P1:

Theme One:

The Creation of a One-Party State:

  • Dec 1917 all non-bolshevik newspapers banned

  • The Kadet Party was banned and leaders arrested

  • Law courts replaced by revolutionary tribunals and the cheka shot enemies of the Bolsheviks

  • Cheka became the GPU 1922

  • GPU became the OGPU 1923

  • During the Red Terror Sept 1918 to Feb 1919, between 50,000-140,000 were executed

  • Concentration camps established on the Solevetsky Islands

  • 1818-1922 the SR, Mensheviks and anarchists were removed and deported

  • Feb 1918 Bolshevik decrees got more extreme, anyone could be forced to do hard labour and could face execution if they resisted

Strikes and Rebellions

  • Created a famine

  • Violent response to Red Terror

  • Autumn 1920, peasants in Tambov revolted against War Communism

    • 50,000 people in the region fought the Communists

  • 1921 strikes gripped a n.o cities

    • In Petrograd the Red Army fired on unarmed workers

  • Kronstadt Rebellion: March 1921 sailors at Kronstadt, a naval base, rebelled against War Communism and called for a return to democracy

1921 Party Congress:

  • March

  • NEP announced, elements of the free-market brought into the economy

  • Ban on factions, two key ones Lenin wanted to get rid of:

    • Worker’s Opposition: wanted control of industry by the workers

    • Democratic centralists: Wanted a more democratic party

The Civil War:

  • Triggered by disagreements over which form of government would be best for Russia and involvement in WW1. Empire was collapsing as Finland, Latvia and Lithuania split from Russian rule

  • Armies of the Civil War:

    • Reds- Bolsheviks

    • Whites- Nationalists and monarchists

    • Greens- Peasant armies fighting against any outside rule by Whites or Reds, dominant in Serbia

    • Anti-Bolsheviks- Left-wing groups who wanted a more democratic Russia, conservatives who opposed Bolshevik proposals for profound social and economic change and groups of soldiers from other countries who had been captured in WW1 and found themselves in Russia

  • Bolsheviks controlled central Russia→good strategic position

  • Red Army a powerful force, 5m soldiers by 1920

  • Conscription used to force local men to fight

Why did the Bolsheviks Win the Civil War?

  • Propaganda:

    • Agitprop was a strong propaganda organisation

    • Spread the Bolshevik message using art, posters, and entertainment to influence the people’s thought

  • Control of industrial heartlands and transport links

  • Alliance: with the anarchists and greens to win over the population in important areas

  • Red army: soldiers received an education, learning to read and write and understand the political aims of the Bolsheviks. Soldiers had to swear the Socialist Military Oath. The Red Banner was introduced, an award for those who fought bravely.

  • Trotsky was an asset for the military leadership

  • The whites where geographically spread out with much longer supply lines. Little control over strategic industries and armies had 250,000 men at most

  • Lacked leadership or an individual to rally around, no common goal other than defeat of the Bolsheviks

  • Unpopular- treated peasants badly and wanted control of non-Russian groups

  • British, French, Japanese and US troops sent to Russia to help/encourage the Whites

  • Cheka present in every Red area and shot enemies

  • Former Tsarist officers employed to improve the Red’s military capabilities

  • Millions of people died as a result of the Civil War and the economy was very weak, with food shortages in cities

Economic Achievements of Lenin and Trotsky:

  • 1924/25 economic growth was particularly strong under NEP →increased the popularity of the Bolshevik leadership and optimism surrounded NEP

  • Lenin’s electrification programme was the best example of a successful public works project

  • Agriculture, productivity in farming went back to pre-war levels, some peasants raised funds for new machinery and tools BUT exports never reached 1912 levels

  • Working day fell from 9.9 hours to 7.8 hours by 1928 for women and men BUT unemployment remained high as many people moved to the towns

Bolshevik Centralisation:

  • March 1918 Bolsheviks→Communist Party

  • Shift towards communism>bolshevism

  • The Sovnarkom: Lenin was the chair of government (The Sovnarkom), and was responsible for Russia’s development into a brutal dictatorship>a genuinely equal socialist society.

