Life in the Soviet Union + Women + Ethnic Minorities

Question 1

Did housing conditions improve from 1928 to 1939?

Answer 1

Yes - but basic conditions and limited in space (families restricted to 1or 2 rooms)

Question 2

Did working conditions improve from 1928 to 1939?

Answer 2

• Given holidays
• Given days off
• Given housing
• Given Healthcare
• Given free education
  BUT
• Trade Unions banned
• Often not allowed to change jobs
• Poor health and safety

Question 3

What was housing like in towns after industrialisation?

Answer 3

• Workers often lived in barracks
• Many families shared communal housing

Question 4

What was food like in towns after industrialisation?

Answer 4

• Food was rationed until 1935
• 4 grades of Rations - lowest grade did not include meat or fish
• Industrial workers received the highest grade of rationing

Question 5

What were working conditions in towns like after industrialisation?

Answer 5

• Little concern about worker safety
• Unauthorised time off and lateness was severely punished
  BUT
• Better pay then rural workers

Question 6

What was personal freedom like in the towns after industrialisation?

Answer 6

• Internal passports restricted movement
• Secret police kept close control over everyone’s lives

Question 7

What was personal freedom like in the countryside after industrialisation?

Answer 7

• Collective farm workers were the lowest social group
• Internal passports aimed to keep farmers in place
• Thousands tried to escape to the countryside

Question 8

What were working conditions like in the countryside after industrialisation?

Answer 8

• Working life was very hard with very few rewards
• Farm workers worked as little/slowly as possible

Question 9

What was food like in the countryside after industrialisation?

Answer 9

• Collective farm workers had very low rations
• Most depended on their garden plots for food

Question 10

What was housing like in the countryside after collectivisation?

Answer 10

• Housing remained very basic
• Cramped, little space

Question 11

What was it like to be in the Communist Party around 1939?

Answer 11

• More privilege
• Access to better housing, jobs and perks like holidays + access to leisure clubs
  BUT
• Still lived in fear of arrest or denunciation - under Stalin’s rule

Question 12

Why did Stalin want birth rates to be high

Answer 12

Because he wanted a growing population for industrialisation

Question 13

Why did Stalin make divorce harder?

Answer 13

didn’t like some of the social impacts that came with easy divorces - gangs of unruly children on streets

Question 14

Why were changes for women generally negative?

Answer 14

Because most of the Communist Party was male, and generally still believed that women were not their equals

Question 15

What were the four main changes in the position of women after 1936?

Answer 15

• Control of abortion (banned in 1936) + contraception (hard to obtain)
• Incentives for women to have more children (6+ rewarded)
• Stricter conditions for divorces:
  
  • high fees: 50 roubles for 1st, 150 for 2nd
  • child support cost: 25% of wages per child
• Abolition of the Zhenotdel (women’s section of Communist party)

Question 16

why was the Zhenotdel ablolished

Answer 16

• party leaders grew concerned that Zhenotdel organised groups (focused on issues concerning women) were a challenge to mainstream (male-dominated) communism
• Official reason: all women’s issues had been solved under socialism

Question 17

What was the socialist theory on nationalism

Answer 17

It said that proletarians were the same everywhere and that being a worker was more important than being Russian, Finn, Georgian etc.
Socialism was internationalist, not nationalist

Question 18

what were the 5 stages in the Treatment of ethnic minorities

Answer 18

• Early 1920s: ethnic minorities given rights + self-government, but under control of USSR
• Stalin, as Commissar for Nationalities encouraged national cultures
• Later 1920s: Nationalism became a problem - attempts to develop a Soviet nationalism
• 1930s: Stalin begins to suspect many non-Russian nationalities of being “enemies of the people”
• 1932-31:
  
  • purges of ethnic minorities begin
  • executions and forced exiles carried out

Question 19

What were the main reasons for Stalin’s persecution of the ethnic minorities?

Answer 19

• People were accused of ‘bourgeois nationalism’: putting their ethnic identities first. Soviet nationalism was encouraged
• Resistance to Collectivisation was often strongest where national identity was strongest e.g. Ukraine famine
• Stalin became convinced that certain ethnicities were enemies of the people, because of Civil War alliances or ties to other countries e.g. Germany, Korea