II - National Studies: Russia Flashcards
1
Q
Stalin’s impact on culture
A
- ‘The purpose of art and literature is to serve the people’ (Lenin).
- Under Stalin, culture was forced to compromise, conform and be censored. (3 c’s)
- ‘intelligible to the ordinary person’ (Stalin).
- happy, productive and accessible
- Union of Soviet Writers set up in 1934.
- more great intellectuals perished in the 1930s than survived
- poet Mandelstam mocked Stalin in a poem, he was forced into a gulag and died four years later. He said that ‘Only in Russia is poetry taken seriously, so seriously men are killed for it.’
- encouraged to emphasise Stalin as the ‘Supreme Genius of Humanity’
- Music composers such as Shostakovich were discouraged from producing the classical music rising in the West and were pushed to compose more tonal, emphasised melodies and constant rhythm.
2
Q
Stalin’s Impact on Religion
A
- All religious property was confiscated, 60 000+ churches, synagogues and mosques were closed down, church funds were nationalised, christian leaders were imprisoned, The ‘league of the godless’ smashed churches and burned religious pictures, pilgrimages to Mecca were banned, women were encouraged to unveil, the study of Hebrew was banned and the Russia Orthodox Church was heavily targeted which led to peasant revolts.
- 50 million Soviet citizens in the 1937 census declared themselves ‘religious’.
3
Q
Stalin’s Impact on Women
A
- Divorce was made more difficult to attain, abortion severely restricted, homosexuality outlawed and family declared to be the basis of Soviet society.
- The Zhenotdel was allowed to lapse in 1930.
- ‘‘housewives’ movement’, established in 1936, which aimed to ‘civilise workers’.
4
Q
Stalin’s Impact on Education
A
- Stalin also gave free access to education for every child and made 10 years compulsory. Those attending school increased from 12 million (1929) to 35 million (1940).
5
Q
Stalin’s Impact on people’s lives and standard of living
A
- Starvation and famine were widespread and the national famine of 1932-1933 killed between 10 and 15 million.
- The level of real wages fell while living standards were lower in 1937 than in 1928.
- Displaced peasants contributed to overcrowding, housing shortages and a decrease in living standards.
- The purges and show trials of the 1930s, the ‘Great Terror’ (Yezhovshchina), led to the humiliation, imprisonment and death of millions of Soviets.
- The totalitarian state introduced by Stalin meant that the state controlled every aspect of society including mass communication, the economy and freedom of speech, movement and religion.
6
Q
Quote, collectivisation causing suffering
A
- Mark Tauger ‘‘The collectivisation of Soviet agriculture in the 1930s may have been the most significant and traumatic of the many transformations to which the Communist regime subjected the people of the former Russian empire.’
7
Q
Five Year Plans (in general)
A
- Stalin ‘Russia is fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years.’
- Ambitious targets sometimes 400% growth required.
- Targets of a 250% increase in overall industrial development and a 330% expansion in heavy industry alone.
8
Q
First Five Year Plan (1928 - 1933)
A
- focused on industries such as coal, iron, steel and electricity to manufacture heavy industries such as ships, railways, factories and to establish sources of raw materials (mining) to feed those factories.
9
Q
Second Five Year Plan (1933 - 1938)
A
- was to focus on production of consumer goods for the workers and peasants as an incentive to increase their production.
10
Q
Third Five Year Plan (1938)
A
- was to begin in late 1938, and did so, but was interrupted by the need to prepare for war and never met its targets.
11
Q
Collectivisation 1928
A
- NEP abandoned
- aimed at eliminating private ownership of land, creating a more efficient system.
- Peasants forced off land onto large collectives (Kolkhoz) or state farms (Sovkhoz)
- Machinery Tractor Systems (MTS) set up to school farmers in modern systems. Peasants resisted the destruction of their traditional life.
- Countryside descended into a virtual civil war as peasants burnt their crops and slaughtered their animals.
- Dekulakisation
- failed to meet the surplus Stalin demanded
- National famine 1932-33 killed 10-15 million
- Orlando Figes ‘The collective farms were a dismal failure’.
- The grain harvest declined from 73.3 million tons in 1928 (which was a low point) to 71.7 million in 1929.
12
Q
Major Industrial Achievements
A
- Russia grew faster than any other nation in the 1930s.
- By 1939, the Soviet Union succeeded in overtaking the other major European powers in terms of industrial output.
- Dnieper Dam - became the largest Soviet power plant at the time and the third-largest in the world.
- Magnitogorsk - a one-industry town modeled after two of the most advanced steel-producing cities in the US at that time - Gary and Pittsburgh, hundreds of foreign experts streamed in.
- White Sea-Baltic Canal - ship canal opened in 1933, forced labor of gulag inmates, up to 250 000 deaths (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
13
Q
Five Year Plans impact on people and living standards
A
- 1000s died each year from exposure, disease and mishap.
- Hard work was encouraged by paying workers based on what they produced (piecework) and exceptional workers received adoration, medals, better pay and superior housing.
- Displaced peasants contributed to overcrowding, housing shortages and a decrease in living standards.
- The level of real wages fell while living standards were lower in 1937 than in 1928. 9 years of massive growth, but nothing for the workers.
- Wage gap with introduction of different pays.
14
Q
Stalinism
A
- Elite nomenklatura -group of intellectuals that make decisions. Stalin’s version of Lenin’s vanguard. Dictatorship with the government representing the majority but prepared to use force to control the minority that opposed it.
- Totalitarianism: State controlled every aspect of society including: mass communication, the economy, freedom of speech, movement, and religion.
- Totalitarianism: merciless crushing of all opposition, no other political parties were tolerated, the OGPU (secret police) purges and labour camps dealt with any internal opposition.
15
Q
Purges 1930s
A
- KGB files revealed the following: executed - 1 million, died in labour camps - 2 million, in prison, late 1938 - 1 million, in labour camps late 1938 - 8 million
- ‘Great Terror’ - Yezhovshchina.
- First victims were managers and workers accused of wrecking the first Five-Year Plan, kulaks and ordinary party members accused of incorrect attitudes.
- 99% of Stalin’s victims were innocent
- Stalin ‘Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.’
- 18 million people were sent to the gulags from 1930 to 1953
16
Q
Purges (of party)
A
- 1935 - Senior communists arrested: 1108 out of 1966 delegates 17th Congress, 98 out of 139 members of the Central Committee, anyone who supported Trotsky. Thousands were denounced and expelled.
17
Q
Reasons for Stalin’s purges
A
- helped the economy due to more labour
- took away opposition (persecution complex: CP Snow, Stalin believed everyone was plotting against him)
- Snowball effect
18
Q
Show Trials 1936
A
- Kamenev and Zinoviev some of the first tried for the ‘murder of Kirov and plotting to kill Stalin.’
- Many confessed because they were physically and psychologically tortured by the Secret Police and their families were threatened with imprisonment or death.