  • The centralisation of power under Lenin’s control was typical of his leadership style

  • Soviets were meant to be in charge of the regions, power was completely centralised under the CP

  • Soviets were required to agree automatically with the decisions of the central Party

  • Outside it looked like the Communist government was a democracy, was not inside

  • When elections were help only members of the Party could stand for office and criticism was not allowed

  • The Central Committee was elected at the Party Congress to represent the party between congresses, they elected the Politburo (key policy making committee)

  • The first members of the Politburo were Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, and Stalin

  • 1924 under a new constitution, Russia was reorganised into the USSR

  • Red Army forced regions to join and there was no way to leave but ‘officially’ it was voluntary

Lenin’s Legacy:

  • Died 1924

  • Created a new dictatorship in Russia

  • Largely authoritarian

  • Removed power from the Sovnarkom as the main organ of government

  • Politburo essentially took over the functions of the executive

  • Sovarkom was there to ‘approve’ the Politburo’s decisions

  • Party-State, Soviet state and CP worked in parallel, opposition parties officially banned 1921

  • 1921, the CP had developed into a huge bureaucracy, administration was mostly made up of MC from under the Tsar. Those who worked for the Party got better food and accommodation, hollow claim that the CP ruled on behalf of the workers

Why did the Bolsheviks need to quash their opponents so quickly and violently after the October Revolution?

  • They were in a very insecure position

  • Revolution not overly popular with general population of political elite

  • Forced their way to power via violence and would need to use it to maintain power

  • Trying to achieve something radical, would not be easy and opposition would likely increase as they introduced more policies (War Communism)

Was Russia doomed to become Authoritarian after the revolution?

  • Figes argues Lenin had no masterplan for power, the civil war was what showed the Bolsheviks the importance of gathering resources from centralised control

  • Some members of the CP did want a more democratic Russia, this faction was taken out by ‘On Party Unity’ at the 1921 Party Congress

The Elimination of Opponents:

  • The NKVD (changed from OGPU in 1934)

  • Role to continue to stamp out the enemies of the people, pursued by 3-person troikas of NKVD officers on the basis of minimal effort

    • People were tried for contact with foreigners and not cutting pictures of Trotsky from textbooks

  • Techniques: mass arrests, forced confessions, informants

  • Many political prisoners executed

  • From 1935- the NKVD had quotas for how many arrests it needed to make

    • Meaning citizens were often arrested for no crime at all

The Gulags:

  • A system of camps

  • Housed 8m prisoners by 1941

  • Many were political prisoners but also: peasants, workers convicted of wrecking (disrupting factory work), and those arrested to meet quotas

  • Provided huge amounts of slave labour for industry and railroads

The Purges Under Stalin-1930s:

  • Used as a way to distract people from economic issues/challenges and to secure Stalin’s position

  • Executions used to set an example to other potential dissenters or threats to Stalin

  • Purges helped to control CP bosses in small towns, prevent corruption, and disloyalty to Stalin

  • 1936 explosions in Keremovo mines blamed on enemies>unsafe conditions

Reasons for the Purges:

  • Stalin wanted to deal with any potential internal opposition

  • Strengthen Stalin’s position

  • Concerned about Hitler and Nazi Germany rearming in the second half of the 1930s

  • A way for Communists to forcible take control across Russia

  • Thousands of powerful people in the CP and army killed in the purges

Show Trials:

  • Important part of the purges

  • Made examples of people Stalin disapproved of

  • Factory managers accused of ‘wrecking’ (acts against the state) were often victims

  • Factory managers resented extremely productive Stakhanovites and were blamed with experts for economic failures

  • Any potential threats to Stalin’s power (old Bolsheviks) were tried and executed

  • Most people not given the right to a show trial, only for high profile Russians

  • Script written in advance

  • Films of the 1936-38 show trials were released around the world

  • Bukharin 1938

The End of the ‘Old Bolsheviks’:

