Consequences of Stalin’s programme of modernisation

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  • Consequences of Stalin’s programme of modernisation
    • City dwellers
      • During first 5YP – urban population rises from 32.5 million to 38.7 million
      • Cities are increasing by average 200,000 a month
        • Housing provision fails to keep pace, most sleep in military-style barracks
      • Shortages in urbanwater, shops & transport due to demand
        • Few consumer goods such as clothes and radios
        • Regular queuing outside shops
      • Health care and education improved
        • Literacy became high priority- public libraries were now available
    • Women
      • 10 million women entered the workforce in this period (from 1930)
        • 21% of building workers were women
        • 72% of health care workers were women
      • Women still tend to be less well paid, less literate & less involved in technical/ political education
    • Professional workers
      • Late 20s see the development of ‘red specialists’
        • Those with highly developed technical skills and socialist outlook
      • Standard of living for many highly skilled workers increased
        • Especially when wage differentials were introduced
      • If you were ambitious you could become one of the new class foremen, supervisors, technicians or managers
    • Industrial workers
      • ‘Quicksand society’ in which many workers regularly moved jobs
        • Caused a huge turnover in labour
      • Decree of control over workers increases
        • By 1938, internal passports and ’labour books’ compulsory
      • Skilled & semi-skilled workers offered extra rations & premium housing, as in huge shortage
      • High rates of absenteeism as many peasants resent being forced into industrial jobs & lifestyle
      • Workers had strict targets
        • Were fined if they did not meet them
    • Kulaks & dispossessedpeasants
      • They were Stalin's chosen victims in his modernisation of agriculture
      • Used as forced labour to boost industrialisation
        • Were originally disposed of and sent to inhospitable areas to build up urban life
    • Managers
      • Managers forced into bribery & corruption to reach targets & satisfy workers
      • Managers could get items like clothing and luxuries in the official Communist Party shops
      • An elite of comparatively wealthy people was developing in secret
        • Totally against the theories of Communism and the wishes of Lenin

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