Social successes and failures

Workers’ working conditions

• 7 day working week and longer working hours

• Arriving late or missing work could result in dismissal, eviction from housing and loss of benefits

• Damaging machinery or leaving a job without permission was a criminal offence and strikes were illegal

• From 1938 labour books recorded workers’ employment, skills and any disciplinary issues

Workers’ working conditioons from 1939

• With prospect of war, discipline was tightened

• Being 20 minutes late for work become a criminal offence

• A decree of 1940 ended the free labour market

• Skilled workers could be directed anywhere while others needed permission to change jobs

• Social benefits were cut

Workers’ gained opportunities

• Wage differentials from 1931 to reward those who stayed in their jobs and worked hard

• Extensive programme of technical education and training opportunities enabled workers to learn new skills and do well

• Future party members Khruschev and Brezhnev went through this scheme

• Stalin’s purges in 1930s hit hardest at intellectuals and white-collar workers but meant workers had a chance at getting higherup jobs

Stakhanovites

• Rewarded materially, enjoyed better food, accommodation or other priviledges such as holidays

Workers’ living conditions

• Overcrowding in early 1930s meant workers lived in cramped communal apartments (kommunalka) that restricted privacy

• Had to cope with inadequate sanitation, erratic water supplies, poor street lighting and petty crime

• Public transport was overcrowded, shops often empty and queues and shortage were an accepted feature of life

• From 1928-1933 meat, milk and fruit consumption declined by two-thirds

Workers’ wages

• Although real wages increased during the Second FYP, still lower than in 1937 and than they had been in 1928

Rationing

• Phased out in 1935

• Food and consumer goods were increasingly available

• However market prices were high

• Members of the party could obtain more goods more cheaply, not the same for ordinary workers

Prisoner’s living conditions

• Belomor Canal relied on manual labour 1931-1933

• Labour force employed reached c.300,000 at its peak

• Many died of overwork, poor treatment, lack of food and disease

• Death rate of 700 per day

• New prisoners came into camps at a rate of 1500 per day

• Average survival time was 2 years

Manager’s stresses

• Had limited control over resources, prices, wages and other costs but we expected to fulfill quotas

• Factory managers had to fulfill or surpass output targets

• Became normal to falsify statistics

• Manager could be put on trial, imprisoned or executed if failed to meet targets

• Bribery and corruption embedded within the system

Managers from 1936

• Factories had to pay for their own fuel, raw materials and labour from their ‘profits’

• This meant that managers had to account carefully in their books, so to not be accused of ‘wrecking’

Managers benefited

• Manager recieved a bonus

• Up to 40% of his income if did better than expected

Manager state regulations

• Managers expected to apply state regulations in the workplace

• Made it difficult for managers to earn the good will of his labour force, some ignored the rules

• When work norms were raised in 1936 by 10% and 50%, it became harder to deal with protesting workers

• Attempts to bypass regulations or lower the norm would lead to accusations of sabotage

Women gained jobs

• By 1935 women constituted 42% of all industrial workers

• Found jobs in education, healthcare and administration to sustain their families

• Managers, in desparation to fulfill quotas, employed the wives, widows and teenage daughters of their male workers

• Employment of urban women reduced the need for further housing development

• During second FYP the Party sent orders for more women to be employed in heavy industry, but some factory managers were still sexist asf

Women weren’t given same opportunities in the workforce

• In 1929 female workers were largely concentrated in the lowest paid jobs requiring the least skills

• Women were routinely discriminated against and were paid less than men for fulfilling the same work norms

• Zhenotdel was closed down in January 1930, meaning there was no more focus on women’s working and living rights, especially as women were harrassed in the workplace

Overall

• 1936 the Party made more effort to enrol women in technical training programmes

• Provision of state nurseries, creches, canteens and child-clinics enabled women to cope with work and family

• On average women still earned 40% less than men

• A little over 43% of the industrial workforce was female by 1940