  • Purges killed many of them eg Kamenev and Zinoviev

  • Executing or discrediting rivals allowed Stalin to consolidate his position fully at the top of the CP

  • Stalin suspicious of the army’s power so he tried to weaken it

  • No evidence of any plots against Stalin within the army, but 35.000 officers were arrested 1937-38

Kamenev and Zinoviev:

  • Candidates to lead the CP after Lenin’s death

  • Executed August 1936, accused of numerous conspiracies against th state

  • Pled guilty to avoid execution but were executed anyway

  • Kamenev’s sons were executed 1938 and 1939 and his wife was executed in 1941

  • Kamenev and Zinoviev were cleared by the Soviet government in 1988

The Great Terror:

  • Due to lots of ‘experts’ being purged, the development of the SOviet Union was stunted

  • 8m people arrested during the GT (1937-38)

  • 1m were shot

  • 2m died in labour camps

  • Vast majority were innocent of any crimes

Kirov and Yagoda:

  • Kirov was a party leader in Leningrad and was killed December 1934

  • Sparked mass arrests

  • Repression increased

  • Some historians suggest it was planned by Stalin/the state to use as an excuse for the great purge

  • Yagoda was head of the NKVD and was executed in March 1938 for ‘wrecking’, Trotskyism, failing to arrest enough ‘enemies of the people’

Stalin’s Power Before WW2:

  • Became General Secretary April 1922

  • First purged the Politburo 1920s, Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev all removed over disagreeing views on economic policy

  • Stalin added loyal followers to the politburo eg Molotov+Malekov

  • Mean Stalin could easily force his own agenda

Reducing the Power of Political Institutions:

  • Frequency of Politburo meetings declined

  • Political power became more condensed and given to smaller groups outside of the Politburo

  • Stalin styled himself as an intimidating ruler, politicians feared disagreeing with him would result on execution

  • As a dictator he had significant political freedom to run the ussr how he liked

  • The CP consented to Stalin’s policies without challenging him

Stalin’s Power Over the State Before WW2:

  • Soviet Constitution 1938, superficially democratic

  • The Constitution enfranchised all citizens in the Soviet Union

    • Previously the bourgeois were disenfranchised

  • Freedom of the press

  • Freedom of religion

  • Freedom of organisation

  • Guaranteed employment

  • Impact:

    • Undemocratic

    • Restricted rights of citizens

    • Only CP members could run in elections

    • Foreign powers the targeted audience of the Soviet Constitution

    • ‘The Constitution of the USSR is the only thoroughly democratic constitution in the world’-Stalin

Limits on Stalin’s power from above:

  • Politburo refused to agree to the execution of Ryutin (member of a faction against Stalin who had denounced him 1932)

  • Cautious of 2FYP targets and forced Stalin to lower them

  • Politburo members voiced fears over brutality- Ordzkonikidze expressed opposition to Stalin’s terror in a meeting

  • Impact:

    • Minimal efforts and not hugely effective

    • Some advisors used powers from Stalin for their own agenda (Beria, Yezhov)

Limits from below:

  • International enemies had some CP members want to increase socialism in the USSR against them

  • Stalin critical of overzealous Party members who enforced collectivisation too enthusiastically

  • COnflict between local authorities and Stalin

Controlling the state during WW2:

  • Less terror, more mobilising resources

  • The State Defence Committee controlled war administration

  • The Supreme Command controlled the military

  • Stalin championed as a hero post victory

Controlling the state after WW2:

  • 1945-53 ‘High Stalinism’

  • Focused on consolidating authority via terror

  • 1949, Stalins’ 70th bday, becoming weak, maintained power via divide and conquer tactics and political machinations to divide rivals

1950s Political Scheming:

  • The Mingrelian Affair 1951 was a purge of the Georgian CP, targeted Beria’s allies

  • 1952 Stalin changed the Politburo→Presidium 36 members instead of 10, allowed him to reduce the power of Malenkov and Beria and promote younger politicians who supported him

  • Some argue he had plans for another purge 1953 (Doctor’s Plot pretext to a purge of Jews)

Struggle for power:

