LENIN SOCIETY Flashcards
THE CLASSLESS SOCIETY
Since Marxism teaches that society evolves through class struggles, it is not surprising that the Bolshevik revolution was accompanied by an active campaign against the Class enemies of the proletariat, in whose name the revolution was fought. These were collectively known as the burzhui, and they were subject to rough treatment. With the official abolition of the ‘class hierarchy’ in November 1917, titles and privileges disappeared and everyone became
a plain citizen’ or while Party members could be addressed as comrade. Those identified as former nobility or bourgeoisie were not allowed to work, were forced to undertake menial tasks, such as road-sweeping, and had their houses requisitioned and turned into communal houses for the workers.
This class warfare was extended to rationing during the civil war.
Allocations depended on work-value, with workers and soldiers receiving the most, essential civil servants and professionals, such as doctors, a lower rate and burzhui barely enough to survive on. Some managed to get through by selling their possessions but sometimes middle-class girls turned to prostitution.
There was something of a reprieve in the class battle when the
NEP was brought in, in 1921. This more capitalist policy was an admission that Soviet Russia still needed bourgeois specialists’ in the interests of economic growth.
It did not, however, halt the campaign against the bourgeois ‘way of life’ and with Stalin’s decision to halt the NEP men attacks, continued in earnest through the 1930s and beyond.
The communists wanted to create a new socialist man; the type of man who was
publicly engaged and committed to the community This ‘socialist man’ would have a sense of social responsibility and would willingly give service to the State - in the factory, on the fields or in battle. In all policies, both in the time of Lenin and of Stalin, there was always this agenda.
Whether it was in land reorganisation or the building of new industrial city complexes, the outcome had to be an environment in which the socialist man’ could flourish; one where the community took
precedence over the individual.
‘Proletarianisation’ was an important step in the creation of the ‘socialist man’ and yet life was far from paradise for the workers. After a brief spell of worker-power, both in the factories and on the land in the early months of Bolshevik rule, labour discipline was tightened and that early ‘freedom’ never returned.
During the civil war,
internal passports were issued to stop workers leaving their employment.
By 1921 workers could be imprisoned or shot if they failed to meet targets and unions became a means of keeping the workers under control The harsh living and working conditions experienced in Leninist times persisted throughout the NEP.
THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE ON WOMEN
One of the greatest social changes to take place after 1917 was a change in the position of women. Soviet propaganda extolled the new liberation which communism, with its doctrine of
equality, offered, although as was so often the case, the propaganda did not tell quite the full story.
THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE ON WOMEN
EARLY POLICIES
The role of the predominantly peasant women before the revolution had primarily been to attend to household tasks and children, although they had also been expected to play their part in farming and the small-scale domestic economy. They had been without legal privileges and, for example, had no inheritance rights.
The revolution changed all this. In November 1917, the new government decreed
against sex discrimination and gave women the right to own property.
THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE ON WOMEN
Further decrees followed:
6
- Church influence was removed by recognising only civil marriage
- Divorce was made caster and less expensive
- In 1920 abortion was legalise, to protect against the high mortality rates produced by illegal abortions.
- Free contraceptive advice was provided.
- A new family code in 1926 gave women in common law marriages, the same rights as those who underwent the civil ceremony.
- In 1928, wedding rings were banned.
THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE ON WOMEN
Women were not only given the right to work in paid employment/they were expected to work - and indeed most did. This is where the advertised equality disguised reality because most women found themselves not only working on the land or, increasingly, in factories and offices, but also coping with attending to all the household tasks and the family’s needs - which meant
spending a considerable number of non-working hours in food queues. Girls were given the same educational rights as boys, which enabled a minority to obtain qualifications and careers not previously open to women. But for most the double burden of work and home made for a grim life of constant toil.
RELIGION
Marx had described religion as the opium of the people, used to justify the power of the upper classes over the people.
However, Lenin did not see the Church as a threat and allowed freedom of religious worship after the October Revolution. He accepted that the largely atheistic Bolshevik minority were surrounded by an overwhelmingly Christian Orthodox majority and that toleration was the best policy.
Nevertheless, a good deal of propaganda was used to applaud the secular society and changes took place in the position of the Church within the State:
Church lands, for example, were seized in 1917, when private ownership of land was declared illegal and, in accordance with educational policies,
Church schools and seminaries were taken over by the State.
The decree on civil marriage and the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was followed by the official separation of church and State in 1918.
EDUCATION
Education was seen as crucial in building a socialist society and Lenin set up the Commissariat of the Enlightenment, which provided for free education at all levels in coeducational schools. The old secondary Gimnazii were abolished and replaced by
new secondary schools which combined general education with vocational training.
At both primary and secondary level traditional learning was combined with physical work.
During the 1920s, most schools abolished textbooks and examinations.
This was largely because there were insufficient textbooks written within a communist framework; however, a fair amount of freedom, creativity and individualism was permitted and physical punishment was banned.
YOUTH ORGANISATIONS
A Russian young communist league (RKSM) was formed in 1918 for those aged 14-21, and this was extended in the early 1920s to become the youth division of the Communist Party. Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, who had been made
Commissar for Education, took a particularly active role in these developments and in the establishment of a junior section in 1922, the Pioneers, for children from ten years old.
RELIGION
Deprived of rations, hundreds of priests lost their lives during the years of war communism.
The Church suffered a good deal from desecration. Church bells were
seized during the civil war, officially to be melted down to raise funds for famine relief, while diligent communist officials had a field day in exposing the Churches sacred relics as fakes, and keen members of Komsomol ransacked churches to show their commitment to socialist teaching.
NATIONAL MINORITIES
The Bolsheviks had come to power with the support of the ethnic minorities, to whom they had promised national self-determination - a pledge fulfilled by their decree of November 1917. However, this encouraged separatist movements, particularly in Finland, the Baltic and the Caucasus. In December 1917, Finland opted to become
an independent state, whilst an elected rada (parliament) was set up in the Ukraine.
Whether or not to force the integration of the minorities provoked heated debate within the Party. In this, Lenin stood by his principles throughout, although in the difficult circumstances of the civil war, the regime could not afford to lose the Ukraine or Georgia (and Stalin did not hesitate to repress harshly the attempts at independence in his native province.)
CULTURAL CHANGE
In the early years after the October Revolution, cultural enterprise flourished in the new, freer atmosphere the Bolsheviks brought. Although Lenin was personally a traditionalist, freedom of expression was
encouraged, provided that art was not used to express counter-revolutionary sentiments.
This stimulated artistic creativity and innovation and the 1920s became known as the silver age of Russian literature and poetry. The world of music also enjoyed new experimentation, inspired by the revolutionary spirit of the era.
