he is probably not lovable, and it would perhaps be too much to call him a gentleman.
That’s how a British guard colonel described it James H. Magill The chairman of the Allied Control Commission, Colonel-General Andrei Zhdanov.
As deputy head of military affairs, Magill was part of the British group in the Finnish Control Commission, which oversaw the implementation of the Moscow Armistice Treaty that ended the continuation of the war. Ždanov and the Soviet Union headed the commission.
Ždanov’s life is revealed in the recently published work “Ždanov in the Tower”, written by a Finnish professor and political researcher working at the University of Tromsø in Norway Christer Pursiainen.
– If a man [Ždanov] from almost nothing progresses to the sparsely populated politburo of the 150-million-strong Soviet Union to an even smaller core group of half a dozen and [Josif] Stalin’s as a pet, there must be something special about this person, be it good or bad or something in between, says Pursiainen.
Such was the life of Andrei Ždanov.
“Good day, boys!”
Andrei Ždanov arrived in Finland in October 1944. The Jyske cannons of the Continuation War had gone out and the armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union had entered into force a month earlier. After this, the Armistice Agreement was approved in Moscow on September 19, 1944, 80 years to the day before the story was published on Thursday, September 19.
It was Ždanov from the Allies who signed the interim peace.
– Few Russians knew the background, articles and appendices of the armistice better than Colonel General Ždanov, who was crippled in decision-making in both Finnish wars.
Ždanov was also authorized to represent the British government.
After arriving, Ždanov stood in front of the honor company of the Helsinki garrison. With his hand in his pocket, the Stalinist Bolshevik listened to the welcome calls. Then, in clear Finnish, with a slight break, he said: “Good day, boys!”
The Finnish soldiers replied: “Good day, Mr. General!”
When Ždanov arrived in Helsinki, the World War II battles around Europe had intensified again.
Ždanov was one of the architects of the Winter and Continuation War. As a member of the Politburo and party leader in Leningrad, he had a central position in decision-making regarding wars.
For example, Ždanov was involved in the political staging of the background to the Winter War, as well as in the negotiations where the Finns were persuaded to peace in March 1940.
In the Continuation War, the plan mastered by Ždanov was to first launch a major attack on Finland in the summer of 1944 and then force the country into an armistice.
– After this, the military forces of the Red Army bound to the Finnish front could be released for the allied race towards Berlin. Stalin accepted the plan of his close aide.
Prime Minister JK Paasikivi was overcome with grief at the government evening school in November 1944.
– Finland is now an occupied country.
The headquarters of the Supervisory Commission was the hotel Torni, which was completed in 1930 in the core of Helsinki. The building became the symbol of the Commission in Finland.
– The Foreign Ministry’s decision expressed the mentality of a surrendered country. The tip of the hotel visible over the city and the dark shadow were apt to emphasize the symbolism between the vanquished and the victor, writes Pursiainen.
The Supervisory Commission was almost omnipotent.
The president, Marshal Mannerheim, was on edge.
– The interim peace is tough, we are in the hands of the Russians. The agreement does not talk about capitulation (surrender without conditions), but in reality a truce is capitulation.
Finland was at the bottom of the abyss.
– What does it mean that such a high-ranking Soviet politician was put in charge of the supervisory commission? Are they going to put the communists in power? Mannerheim pondered.
Ždanov was born in the industrial city of Mariupol, Ukraine. There he grew up in a noble cultural home together with his parents and three sisters. The family was not wealthy, but not poor either.
His father was a cultured man who worked as an inspector of public schools. Mother was trained as a concert pianist.
– A hint of the humane atmosphere of the Ždanov family is given by the fact that during the worst times of Jewish persecution, they hid their Jewish neighbors in their home, Professor Pursiainen writes.
Andrei Ždanov was a gifted child.
– Even as a toddler, before even the milk had dried on his lips, the boy plays and sings, even with perfect pitch, and accompanies himself on the harmonica. He is the apple of his family’s eye, pampered and teased to a great extent. A boy can even learn to read at the age of four, Pursiainen writes.