  • Post Stalin’s death the Presidium membership was reduced back to ten

    • In the Presidium the key contenders for power were Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev

  • Malenkov made the Chairman of the Council of Ministers (head of govt)

  • Beria was head of the NKVD and security system as Minister of Internal Affairs

  • Khrushchev held the least power straight after Stalin’s death, he was not made a minister, he was the General Secretary, the Party base had much more power than formal govt positions and many newcomers owed him their position

  • Beria was involved in the fabrication of the Doctors Plot and unpopular with the army due to his role in army purges, he was tried in secret and shot with 6 aides

  • Khrushchev cements power:

    • Pushed for the Virgin Lands Scheme (farming policy in Kazakhstan and Siberia)

    • Good harvests 1954-55 made his idea more popular

    • Malenkov stood down as head of govt , replaced by Bulganin (ally of K)

    • 24th February 1956 Secret Speech, 20,000 words long, accused Stalin of abusing his power, used Lenin’s testament to show he did not want Stalin to be leader, focus on crimes post 1934

  • Impact of secret speech:

    • Riots in the gulags

    • Release of 1000s of political prisoners

    • Stalingrad renamed to Volgograd

    • Stalin’s body removed from the Red Square Mausoleum

    • Portraits and busts of Stalin destroyed, called an ‘enemy of the people’

    • BUT protests in Tbilisi capital of Georgia (Stalin’s origins), troops were sent 20 died, 60 injured

K’s Weaknesses:

  • Position not fully secure, 1957 Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov and Bulganin

  • K used his base support in the Party to win a vote against the rebels

  • Secret Speech had not given K the popularity he had hoped for

National Minorities:

  • Secret speech made them feel comfortable to rebel

  • 1956 K had to use military force to put down protests in Hungary

    • 20,000 Hungarian casualties

    • 1500 soviet casualties

    • Reaffirmed his position as a Stalinist

Stability under Brezhnev:

  • Revolution had been completed by previous leaders

  • Restoration:

    • Some of K’s policies had not worked

    • Decentralisation came to an end

    • All-Union centralised ministries returned

    • Agricultural and industrial sections of the Party were reunited

    • No terror to the terror of Stalin’s years

  • Stability of Cadres:

    • Discouraged too many changes within the govt

    • Was difficult to fire govt workers or move them around departments

    • Party member’s jobs v secure

  • Political stagnation:

    • Govt officials stayed in their jobs for many years or even life

    • Young people did not take on govt jobs, average age of state employees went up

    • 1964-71: only 2 new politburo members, average age 75 in 1982

    • Gerontocracy

    • Older officials became more inefficient, few opps for promotion demotivating

    • Corruption grew, Brezhnev’s daughter involved with a diamond smuggler

    • No more utopian vision, B did not persuade people to work hard for socialism, only encouraged revolution in other countries

Andropov and Chernenko: 1982-85

  • Andropov:

    • Leader post B’s death with Chernenko, both men close allies w/ B, little attempt at reform during the period

    • Andropov tried to bring corruption to an end

  • Anti-corruption campaign:

    • Stability of cadres ended

    • Replaced many senior officials

    • Red army generals key target of campaign

  • Chernenko:

    • Also against reform

    • Ruled for such a short time, did very little as leader

Theme Two:

Communism in the Russian Civil War: 1918-21:

  • War Communism:

    • Aimed to end of free trade of goods and balance out social classes by evenly distributing money

    • Fixed prices of grain to keep prices low

    • Peasants did not want to sell their grain for that little money so hoarded grain

    • The Cheka was sent to requisition grain from peasants

    • Food rationing introduced, people with jobs most important to the war effort prioritised

    • Money abolished, people paid in material goods

    • July 1918 all large industries nationalised and production targets set in Moscow

    • Public transport made free in the cities

    • Private trading banned

  • NEP: 1921-24

    • War Communism failed, peasants destroyed their own crops so that the Cheka could not seize them→large food shortages, peasant uprising in the Tambov region

