impact of communist rule on society

bolshevik aims with the red terror

• class based

• talked of wiping out the middle class entirely

bolshevik impact on bourgeoisie

• abolished as classes, some lived as state employees

• specialists needed as civil servants, to run industry + scientists and engineers

skills shortage in the bolsheviks

• only 138 engineers were party members 1928

bolshevik attempts to solve the skills shortage

• replace through institutions such as the institute of red professors

• educated proletarians fast-tracked to positions of authority in factories and administration to which their educational achievents and actual skills did not entitle them

• authority could not be questioned - had the party behind them

class divisions in the countryside

• division between town and country > kulaks, middle and poor peasants

• number + wealth of kulaks exaggerated

  • hired labour at times + had more produce to sell but not substantially richer than middle peasants

• former landowners lived among former peasants - ukraine 25% landowners on peasant sized plots