Living and working conditions

Question 1

What was housing like under alex III for industrial workers?

Answer 1

Urbanization meant public health issues. Not enough housing being built after 1897. When it was built it was cheap and built quickly.

Question 2

What was housing like under Nic II for industrial workers?

Answer 2

1910 100,000 killed by cholera in St Petersburg, 1911 sewerage system introduced . 1914 only 38 towns had a sewerage system, 74 towns had electricity.
Some workers lived and slept by their factory machines. In 1904 the average St Petersburg apartment housed 16 people and 6 per room
Workers barracks were built and overcrowded and unsanitary leaded in workers sharing bunk beds. Skilled workers were better off as they could afford to rent private rooms but on the whole factory workers experienced some of the worst living conditions

Question 3

What was housing like under Lenin for industrial workers?

Answer 3

Bolsheviks focused on housing. Took housing from private owners and given to the proletariat.

Question 4

What was housing like for industrial workers under Stalin?

Answer 4

1930s, 25% of population in Moscow lived in 1 room, shared between 2 households. 5% of people living in bathrooms, kitchen and hallways. WW2 over 25 million Russians became homeless. Built high rise communal living spaces (tenements) . Built homes on edge of collective farms.
However most social projects were put on hold to focus on Five Year Plans

Question 5

What was housing like under Khrushchev for industrial workers?

Answer 5

Housing programmed built cheaply and quickly. Housing stock doubled between 1955 and 1964. Some workers benefitted more than others through housing cooperatives
Housing income rose by 3% per annum (1960-1965)

Question 6

What was housing like for rural people under Nic II?

Answer 6

In the countryside, people lived in a wooden hut called a Izbau. Overcrowded and co-habited with animals. Start of WW1 half of housing constructed of wood. Poor by modern standards

Question 7

What was housing like for rural population under Khrushchev?

Answer 7

Self-contained agro-towns on the edge of farms.
Principle of communal living abandoned.
Overall little was done by any Russia leader to aid improvements to rural housing

Question 8

How was food supply under Alex III?

Answer 8

1891 adverse weather resulted in half the provinces of Russia having food shortages.
Government partly responsible for through heavy taxation of consumer goods, forcing peasants to sell more grain. 350,000 died from disease or starvation. In response AII banned exports of grain and set up committee on famine relief.
Provincial governments coped well

Question 9

How was food supply under Nic II?

Answer 9

Food shortages during WW1 due to failure to transport food from countryside, not down to lack of food. Food shortages in cities important in causing unrest against Nicholas.

Question 10

How was food supply under Lenin?

Answer 10

Food crisis in 1918 about grain requisitioning. Violent protests by peasants and resisting signing up to collectives. 1920 Cheka and Red Army ordered to seize all food supplies not just surplus. 1921 famine caused by severe weather and draughts. Exacerbated by almost complete shut down of railways due to the Civil War. Over 5 million died. Lenin had Cheka arrest and exile foreign aid workers.

Question 11

What was food supply like under Stalin?

Answer 11

1932-4 ‘man made’ famine. Most disastrous famine due to collectivization and poor harvests. Up to 5 million dead, but could be up to 10
Death penalty for stealing grain. Peasants who at their own corn were shot.
Cattle froze to death, and peasants killed them when the state came to take them away.
Discussion of grain crisis was banned as Stalin denied a food problem existed

Question 12

What were working conditions like for industrial workers under Alex III?

Answer 12

1890s real wages decreasing. 1882 employment of children under 12 made illegal. 1896 maximum working days of 11 hours imposed.
No factory inspectorate until 1882

Question 13

What were working conditions like for industrial workers under Nic II?

Answer 13

Witte’s ‘Great Spurt’ increased number of industrial workers rapidly. Aim was to get money out of peasants to pay for industrialization. Stolypin’s reforms 1906 reflected his view of peasants being just an exploitable class.
1914- 9-10 hour working day was the norm
1903 workers insurance scheme
But wages were low and employment insecure, in Moscow there was a daily market where workers were hired for just a day

Question 14

What were working conditions like for industrial workers under the Prov Gov?

Answer 14

Their decision to stay in the war meant improvements like wage rises and 8 hour working days were put off until after the war. Failure to help workers increased worker unhappiness, leading to October Revolution.

Question 15

What were the working conditions like for industrial workers under Lenin?

Answer 15

Putilov workers strike sparked rebellion. Dictatorship of proletariat. By start of Civil War, over half of Petrograd’s industrial workforce was unemployed. Needed to make ammunitions in Civil War. Low pay, conditions poor.

Question 16

What were the working conditions like for industrial workers under Stalin?