    • NEP reintroduced money and some other aspects of the free markets

    • Small businesses flourished, private businesses could employ workers

    • Peasants no longer had grain seized from them, had to pay taxes n goods first, then cash

    • Peasants could sell grain and keep money→NEPmen

  • Opponents of NEP:

    • Some Communists felt it betrayed their principles

    • Trotsky

    • More and more cases of suicide in the Bolshevik Party

  • Effects of NEP:

    • Scissors crisis, food prices low, manufactured goods high

    • Inequality increased

    • Trade with other countries remained lower than 1913 levels

    • ‘Commanding Heights’ (banks/major industries) stayed nationalised

  • Lenin’s ideology:

  • Wanted to modernise the economic bc socialism required a highly advanced economic system

  • More stable economic system

  • Ultimately did want to destroy capitalism, a socialist economy would be more efficient and would result in an end of inequality

  • Had to balance ideology with pragmatic needs

  • March 1918, nationalisation, a core economic policy, state took control of industry

  • March 1918, state capitalism, a way to move from cap→com, partly involved nationalising industry

  • Vesenkha: to create a more efficient economy Lenin centralised control of industry under Vesenkha. Brought back water discipline w/ higher pay for the most productive. These bodies also appointed specialists to run factories

Five Year Plans:

  • Agricultural and economic targets: collectivisation to improve agricultural output→led to the starvation of millions of Russians. Justified by: selling excess grain abroad could be used for industrialisation and the Russia could modernise farming methods and would also produce more grain to feed industrial workers

  • Political and ideological targets: more control over the countryside, NEP supported capitalism, industrial workers felt peasants benefited from the revolution in a way they did not, Stalin believed in the Marxist principles

  • Marxist Principles: in a developed human society, countries would be industrialised and factories made efficient and productive. Move towards urbanisation, fewer people needed to work the land. Private property abolished and wealth redistributed to the poor, collectivisation part of this process

  • Problems with NEP: more successful farmers could buy land from poorer ones and employ other people, essentially a form of capitalism. Needed to liquidise kulaks ideologically. Bukharin, Stalin’s rival, supported NEP→more motivation to end the policy

Living and Working Conditions in Towns and Countrysides:

  • The Towns:

    • Housing low quality

    • Living standards were low

    • Many in barracks or communal accommodation

    • 1928-33 fruit and meat consumption went down 66% in Leningrad

    • Queuing for food a daily experience in the 1930s

  • The Workplace and International Movement:

    • No concern for health and safety

    • Industrial accidents resulted in many deaths

    • One day off work without a good reason could lead to losing your job

    • Early ideas of equality of wages abandoned

    • Internal passports 1932- to stop the free movement of people around the country

    • Arrest and imprisonment could be the result from failing to prove a ‘right’ to be in a particular city

  • The Countryside:

    • Only basic housing

    • Outside toilets

    • No running water

    • Rations, excess food confiscated for cities

    • Productivity so poor 1939 peasants allowed to sell produce from garden plots for a profit to incentivise them to produce more

    • Not allowed to leave their farms and also had internal passports

  • Party Officials:

    • Lived in relative luxury

    • Access to special shops for consumer goods, how loyalty was rewarded

    • Created a new ruling class w/i a ‘classless’ society

    • Quality of life for some workers did improve, but these elites had become more important than the workers

Industrialisation and Gosplan:

  • 1927 war scare led to the abandonment of NEP (popular w/ workers) and the announcement of the 1FYP

  • Gosplan was the committee responsible for delivering FYPs, set targets for factory managers/workers and worked to ensure they were achieved. 5000 new factories were created 1928-37

  • The successes of the FYPs: first two FYPs completed in 4 years, 1FYP focused in heavy industries 2FYP focused on using resources more efficiently and providing consumer goods (still mega neglected)

  • Stakhanovite movement: Aleksey Stakhanov was the son of a Ukrainian peasant, supposedly in August 1935 he mined 102 tons of coal in under 6 hours 14x more than he quota. He was held up as an example and made a national hero. On the Time magazine cover in the West. Received 2 Orders of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner

