Life in the Soviet Union + Women + Ethnic Minorities Flashcards
Did housing conditions improve from 1928 to 1939?
Yes - but basic conditions and limited in space (families restricted to 1or 2 rooms)
Did working conditions improve from 1928 to 1939?
- 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
What was housing like in towns after industrialisation?
- Workers often lived in barracks
- Many families shared communal housing
What was food like in towns after industrialisation?
- 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
What were working conditions in towns like after industrialisation?
- Little concern about worker safety
- Unauthorised time off and lateness was severely punished
BUT - Better pay then rural workers
What was personal freedom like in the towns after industrialisation?
- Internal passports restricted movement
- Secret police kept close control over everyone’s lives
What was personal freedom like in the countryside after industrialisation?
- Collective farm workers were the lowest social group
- Internal passports aimed to keep farmers in place
- Thousands tried to escape to the countryside
What were working conditions like in the countryside after industrialisation?
- Working life was very hard with very few rewards
- Farm workers worked as little/slowly as possible
What was food like in the countryside after industrialisation?
- Collective farm workers had very low rations
- Most depended on their garden plots for food
What was housing like in the countryside after collectivisation?
- Housing remained very basic
- Cramped, little space
What was it like to be in the Communist Party around 1939?
- 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
Why did Stalin want birth rates to be high
Because he wanted a growing population for industrialisation
Why did Stalin make divorce harder?
didn’t like some of the social impacts that came with easy divorces - gangs of unruly children on streets
Why were changes for women generally negative?
Because most of the Communist Party was male, and generally still believed that women were not their equals
What were the four main changes in the position of women after 1936?
- Control of abortion (banned in 1936) + contraception (hard to obtain)
- Incentives for women to have more children (6+ rewarded)
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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)
why was the Zhenotdel ablolished
- 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
What was the socialist theory on nationalism
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
what were the 5 stages in the Treatment of ethnic minorities
- 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
What were the main reasons for Stalin’s persecution of the ethnic minorities?
- 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
