Security for soviet people 1917-85

Question 1

Labour market under Lenin

Answer 1

• Labour exchanges established to make sure that the Red Army was supplied but people avoided signing up
• Demobilisation caused people to come to cities to look for work. This caused a lot of unemployment (1m in 1926)
• A wage gap as some workers were unskilled

Question 2

Full employment and industrialisation in the early days

Answer 2

• Five year pland and industrialisation not only created full employment but also labour shortages
• It was a result of that most work had to be done manually.
• it was a hard life tho, and work wasn’t great. The trade unions were banned from negotiating. To prevent workers from constantly moving jobs they introduced internal passports.
• in 1927 they were producing half of what the british worker wold do. They had massive shifts (factories running 24h).

Question 3

Housing in the early days

Answer 3

• rather shitty and non-existand
• in some cities like Magnitogorsk population rose from 25 to 250,000 in 3 years. This made govrnement unable to provide enough accomodation.
• workers sleeping in tents and factories.
• blocks of flats were shit and communal (shared kitchen. rarely had more than 1 room)
• also as a result of the WW2: Stalingrad lost 90% of its housing

Question 4

Social benefits

Answer 4

• Trade unions were responsible for social benefits. They were arranging holidays, organisisng film shows, paying sick pay.
• Health care was decent, accessable to everyone. Effective, for eg compulsory vaccination helped to stop the epidemic of cholera.
• There were loads of doctors (as many fled russia they had to replace them. Maybe not best quality.) But it doubled 1928-1940