By the time Stalin died, on March 5, 1953, he appeared to have succeeded in stifling all criticism and dissent on the part of the Soviet citizenry. The war years, in which some loosening of ideological controls over Soviet life had been permitted, were followed by the massive cultural purge of the late forties. This reimposition of ideological orthodoxy came to be termed the “Zhdanovshchina,” after the official primarily responsible for carrying it out, Andrei Zhdanov. It was characterized by a crude campaign against Western influences, and such leading literary figures as the poet Anna Akhmatova and the satirical writer Michael Zoshchenko were savagely attacked for their alleged adulation of “bourgeois” Western culture.