Impact of industrialisation on soviet society Flashcards
Peasants - positive impact of industrialisation for them
Black market thrived - allowed people to get consumer goods that they needed.
Peasants - negative impact of industrialisation for them
More money put into heavy industry, less focus on light industry (consumer goods) - shortages of consumer goods 1928-41.
Poor healthcare
Collectivisation
Why did large numbers of peasants move from the countryside to the cities?
To escape collectivisation
1926-1932 - urban population grew from 26 million to 38.7 million.
Workers - positive impact of industrialisation for them
New factories built - creates more jobs
Improved transport - resources needed could more quickly and easily be transported to factories.
1935 - Stalin authorised higher payments and system of rewards for most productive workers.
STAKHANOVITES - workers who were extremely productive - allowed to reorganise their workplaces to increase productivity, given higher pay, educated workers in most effective ways of working.
Black market thrived - allowed people to get consumer goods they needed.
Workers - negative impact of industrialisation on them
Longer hours - forced to work seven day weeks (particularly before 1935)
Low pay (particularly before 1935)
Lack of incentives in the system (particularly before 1935)
Harsh working conditions
STAKHANOVITES - often resented by colleges
Purges of industrial managers, economic planners and officials - terror - lots of pressure to achieve ridiculously high targets set by GOSPLAN.
More money put into heavy industry - light industry suffer - shortages of consumer goods 1928-1941.
Rationing
Increase in urban workforce e.g. 1929 - only 25 people living at Magnitogorsk, 1932 - 250,000 people living there.
Necessary housing never built
Most houses built did not have running water.
Majority lived in wooden shacks, tents or mud huts.
Lateness and absenteeism criminalised
Internal passports - workers could not move from town to town looking for better jobs.
No bath house available for the 650,000 people in Lyubertsy district of Moscow.
Women - positive impact of industrialisation for them
Black market thrived - could get consumer goods
Encouraged women into work - 1927 - only 28% workforce = women, 1937 - 40% industrial workforce = women.
Women - negative impacts of industrialisation for them
Focus on heavy industry, not light industry - shortages of essential consumer goods.
Convict labour - positive impact of industrialisation for them
Rates of industrial growth demanded by Stalin could not have been achieved without the use of forced labour by GULAG prisoners - important to industrialisation - sense of achievement.
Convict labour - negative impacts of industrialisation for them
1929 - 1953 - expansion of labour camps - 18 million prisoners passed through the system.
Appalling working conditions - gave it the nickname ‘the meat grinder’
Huge numbers of prisoners died whilst working on industrial projects e.g. the VOLGA DON CANAL and the WHITE SEA CANAL.
WHITE SEA CANAL project - 18,000 prisoners worked on it, winter of 1931-32 - 10,000 prisoners died.
