Industrial and social developments in towns and cities 1929-1941

What percent growth a year was there during the first three Five Year Plans?

5-6%

What did the urban labour force increase by during the first Five Year plan?(1928 – 1932)

12.5 million people 

During the first Five Year Plan (1928 – 1932), how much did electricity production increase by?

300%

During the first Five Year Plan (1928 – 1932), how much did coal and iron production increase by?

200%

During the first Five Year Plan (1928 – 1932), how much did steel production increase by?

1/3

What industry was developed during the first Five Year Plan (1928-1932)?

Engineering

When was the first Five Year Plan?

1928-32

When did a Soviet delegation arrive in Ohio to discuss the development of an iron and steel plant at Magnitogorsk?

1928

Who headed the team of German specialists directing the work at Magnitogorsk, intended to supplement the largely untrained workforce of ex-peasants?

Ernst May

When was the Gorky automobile plant constructed?

1932

When was the Belomor Canal constructed?

1931-1933

During the first Five Year Plan (1929-1932) which targets were not met?

Chemical industry

What did early purges target, contributing to poor economic planning?

Gosplan

When was the Great Depression, which reduced the value of Soviet exports?

1929-39

Who claimed that industrial projects focused more on creating ‘a visible symbol of development’ than fulfilling the actual needs of Soviet industry; evidenced by the Belomor Canal which was completed four months ahead of schedule, however it was too shallow to be beneficial to trade, only able to carry tourist steamers which were ‘stocked with Soviet and foreign writers’ proclaiming the glory of the work?

Marshall Berman

When was the second Five Year Plan?

1933-37

Production of what expanded rapidly during the second Five Year Plan (1933-37)?

Electricity

When did the USSR become virtually self-sufficient in metal goods and machine tools?

1937

When was the Moscow Metro opened?

1935

When was the Dnieprostroi Dam (producing hydro-electic power) completed?

1932

During the second Five Year Plan (1933-37), what was extended with four more generators, becoming the largest dam in Europe?

Dnieprostroi Dam

During the second Five Year Plan (1933-37), what domain of engineering was developed?

Metallurgy

When was rationing ended?

1936

What industry was prioritised during the second Five Year Plan (1933-37) putting the USSR not far behind Germany as a major producer of it?

Steel

During the second Five Year Plan (1933-37) improvements were made to communications, especially what? (which became faster and more reliable)

Railways

During the second Five Year Plan (1933-37), state atheism was promoted with the goal of eliminating the clergy by when?

1936

Which years were described as ‘the three good years’ due to an increase in disposable income and less workplace pressure?

1934-36

During the second Five Year Plan (1933-37) targets for what industry were not met?

Oil

Production of what took a backseat throughout the Five Year Plans, leading to an unbalanced economy?

Consumer goods

When was the third Five Year Plan?

1938-42

What continued to grow during the third Five Year Plan (1938-42)?

Heavy industry

Spending on what doubled between 1938 and 1940?

Rearmament

What opened up job opportunities for some Russian workers?

The Great Purge (1936-8)

During the third Five Year Plan (1938-42), production of what halted?

Steel

During the third Five Year Plan (1938-42), production of what failed to meet targets?

Oil

When did many factories run out of materials?

The third Five Year Plan (1938-42)

When was there a ‘hard winter’?

1938

What created a shortage of qualified personnel?

The Great Purge (1936-8)

What led to the intentional inflation of figures and the prioritisation of quantity over quality?

Impossible targets

What did per capita urban consumption grow by between 1928 and 1937?

10%

What government institution provided free healthcare, focusing on disease prevention through vaccination?

Commissariat of Public Health

What infectious diseases was the Commmissariat of Public Health successful in dealing with?

Tuberculosis, typhoid fever and typhus

How many new hospitals were built between 1928 and 1932?

2000

How many more students were there at secondary school in 1934 than in 1927?

4.2 million

What was the literacy rate in 1939? (more than double the figure at the beginning of the 20th century)

94%

When were wage differentials introduced?

1931

When did the Stakhnovite movement begin?

1935

When was there a skills shortage?

Early 1930s

When were fees introduced in urban secondary schools?

1934

What percent of the total victims of the Yezhovschina (1936-8) did the mass operations of the NKVD targeting ‘foreign’ ethnicities make up?

34%

What was promoted in the other Soviet republics?

Russification

The church was treated as a private enterprise, qualifying the clergy as kulaks, allowing what percent income tax?

81%

By 1941, how many churches had been shut down and converted into schools, cinemas, warehouses and grain stores?

40,000

By 1941, how many mosques had been shut down and converted into schools, cinemas, warehouses and grain stores?

25,000

When was the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow destroyed on the direct order of the Politburo?

1931

When were many religious leaders sent to the Gulags?

Late 1930s

What percent of industrial workers did women account for in 1935?

42%

On average, how much less did women earn than men?

40%

When was the Family Code introduced?

1936

When was homosexuality criminalised?

1934

When were tough measures introduced to deal with absentees including dismissal, eviction from factory-owned homes and loss of various benefits such as free access to healthcare?

1930-33

What could leaving a job without permission lead to being criminally charged with?

‘Social parasatism’

What was a typical sentence for ‘social parasitism’?

5 years of hard labour

During Yezhovshchina (1936-1938), what were quotas set for, leading to police rounding up people in markets and train stations and forcing them to confess to ‘sabotage’ or ‘wrecking’ as well as naming accomplices?

Arrests

Who set quotas for production and directly oversaw industrial management in line with party directives?

Gosplan

When was the forced transfer of labour between enterprises legalised and the death penalty introduced for the theft of state property?

1932

What was the death rate per day for prisoners working on the construction of the Belomor Canal (1931-33)?

700

What was the average survival time for a prisoner working on the construction of the Belomor Canal?

2 years

Which youth organisation promoted the ‘ideal Communist youth’ and discouraged ‘hooliganism’?

Komsomol

Which biologist came up with pseudo-scientific ideas associated with the ‘new Soviet man’ and woman?

Trofim Lysenko

Which script was the Uzbek language required to be written in, as opposed to Arabic?

Cyrillic

The heavily mythologised story of which 13-year-old boy who renounced his father to the Soviet authorities, featured heavily in Soviet propaganda – being the subject of an opera and six biographies?

Pavlik Morozo

What allowed Stalin to remove Bukharin from Comintern, Pravda and the Politburo in 1929 over his opposition to the Five Year Plans?

Ban on Factions 1921

By when did the USSR have more tanks than Britain, France and Germany combined?

1932

The plans allowed for the production of what, that were in many cases superior to the rest of the world?

Tanks, aircraft and guns

Many historians agree that the rapid industrialisation of the plans was a major factor in Soviet victory in what?

The ‘Great Patriotic War’ 

What was reintroduced in secondary schools despite being banned by Lenin?

Examinations

Who controlled universities?

Vesenkha

When did Komsomol become directly affiliated with the CPSU?

1939

What was the Komsomol newspaper?

Komsolskaia Pravda 

When was The League of the Militant Godless established?

1925

How many abortions were there in 1935?

1.9 million

How many abortions were there in 1937?

570,000

When was there a war scare?

1927