His father suddenly died when the boy was 13 years old. Perhaps it was the loss of another parent that later drove Ždanov to always look for a new father figure, mentor and protector. He found that in Stalin.
– I don’t want to live longer than Stalin, Ždanov once shouted to his son, writes Pursiainen.
Ambition arose in young Ždanov. He became the natural and talkative speaker of his school class, a resourceful intellectual, admired, respected and also feared.
Ždanov was the top of his class. The legacy of the home was beautiful behavior and liberal ideals.
Ždanov applied and got into the Moscow Agricultural Institute because he did not want to join the First World War. Around the same time, left-wing radical political activity began to attract the young man. Ždanov joined the Bolshevik Party.
Ždanov could not avoid the war indefinitely. Because he had the natural qualities of a leader and propagandist, at the end of 1916 he received a small star on his collar, which was a sign of the rank of a second lieutenant.
In his twenties, Ždanov already spent almost all his time on politics. In the 1920s, the youth’s party career in the ranks of the Bolsheviks took off strongly.
– He wanted to appear specifically as a man of the people, Pursiainen says.
The starting shot for finnishing
Finally, Ždanov entered Stalin’s inner circle in December 1934, when he was appointed to succeed the murdered party leader in Leningrad.
He also took care of the revenge actions that followed the murder. The number of Stalin’s enemies killed and deported to Siberia is estimated to have reached several million.
Ždanov rose to the top Soviet leadership already at the age of 38, also in 1934, when he was elected the first secretary of the party’s Central Committee. At the same time, meetings with Stalin became everyday. He became a candidate member of the Politburo in 1935 and a member in 1939.
Ždanov’s rise in the party hierarchy was dizzying.
– The son of Mariupol always remains respectful and polite enough, but he does not freeze with terror in the company of Stalin, like many other Bolshevik leaders, Pursiainen writes in his work.
Ždanov became Stalin’s trusted executioner. It was not for nothing that he was considered one of the worst men involved in Stalin’s purges.
In the Finnish Supervisory Commission, Ždanov was almost autocratic. The Finnish political elite came to the hotel Torni to share their information at any time.
Finland’s new direction was blessed by Stalin. The era of Finnishization that lasted for many decades began. Finnishization refers to a political development in which a small democratic country submits to the will of a larger, totalitarian neighboring state.
Under the leadership of the Supervisory Commission, a pro-Soviet People’s Front was created in Finland’s domestic politics, a government disliked by the Soviet Union was replaced, German soldiers were evicted from Lapland, and a total of 3,327 associations or other organizations deemed fascist were abolished. The political leadership during the Finnish Continuation War was put on trial.
Under the supervision commission’s watch, Finland had for the most part fulfilled the conditions of the interim peace agreement.
– In a short period of time, Finland was steered onto the right path from the perspective of the Soviet Union, it had quickly become a country committed to good neighborliness, which would no longer pose a threat to its eastern neighbor, Professor Christer Pursiainen sums up in his work.
The wish came true in death
At the end of September 1947, the task of the Allied Finnish Control Commission had officially ended. It was time to close Hotel Torni.
Colonel-General Ždanov left Helsinki behind already in December 1945 and led the control commission mainly from Moscow.
His health had deteriorated: Stalin’s confidant was an alcoholic and a chain smoker. He had already suffered two heart attacks before.
Andrei Ždanov died of a heart attack in the sanatorium of the Soviet party elite in 1948 at the age of only 52. So Ždanov didn’t have to live longer than Stalin, whom he worshipped, who lived another five years.
The city of Mariupol was renamed Ždanov immediately after the death of the colonel general. After the independence of Ukraine in 1991, the name was changed again to Mariupol.
In the spring of 2022, the city, which was the target of Russian siege and bombardment in the Ukrainian war, was almost completely destroyed.
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