Answer 16

Ethos of collective work towards ideal communist world. Five Year Plans – terrible conditions. Discipline and fines for being late or ‘wrecking’. 10 million peasants died under collectivization. By 1930s 1.5 million workers promoted to managerial positions. First 5 Year Plan wages fell by 50%.
1932 average working day was 10-12 hours (for the first Five Year Plan)
But by 1939 this had gone down to 7 hours
Bonus schemes for workers popularised through the Stakhanovism movement

Question 17

What were working conditions like for industrial workers under Khrushchev?

Answer 17

1955 minimum wage introduced. No significant improvement in workers rights. 1958 7 hour working day the norm
Wages only reach 1920 levels in 1954

Question 18

What was education like under Alex II?

Answer 18

1864 put Zemstva in charge of elementary education among wider educational reforms. 1877 school inspections introduced. Tolstoy manipulated school curriculum to exclude ‘lower class children’.

Question 19

What was education like under Alex III?

Answer 19

Banned ‘lower class’ children from secondary schools. Elections to university councils were changed to an appointment system. Whips used to disperse university demonstrations.

Question 20

What was education like under Nic II?

Answer 20

Stolypin made all non-academic meetings at university illegal. Duma made plans for education reforms.

Question 21

What was education like under Lenin?

Answer 21

1918 Church schools handed over to local Soviets to run. Bolsheviks scrapped traditional grammar schools and replaced with polytechnic vocational courses. Abortion legalized 1926.

Question 22

What was education like under Stalin?

Answer 22

Made education for under 12s compulsory in 1930. From 8 million children in primary schools in 1929 to 18 million in 1930. Religious teaching replaced by revolutionary concepts. 1931-2 14.4 million increase in children in secondary schools. 1944 Distinction to Mother Heroines rewarded women for 10+ children.

Question 23

What was education like under Khrushchev?

Answer 23

Scrapped school fees which had been introduced in 1939. Continued polytechnic education.
Education generally fairer under Communists, although both use education to prepare population for their ‘station’ in life.

Question 24

What was the result of WW2 on living conditions?

Answer 24

over 25 million Russians were made homeless

Question 25

What reasons explains why the period was characterised by famines?

Answer 25

Tendency towards monoculture (grain)
Restrictive policies of the mir, for instance the insistence on growing certain crops
Severe weather conditions
Government policies e.g. grain requisitioning and collectivisation

Question 26

What were the impacts of WW1 on food shortages?

Answer 26

Bread queues over 8 hours became the norm, peasants hoarded food.
Food crisis of 1918 as valuable land had been lost due to the Treaty of Brest Litovsk so Bolsheviks introduced grain requestioning (taking food and grain surpluses from peasants and distributing it among those in towns an cities)

Question 27

What was a characteristic of famines?

Answer 27

Leaders were blamed for their long time to respond or accept aid e.g. Lenin took ages/ showed reluctance to accept aid from the American Relief Administration

Question 28

What was the diet of industrial workers like under Stalin?

Answer 28

By the late 1930s the consumption of meat and fish had fallen by 80%

Question 29

What was the impact of WW2 on food supplies?

Answer 29

Policy of collectivisation was relaxed.
Removal of restrictions on size of private plots of land, so food production rose.
However this was short-lived as another famine took place in 1947

Question 30

What is the general pattern of famine throughout the period?

Answer 30

Adherence to a policy of subsidised “socialised agriculture” simply led to inefficiency and a situation whereby the demand for food in Russia always outstripped the ability of farmers to meet it

Question 31

What was the difference in working conditions for peasants under tsars vs communists?

Answer 31

Before, they were able to control the pace at which they worked and how much they produced. The only restrictions were placed by the mir.
But before communism, Russian agriculture was simply based on achieving subsistence levels

Question 32

How did working hours differ between tsars and communists?

Answer 32

Sometimes employers under the Tsars found loopholes in the law and pushed workers to work longer hours. Under the communists working hours were strictly controlled by the state

Question 33

What were living conditions like for industrial workers under K?

Answer 33

50% owned a washing machine, books, and public transport cheaper than the West and TV but only 10% had a telephone

Question 34

How did the constitutions of 1924 and 1936 help working conditions?

Answer 34

ensured workers age, health and unemployment insurance

Question 35

What were the reforms made to living conditions of rural population under Nic II?

Answer 35

Stolypin’s Reforms number of primary schools between 1905 and 1914 doubled and zemstva expenditure on health, poor relief and agricultural support doubled between 1906 and 1912

Question 36

What were living and working conditions like under the Prov gov in petrograd?

Answer 36

Cost of living rose by 1400% between 1913 and 1917
Real wages fell between 10-60% from January to October