How did the USSR develop up to 1953?
- Created by: Lottie
- Created on: 02-05-12 16:31
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How did the USSR develop up to 1953?
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- Collectivisation
- The Five Year Plans
- The Cultural Revolution (inc. the cult of personality & policies towards women, religion, education & young people)\
- POLITICALLY
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- The Cult of Personality – Stalin himself benefited the most from the Cultural Revolution – the ‘cult of personality’, which was propagated by it, strengthened his position as leader.
SOCIALLY - cultural relativism
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- Peasantry – After the NEP (1921-28) & with the implementation of Collectivisation (1928-33 and onwards) the peasants found themselves the victims of increasing state control & famine. They became a smaller proportion of the population as industrialisation progressed and were effectively restored to the miserable status at the bottom of society that they had experienced under Tsarism.
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- Industrial Working Class – Grew as a class due to the success of the Five Year Plans – their achievements in the service of the USSR were celebrated over other groups. Workers’ education programmes offered further ways to improve their position in society and fostered the idea of the ‘New Soviet Man’ – the model working class citizen. Living and working conditions improved after the initial horrors of rapid industrialisation, but remained of a relatively low standard. Healthcare services for all improved (hospitals, sanatoria, clinics, training for doctors, nurses & midwives) but never came close to the claims the Communists made for them from the moment they set up a state-run health service in 1917 and never adequate to meet the demands of a population experiencing rapid industrialisation and total war.
- Women (& Families) – Experienced some ‘liberation’ in their lives after 1917 – more freedom of choice in marriage, divorce & childbirth (abortion) and their interests represented by Zhenotdel (1917-30) in the Communist Party – the family and women’s obligations to it were rejected as instruments of Bourgeois Capitalist Oppression.
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Cultural Revolution essentially reversed this trend,…
- Industrial Working Class – Grew as a class due to the success of the Five Year Plans – their achievements in the service of the USSR were celebrated over other groups. Workers’ education programmes offered further ways to improve their position in society and fostered the idea of the ‘New Soviet Man’ – the model working class citizen. Living and working conditions improved after the initial horrors of rapid industrialisation, but remained of a relatively low standard. Healthcare services for all improved (hospitals, sanatoria, clinics, training for doctors, nurses & midwives) but never came close to the claims the Communists made for them from the moment they set up a state-run health service in 1917 and never adequate to meet the demands of a population experiencing rapid industrialisation and total war.
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