4.4 Women and Ethnic Minorities

Question 1

Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia

Answer 1

November 1917. Equality, self-determination (even including the right to leave and be independent), freedom of religion (important as many people were Muslim in the USSR, especially in Central Asia), the right to develop their own culture and lifestyle.

Question 2

Stalin’s views on marriage

Answer 2

Stalin’s view was that men and women should marry, and stay married.

Question 3

Consequences of allowing easy divorce?

Answer 3

The breakdown of marriages had led to gangs of abandoned children roaming the streets in some cities, causing trouble and committing crimes. The ease of getting divorces encouraged some men to abandon their families and give up supporting their children.

Question 4

Consequences of allowing easy divorce?

Answer 4

After 1936 it became more difficult to get a divorce. Expensive fees were introduced that most workers could not afford. Men who left their families were fined if they didn’t provide financial support.

Question 5

What are paternity suits?

Answer 5

A legal action in which an unmarried mother sues the father of the child for financial support.

Question 6

What happened to paternity suits?

Answer 6

To discourage unmarried women from getting pregnant, paternity suits were banned.

Question 7

What happened to abortions?

Answer 7

Abortions, which were made legal in 1920, were banned in 1936.

Question 8

Why were abortions banned in 1936?

Answer 8

Stalin wanted to encourage growth in the Soviet population to provide workers for the new factories built in the Five-Year plans.

Question 9

What happened to homosexuality?

Answer 9

In 1933, a new law, Article 122, was added to the criminal code of the USSR. It made male homosexuality illegal with up to 5 years of hard labour in prison for men convicted. It made no mention of women.

Question 10

Women’s economic role

Answer 10

Women had an increased role in the economy and were encouraged to become workers. However they rarely got into management positions and their role was still perceived as home makers (i.e. taking care of their children, cooking, etc.). Society was predominantly run by men.

Question 11

Backstreet abortions

Answer 11

Making abortions illegal lead to many women (some who were struggling to work AND raise families in cramped accommodations) to resort to unsafe, secret abortions by people with no medical qualifications. Women were often left damaged by these illegal procedures.

Question 12

What happened to infant mortality?

Answer 12

Infant mortality went up between 1935 to 1940, and this may have been because of the illegal abortions being counted as infant deaths.

Question 13

How did the state encourage families to have more children?

Answer 13

The state made it harder to find contraceptives, and sterilisation became illegal. To encourage families to have lots of children, the state gave women a financial allowance for their 7th child (and any further children) up until their 3rd birthday.

Question 14

What is sterilisation?

Answer 14

An operation to prevent a man or a woman from having children.

Question 15

What was the hope for national differences?

Answer 15

The hope was that eventually national differences would fade away. However, they proved to be longer lasting than communism in the USSR.

Question 16

Why was Stalin considered an “expert on minority ethnic groups in Russia”?

Answer 16

Stalin wrote in 1913 a book entitled “Marxism and the National Question”. Because he was Georgian and not Russian he was soon to be considered something of an expert on minorty ethnic groups in Russia. In fact, he was happy to see Russia dominate the other national groups.

Question 17

What was the USSR described as after the Civil War?

Answer 17

A “federation of nationalities”.

Question 18

Why was it described as a “federation of nationalities”?

Answer 18

As it was made up of different self-governing groups that, together, formed one country. The very first census of the USSR was held in 1926 and it listed 172 distinct nationalities.

Question 19

Percentage of Russians in USSR population?

Answer 19

Only 55% of the population of the USSR was Russian.

Question 20

How many large nations in the USSR?

Answer 20

There were 15 large nations, each organised as a Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). All of these SSRs were regarded as being equals. All of them had significant minority populations within them.

Question 21

Name the 15 different Soviet Socialist Republics

Answer 21

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Russian SFSR, Tajikistan, Turkmenia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.

Question 22

What happened to different languages?

Answer 22

In the 1930s, promotion of non Russian languages and culture, which had once been communist policy, became considered a sign of disloyalty to the USSR.

Question 23

What happened to national minorities during the Great Terror?

Answer 23

During the Great Terror, leaders, teachers, writers and artists from national minorities were rounded up. There were even quotas for how many members of ethnic minorities should be arrested.

Question 24

What happened to groups by the mid 1930s?

Answer 24

In the mid 1930s, many groups were forcibly moved away from border areas. For example, in 1937, over 171,000 Koreans were deported from the border regions of the Russian Far East to central Asia. They ended up in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Many of their descendants are still there.

Question 25

What happened to Polish people in September 1939?

Answer 25

When the USSR invaded eastern Poland in September 1939 as part of a deal with Nazi Germany. About 1 million Polish people were arrested and sent to the Gulag.

Question 26

What happened to the Baltic Countries?

Answer 26

In the 1940s the USSR seized control over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. About 56,000 (mostly middle class) people were arrested and sent to labour camps

Question 27

What happened to Volga-Germans?

Answer 27

In 1941, when Germany invaded the USSR, the Volga Germans (who had lived in Russia since the 18th century) were arrested and exiled to Siberia and Central Asia, where huge numbers died.

Question 28

What happened to Finns?

Answer 28

About 89,000 Finns were deported to Kazakhstan.

Question 29

Why was the state suspicious of these minorities?

Answer 29

The communist government was particularly worried about the loyalty of Finns and Poles living in the USSR as Finland and Poland shared borders with the USSR.

Question 30

What about minorities deep within the USSR?

Answer 30

It was feared they would become too independent of the government in Moscow. They were denounced as ‘Bourgeois Nationalists’.

Question 31

Were the Communists religious?

Answer 31

No.Communists were atheists, and opposed all forms of religion.

Question 32

Why did the Orthodox Church face opposition from the communists?

Answer 32

Since 1917, the Orthodox Church had faced pressure from the communists because they supported the tsar and the Whites in the Civil War.

Question 33

What happened to the Orthodox Church?

Answer 33

Many churches were shut down. Priests were shot or imprisoned and persecution increased as Stalin tried to wipe out religion in the USSR.

Question 34

Was the State able to completely destroy the Orthodox Church?

Answer 34

By 1941, only 500 churches remained open compared to the 54,000 in 1914. However, despite the persecution, the communists were not able to destroy the Orthodox Church because too many citizens of the USSR remained members.

Question 35

Was Islam attacked?

Answer 35

Muslims too found themselves under attack. This especially impacted Sufi groups in the southern republics. However, anyone