Lesson 4-What was life like in China's Great Communes?

Question 1

Define commune.

Answer 1

Organised regions were collectives were grouped

Question 2

What are the Ten Guarantees?

Answer 2

Guarantees of:
Meals
Clothes
Housing
Schooling
Medical attention
Burial
Haircuts
Theatrical entertainment
Money for heating in winter
Money for weddings

Question 3

What are Happiness Homes?

Answer 3

Homes for elderly set up in communes

Question 4

Define irrigation.

Answer 4

The agricultural process of applying controlled amounts of water to land to assist in the production of crops

Question 5

What is Utopian Socialism?

Answer 5

Socialism reached by persuading Capitalists to share their wealth for the greater good.

Question 6

Define abolition.

Answer 6

Bring to an end of ban

Question 7

What is Lysenkoism?

Answer 7

The Soviet theories of improved crop yields which earned the support of Joseph Stalin.

Question 8

What is Sparrowcide?

Answer 8

The extermination of sparrows is also known as the smash sparrows campaign

Question 9

Define Agit-Prop.

Answer 9

Political (originally Communist) propaganda, especially in art or literature.

Question 10

What is Four Pests Campaign?

Answer 10

One of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows.

Question 11

What were peasants in communes divided into?

Answer 11

Production brigades

Question 12

Where were peasants brought together in communes?

Answer 12

Communal canteens and dormitories

Question 13

Who were peasants working lives dictated by in communes?

Answer 13

New management teams

Question 14

Give examples of industrial enterprises communes would organise.

Answer 14

Flour mills
Brick works
Tool repair workshops
Backyard furnaces

Question 15

Communes were meant to be a unit for a local government and would take over responsibility for providing what local services?

Answer 15

Education
Public health
Policing
Militia
Childcare
Canteen facilities

Question 16

What was the communes providing local services meant to do for women?

Answer 16

Free them up so they could work

Question 17

What were parents encouraged to abandon in favour of?

Answer 17

Bourgeois emotional attachments in favour of a regimented lifestyle where they worked for long hours purely for communal good.

Question 18

What did freeing peasants from domestic responsibilities mean?

Answer 18

They could be redeployed to work on projects.

Question 19

Give examples of projects peasants were freed from domestic responsibilities to work on.

Answer 19

Water conservancy
Irrigation schemes
Building new roads or bridges

Question 20

What was there some talk of in communes?

Answer 20

Utopian Socialism and moving away from a monetary economy

Question 21

What did some communes claim to provide?

Answer 21

Ten Guarantees

Question 22

Once the countryside had been transformed by communal living, what was planned next?

Answer 22

That communal living should be extended to cities

Question 23

Unlike the collective where membership had been voluntary, peasants had no choice but to be put into the commune.
True or false?

Answer 23

True

Question 24

What happened to a peasant’s private property after they had been put into the commune?

Answer 24

They had to surrender all of it without compensation.

Question 25

Because there was no need to farm for private need since private farming was abolished, who was food provided by in the communes?

Answer 25

The government provided food within the communes centrally.

Question 26

Under the collectives what was issued for good work?

Answer 26

Work points

Question 27

Why were work points pointless in the communes?

Answer 27

The state were providing equally for the needs of the people within the communes.

Question 28

What did the removal of work points mean in the communes?

Answer 28

There was a reduced incentive to work as rewards were the same regardless.

Question 29

Who were workers compelled to work by to some extent?

Answer 29

Team leaders

Question 30

How did communes have increased control?

Answer 30

Had a military element.

Question 31

Give an example of how communes included a military element.

Answer 31

People were being placed into militia to be trained between ages of 15-50

Question 32

Who was Lysenkoism named after?

Answer 32

Trofirm Lysenko

Question 33

Who was Trofirm Lysenko?

Answer 33

Ukrainian agricultural scientist

Question 34

When had Stalin relied on the theories on Lysenko?

Answer 34

In the aftermath of the Russian famine of the early 1930s

Question 35

What did Mao do in 1958, in regards to Lysenkoism?

Answer 35

Made it an official policy and drafted it in an eight-point programme based on his ideas

Question 36

Give examples of some of Lysenko’s common sense ideas.

Answer 36

Development of new farm tools
Use of new breeds of seeds
Improved field management
Increased irrigation

Question 37

Which ideas of Lysenko were potentially dangerous when actioned together?

Answer 37

Close planting
Deep ploughing
Increased fertilisation
Pest control

Question 38

What idea of Lysenko was the most obviously catastrophic?

Answer 38

Pest control

Question 39

Why was pest control most obviously catastrophic?

Answer 39

Focused on killing birds to prevent them eating seeds.
This upset the ecological balance, leading to a growth in insects.

Question 40

How did peasants kill birds (sparrows) to prevent them from eating seeds?

Answer 40

Peasants wasted hours banging pots and pans together in order to prevent them from landing, until they fell exhausted from the sky

Question 41

What happened as a result of growing insects?

Answer 41

Locusts and other vermin like rats multiplied and destroyed grain stocks

Question 42

What did the focus on increased fertilisation lead to?

Answer 42

The destruction of thousands of peasants houses.

Question 43

Why were peasants houses destroyed because of the focus on increased fertilisation?

Answer 43

They were ploughed into the ground as the animal dung used to build the walls was deemed to be useful for fertilisation

Question 44

What happened to the peasants whose houses were destroyed?

Answer 44

Thousands of peasants sought accommodation wherever they could find it.

Question 45

How did some of the daily duties of communal living impact the lives of those who lived in them?

Answer 45

Not allowed to cook at home-forced to use collective canteens
Food given out according to merit
Underwent military training everyday
Each morning chief would decide when day started and ended

Question 46

How did work points impact daily life in communes?

Answer 46

Notion of wages disappeared
If you were not on attendance list, your work points would be taken away-leading to less food

Question 47

How has their been competition between communes?

Answer 47

Awards ceremonies for best performing communes

Launching a satellite-led to falsification of figures

Certain communes claiming to have created a few tonnes of steel a da

Question 48

How was the apparently ‘successful’ harvest of 1958?

Answer 48

Lying at all levels of the party

Lots of talk amongst the party about lots of good but at a local level there clearly was a problem

Area like Danchen which was fertile had little crops

Tax paid by cadres in grain- all the amount harvested taken due to falsified figures

Question 49

Give examples of suffering as a result of the spring harvest of 1959.

Answer 49

Eating tree bark

Villager eating white mice

Adult collapsing whilst trying to eat bean paste, dying with food still in his mouth

Entitled to 250 kilograms a day- cadres took more than share

Severely beaten and attacked for stealing food

Sexual exploitation