Social Developments USSR

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Social Security

LENIN - UNDER WAR COMM: + work becomes compulsory, every citizen between 16-50 had to either work or fight. + Housing and transport free to workers. - Urban population fell by 25% in civil war due to insufficient rations. UNDER NEP: + the Soviet Union had the most comprehensive system: social insurance, unemployment and medical benefits. - Administered by trade unions, only 9% of the population. 

STALIN - UNDER FYP: +Full male ubran employment and increasing number of women. - Labour discipline harsh, conditions dirty and dangerous +30,000 KM of railways lines, better transport, vaccinations against measles, typhus and malaria. - Peasants not entitled to rations. -Animal feed sometimes used instead of rations. 

KHRUSHCHEV - +doubled healthcare spending, from 1950-60, quadrupled pensions budget 1950-65 and in 1961 introduced free school, office and factory meals, free public transport and free pensions and healthcare for farmers. +Death rates dropped from almost 10/1000 people to 7/1000 people from 1950-65

BREZHNEV - 'SOCIAL CONTRACT' +Job security, free healthcare etc, low prices for essential goods, subsidised rent and holidays, subsidised electricity and water, most utilities free of charge. - Life expectancy dropped from 68-64 in the 1970s, mainly due to alcoholism. 

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Housing

LENIN - + Redistribution of housing, under the Land Decree 1917 , allowed poor people to live in houses of aristocrats.  +Cheap rent. 

STALIN - -Kommunalka, communal apartnments, entire families lived in a single room, of around 5 square metres. -Barrack-style dormitories were constructed to house factory workers in new factory towns like magnitogorsk [25 people in 1929 - 250,000 in 1932] . In Moscow Coal fields, there were only 15,000 beds for 26,000 workers. 90% of housing lost in Stalingrad, and 1/3 lost in Leningrad during the siege of the city.

KHRUSHCHEV - + Khrushchycova housing, which was made from prefabricated concrete panels, easy to build. + Allowed families an entire apartment with water and central heating - they were only meant to be contemporary but actually became the standard model in the 70s and 80s. 

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Women / The Family

POLITICAL - LENIN + Zhenotdel was the women's department of the Communist party, run by Alexandra Kollontai. - Only 5% of delegates in 1918 were women. Lenin's wife, Krupskaya served as deputy minister of education. STALIN - Zhenotdel closed. - expected to return home to keep a well ordered communist household, (16% women - party membership) 'wife activists'. KHRUSHCHEV + 1/3 of local soviet members were women +Furtseva became the first woman in the Presidum. BREZHNEV -Women remained no more than 4% 

SOCIAL / THE FAMILY - LENIN [THE FAMILY CODE] + Crèches opened to help women work. +abortion on demand +contraception - crèches closed during NEP. STALIN - THE GREAT RETREAT - abortion criminalised, contraception banned, lesbianism was considered a disease. Divorce costed one weeks wages and difficult to get. KHRUSHCHEV + Legalised abortion in 1955, Increased maternity leave pay from 77 days to 112 in 1956. - Contraception remained hard to aquire. BREZHNEV - THE FAMILY CODE 1968 + men couldn't divorce women if they were pregnent or had given birth up to a year ago. -Women recieved criticism due to fall birth rates. 

WORK - LENIN + Equal pay passed - women worked in crèches during the civil war but their jobs were taken when men returned home. 70,000 women fought - civil war. STALIN + by 1945 800,000 women were in combat positions, a group of women fighter pilots became known as night witches. +By 1945 80% of farmers were women, but they would spend 5x longer doing domestic chores. 

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Women / The Family 2

KHRUSHCHEV - Women used to entice young men during the Virgin Land Schemes, they were subject to sexual violence, sometimes forced to marry their rapists. - Women occupied unskilled, manual, low paid jobs. BREZHNEV- Remained in low paid, unskilled jobs, only 2% of collective farm managers were women although they made up 72% of workers. Triple burden and sexual violence continued. 

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Education

Literacy: LENIN- Liquidation of Illiteracy - in 1917 32% of people could read and write, by 1939 it was 94% and 86% urban:countryside, Lunacharsky set up reading rooms acrosss Russia, 6 week intensive reading and writing courses. STALIN: sent cultural soliders into towns to help fight the 'cultural war' against illiteracy, this was undermined by collectivsation as my teachers were blamed for it by peasants, 40% of teachers physically attacked.

Control:- LENIN: Younger Pioneers (1922) 10-15, Komsomol (1918) 16-28, aims were to root out class enemies, cultural revolution, Komsomol membership grew from 2.3 million in 1929 to 40 million by 1982. Those who didn't join Komsomol found it very difficult to reach higher education. However under Lenin it only had 6% of the eligble youth population at its highest. STALIN: expected to spy on their parents, encouraged to be hard working and obedient. KHRUSHCHEV: wanted Komsomol to hold factory managers and party officials to account to the communist vision. BREZHNEV: didn't trust the Komsomol leadership, young, ambitious and potentially dangerous, should emphasize discipline. +Called on to help with community projects and report deviant behaviour for people listening to foreign music, engaged in vandalism etc. 

EDUCATION ...

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EDUCATION 2

Education: LENIN - during the civil war, some schools were used as barracks and stores for barracks meaning education ceased. 1 pencil per 40 students. 1917 + Lunachevsy launches programme to provide free education 7-17.

STALIN: By 1928, 60% of children of primary school age were in school, 10% more than before the revolution. By 1953: 100% 8-12 year olds had the full four years primary education. Universities expanded from 170,000 in 1927-1.5 million in 1953. -'Great Retreat' restores discipline, textbooks prescribed by gov, Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great (national heros), Marxist-Leninist theory compulsory. 

KHRUSHCHEV: Abolishment of School Fees 1956, university and secondary school payments funded. Curriculum Reform 1956, established Polytechnic education and industrial skills for less academic students and work placements became common. 20% - 75% finishing secondary school by the end of Khrushchev's rule. Parents were opposed wanting a more traditional role. Only 65% of schools complied with gov regulations.  

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