Russia T2 Flashcards
Urban Housing/Living conditions = Tsar
Tsars -
16 people in single st petersburg apartment room on average
Cholera outbreak every 3 yrs in St Petersburg, 1913 Tsar daughter got Cholera, 1908-09 30,000 died of cholera. 1/2 of all housing constructed of wood
In 1914 over 1000 towns containing 2 million buildings = 74 towns had access to electricity and 35 to gas, 200 towns had piped water, 38 had sewer system
Worker housing built on site of factory, hastily built, overcrowded and insanitary. Shift systems led to families sharing bunk beds.
Urban Housing/Living conditions = Communist
Lenin =
Decree on peace - aimed to improve housing, dwellings in towns and cities were to be taken from owners then redistributed by the soviets - some improvemnet but short lived
Stalin =
Allocate space rather than rooms, overcrowding = 25% living in a room shared with 2 or more households, 25% lived in communal dormitories, 5% lived in a bathroom, kitchen, corridor, or hallway
Living space fell = 1905 8.5sqm to 5.8Sqm in 1935. New high rise buildings build but bathrooms and kitchens still shared
Khrushchev - Khrushchevka’s
Housing being built, living standards going up as people prefered to stay in rather than attended political meetings. However skilled workers could afford a deposit easier and those in cooperatives were given first pickings
Rural Housing
Tsar =
Izba - Single room wooden hut that was heated by an oven, was also used to house animals. Overcrowed, cold, damp and grubby and smelly
Stalin - Special housing blocks constructed on the periphery of collective farms
Khrushchev - Agro-towns, built quickly and cheaply, continued to be overcrowded and public health consequences.
Rural Work
Natures clock - dictated what tasks were to be completed, Mir’s could place restrictions - Success depended on quality of soil, weather, and skill of farmer.
5 policies infuenced conditions - Emancipation, land captains, Grain req, Collectivisation, Virgin lands.
Bolsheviks = They now dictated how much to farm and what methods they would use
Collectivisation - required peasants to work cooperatively. They were also set targets, usually unachievable. Investment was made in new agricultural techniques and technology to boost productivity - the tractor was heralded as a major breakthrough but used with mixed success.
Urban Work - Tsar
Under all russian rulers conditions were long hours and low pay, and women earned less for the same job
Tsar -
before 1882 no factory inspectorate, working conditions dangerous and unhealthy especially textiles.
Post 1882 impact of inspectorates was limited - too few in number and had limited enforcement. Evidence = despite legislation child labour was still used, employers found loopholes to work longer than statutory hours.
low pay was offset by intro of workers insurance system of 1903 (improved in 1912)
1882 - child labour under 12 banned, 1896 - 11hr day limit and not obliged to work Sunday
Urban Work - Communists
1920 - Rabkrin - Talking shop rather than an effective body that enforces law
Worker hours controlled by the State
Long hours, low pay and subject to harsh discipline un1der new work discipline
Women and children treated more severly than men = Punishments = fines and threat of being purged
Wage differentials increased under stalin as a result of piece-rate payments
However there were improvements - Schemes against ill-health, old age and unemployment were introduced in 1924 and 1936
Low pay was offset by intro of workers’ bonus scheme popularised by stakhanovite movement where extra payments were given to workers for exceeding their individual quotas
After 1928-1932 1st 5yr plan real wages fell by 50% they rose again but not until 1954 that they reached the levels of early 1920s
Economic Change - Stalin
Needed to catch up with the west or perish - “we must make good this distance in ten years”
Gosplan - Initial targets set by party officials. Industrial commissariats - Targets were conveyed to industrial commissariats to form a plan. Regional managers - Implement the plans
Targets based on flimsy research and had little guidance
Five Year Plans
Five Year Plans -
First - Significant increase in output of heavy industry - engineering industry especially production of machine tools and turbines. Magnitogorsk. Tractors for agriculture. Consumer goods neglected, Small specialst workshops disappeared, shortage of skilled workers and dramatic shortfall in some industries e.g. chemicals
Second - Electricity took off, Engineering became self sufficient, Transport and communications put in place, chemical industy catch up, Specialised training schemes, Targets scaled down. Consumer goods continued to decline however some flourished - shoes, meat packaging and ice cream
Third - A notable increase in quality and quantity of armaments produced. Full diversion into the war effort - Shortage of raw materials, slowdown of progress. By the end lack of planning, shortages, bottleneck and lack of expert workers
Fourth - Rebuild economy - prewar levels reached within 3yrs. People placed under extreme pressure to help russia get back on its feet
Fifth - fairly rapid growth especially agricultural equipment. Too many resources devoted to projects with little positive economic benefit e.g. hydroelectric
Sixth - Shift to modern industry, Plastics to synthetics, more consumer goods, Over-optimistic targets were set resulting in the plan being abondended after 2 years
Seventh - Substantial increase of production of a wide range of goods, more realistic targets. Signs that the rate of growth was slowing compared to US
Famines and Food Shortages
1891 - Under Vyshnegradsky 400,000 dead mostly due to the diseases brought on by the famine - Govt main cause of famine due to the late closing of the markets (mid August) and gave merchants the forewarning to sell all their grain. He is also blamed for his policy of raising taxes to force peasants to sell more grain.
1921-22 Famine - 5 million dead = WW1 and Russian civil war meant food seizures and not paying enough to peasants meaning a lower crop production next year. -Grain requisitioning through war communism left farmers with little to no seed to sow.
1927 - Grain crisis - Normal peasants started to increasingly chose to consume the food rather than sell it
1932-34 - 7 million dead - Forced collectivisation and Grain requisition policy - Extreme requisition requests meant that people were searched and sowing/reserved grain was seized, Dekulakisation, resistance to collectivisation (& slaughter of farm animals) and failure agro-techniques
1961 - Food shortage - Failure of virgin lands and maize mania meant imports from US needed
Religious freedoms
- Tsar’s = Orthodox - Under State control and acted as a form of social control, Church relied on Tsars for money and the govt encouraged religion to the Russians, the Tsars themselves were also Orthodox.
Jews - Only lived in the pale and heavily restricted eased in 1855 to allow some professions out but restricted again in 1881 (temporary laws), eventually ended in 1917 by PG. All Tsars were antisemitic in some form and waves of Pogroms swept the country often e.g. Polish revolt.
Communists = - Lenin - ‘Decree on the Separation of the Church from the State and School from the Church’ - withdrawal of subsidies and no more private property. Removed religion from school curriculum, couldn’t teach religion in state or private schools and couldn’t teach it to minor’s. Killed many religious leaders of all level.
During Civil war many churches were taken and violence against religious leaders ramped up.
Lenin was sympathetic towards the jews and made antisemitism illegal within the party and there was a significant portion of the party was Jewish (Trotsky), punished those in red army who committed antisemitism. - Stalin - Set up the Militant Godless in 1925 dissolved in 1941 after reopening churches as a result on WW2 morale. 3.5 million members at peak. They printed anti-religious media and promoted atheism. Clergy were focussed in purges
- Khrushchev - introduced new moral code to replace bible, closure of churches 22,000 to 7,000 in 1965