  • In reality, Stakhanov had assistants to help him in his work and better equipment, those who tried to copy him disrupted the smooth running of factories in pursuit of personal gain→propaganda tool

Successes of Industrialisation:

  • Workers gained more power and influence in the communist system and workplaces became more organised

  • Production levels in industry increased dramatically from 1928-39

  • Electricity supply and machinery production were key successes

  • The Dnieper Dam and Moscow Metro were built, serving as visual symbols of Russian engineering

Failures of Industrialisation:

  • Harder to find a place to live

  • Targets grew higher and higher

  • 1FYP unrealistic goals: 250% increase in overall industry development, 330% expansion in heavy industry

Outcome of industrialisation:

  • Heavy industry grew enormously

  • Sparked the development of industrial cities like Magnitogorsk

  • Unemployment virtually vanished

  • Able to re-arm

  • More industrial workers as the popularity of the regime grew

Collectivisation: by 1933 famine 1.3m Kazakhstan deaths, 1m Russian

5.7m died during the collectivisation years

Gave the Party control of the countryside

Holodomor, famine in Ukraine, Stalin couldb’t admit it existed, death toll may have been as high as 3.3m people, by June 1933, 28,000 people dying per day

WW2:

25m left homeless

90% Stalingrad destroyed

30m Russians died

More people in Leningrad died than in Hiroshima/Nagasaki (3m)

Khrushchev and the economy:

Set up 105 regional economic councils to replace national industry aimed to avoid waste and over-regulation but in reality just added another layer of bureaucracy

1959 7 year plan introduced, focus on light industry accompanied with more chemical production for fertilisers. Production increased, but chemicals missed target by 20%

1956 minimum wage introduced

Average household income increased

Diets became more varied

Standards of living increased (marginall)

1953 grain supplies and animals less than what they had been under the Tsar

Prices increased by 25% 1953-56

1952-58 grain incomes doubled

Cut the running costs of the Kolkhozy

Taxation changed, peasants who did not own livestock did not have to give meat as taxes

VLS 28m hectares but not fertile enough

Brezhnev and the economy:

Romoved K’s commitment to communism by 1980

wanted to improve living standards

Subsidised prices

Black market allowed to continue

Andropov and the economy:

Operation Trawl wanted to improve productivity

KGB tried to stop drunkeness and absenteeism

Econ stagnation by 1885

Theme Three:

Arts and Propaganda:

Agitprop

Art which put workers at the centre was encouraged

Glavit-censorship office

genre called socialist realism promoted in literature

Propaganda films shown for free to factory workers

Attacks on religion under Lenin:

1917 Decree on Land, peasants could take land from the church

Nov 1917 cheka had archpriest Kockurov murdered

Jan 1918 priests massacred in Moscow

1918 decree concerning the separation of church and state

1921 Lenin founded the living church which was supposed to rival the orthodox church, but did not support the regime and could not attack many russian followers

Initially supported attacks on Islam too then switched position and funded Islamic schools

Attacks on religion under Stalin:

During periods of economic change such as collectivisation church closures seen as acceptable to create eg grain stores

Muslims suffered during the Terror, 1936 Sufi groups in Turkestan had been wiped out

WW2 ‘The Great Patriotic War’ Stalin relaxed anti-religion policies realising orthodox christianity was directly linked to patriotism (414 churches reopened)

Attacks on religion under Khrushchev:

Led a campaign against the orthodox church, victimised the church/congregations

Tried to limit power of priests, anyone who protested was imprisoned

Other strands of Christianity and Islam also targeted

Atheism a school curriculum subject

Poeple with strong religious beliefs faced discrimination at uni/job applications

Brezhnev’s approach to religion:

Instead of oppressing religious groups he used scientific education to turn young people away from religion

Started supporting Islamic groups in the middle-east bc they were anti-american

The board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan was created

Communists saw Islam as progressive and a revolutionary religion

Secret police:

Yezhov, 1.5m arrested, 680,000 killed, 635,000 deported to the gulags

Trial of the 16 1936, Yagoda coordinated this trial, led to execution of zinoviev and kamenev

Trial of the 17 1937, Yezhov, ro,ved Trotsky’s key allies

Trial of the 21 1938 Beria, removed bukharin and allies, one being Yagoda

Andropov and Dissidents:

Allowed some dissidents to leave the country

Some sent to mental asylums for re-education

Surveillance and formal warning letters to target/influence specific individuals

1970s, 70,000 citizens received a police warning

Intellectuals/dissidents fired from jobs

Popular discontent 1982-85:

Anxiety about poor living standards

Unhappiness with consumer products and availability of food

Anger about corruption in the Party/govt

  • Social problems:

    • Alcoholism

    • Poor workplace discipline

    • More black market trading

    • Attempts to avoid military service

    • Demanding western goods

    • Sympathy for solidarity opposition movement in Poland

    • Higher church attendance

    • Lower birth rate

Theme Four:

Social security:

Lenin+Stalin wanted all who could work to do so

War communism 16-50 had to fight or work, ¼ fled towns for food

NEP-1924 18% of urban workforce unemployed

NEP soc benefits: maternity pay, unemployment benefits, medical benefits, disability benefits, state paid for urban families education, peasants left behind

FYPs compulsory labour, working conditions poor

Stalin soc benefits: food rations, better public transport, vaccinations against common diseases inc typhus/malaria from 1947

1926-39 n.o specialists rose from ½ million to 12 million

1939 33% of people worked outside of agriculture

1931 hierarchy of pay reinstated

Stalin housing/healthcare:

Rare housing projects eg Narkomfin APartment House in Moscow

Urban housing communal apartments called kommunalka

Families sinved in single rooms of 4-5.5 square metres

Barrack-style buildings used to house factory workers, forced to share beds

n.o doctors increased by 4x by 1940

free healthcare

poor sanitation/diets

Khrushchev:

Doubled welfare spending in 9 years and quadrupled pension spending from 1950-59

1961 free school, factory and office lunches, free transport and healthcare for farmers

Infant mortality fell from 81 to 27 1950-65

Housing`; k-7 developed the Khrushchyovoka housing blocks could be built v quickly, used standard prefabricated pieces>bricks. Families had an apartment to themselves w/ heating+running water

Brezhnev’s new social contract:

Guaranteed full employment

Price controls on goods

Some free market forces, some black market trading allowed

Free healthcare

Subsidised rent and utilities

Some paid leave

Cities highest standards of living under Soviet rule

Social issues under Brezhnev:

Women discriminated against

Female unemployment 10%

Life expectancy went down four years for men→alcoholism

Urban Women:

Lenin set up Zhenotdel the women’s arm of the CP

Alexamdra Kollontai head of Zhendotel, believed men and women inherently diff

Civil War CP recruited women for childcare jobs

NEP women fired to give men their jobs→increased prostitution. 39% men used prostitutes 1920s

Stalin:

Women much more present in the industrial workforce 10m by 1940

WW2 women’s participation in the urban workforce increased to 75% of urban workers

Wages 60-65% of men’s, often faced workplace harassment and rarely promoted

1960s women 45% of industrial labour force, 74% of clerical/health/education jobs

By 1985 570% of doctors were women

Women in the countryside:

VLS Khrushchev wanted to recruit more women into roles like milkmaids/gardeners directed away from vehicles/machinery

6400 women recruited, August 1958 less than 450 had well-paid professional jobs

1970, 72% of poorest paid farmers were female

Education:

1m graduated uni by 1940

1/3 studied engineering

1927 most went to school for 4 years

1940 most went to school for 6 years

30% continued education from 14-17 but w/ school fees

Youth groups eg Young Pioneers for kids aged 10-15 founded 1922, Komsomol for 16-28

Stalin: youth group members to spy on parents, informants for the regime

Khrushchev: wanted to use the Komsomol to hold party officials to account for their actions

Brezhnev: saw politically ambitious older leaders of komsomol as a threat emphasised their role in disciplining members and developing respect for authority