social and cultural change in the USSR under Stalin Flashcards
Women
Nature:
During the early days of the revolution there was an emphasis on women’s rights, equality and feminist thinking.
Abortion was declared illegal unless it was necessary for the mothers health → doctors were imprisoned if they performed abortion and some of the mothers
The government increased child support benefits → the more children the more benefits
Women gaining status and income were a minority and usually unmarried and/or without children
Women still had to work to contribute to the modernisation of the Soviet Union while also raising their children to take place in the new society
Divorce was expensive
Government legislated against homosexuality and prostitution.
Marxists rejected marriage as bourgeois institution
Stalin believed that family life was highly important and that if you were a poor family woman/man and father/mother you would be considered a bad citizen
Under Stalin there was a reversion to more conservative values that affected women: Social ramifications of the 1930s → Birth rate was steadily falling and the Soviet divorce rate was the highest in Europe by the end of the 1930s (One divorce for every two marriages).
Extent ot transformation:
The Bolsheviks supported women’s social equality
Lenin Believed that traditional marriage made women little better than slaves
Changed laws to allow more women’s rights, e.g. marital status and others
Gave women economic independence and changing people’s attitudes towards male-female relationships
Lenin supported the idea that women should be freed from domestic duties.
From 1918, the Bolsheviks passed a number of laws intended to give women greater freedom
Impact:
The ‘Family Code’, passed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, meant either party could end marriage on the grounds of incompatibility,
This had a significant impact in increasing divorce rates to 50%
However Women were impacted negatively by this, as most divorced women received no support from the father of their children, and the Soviet economy lacked the resources to provide social welfare
Women’s voting rights were impacted negatively, as the number of women allowed to vote at party congresses fell after 1918
The social instability engendered by collectivisation and industrialisation had a notable impact on decreasing birth rates as well inundating cities with large numbers of homeless children
Family Code introduced in 1938 had a significant impact in restricting the rights and freedoms of women and changing the nature of the family unit due its emphasis reverted to traditional values (eg, divorce harder to obtain, abortion only if female’s life is at risk, role of women centred in the home)
This period described as ‘The Great Retreat’ by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Exploitation of women during the The Great Retreat had a detrimental impact; Stalin’s demand of labour created through industrialisation necessitated women in the workplace, however this meant they had to fulfil two roles as mothers and as workers contributing to the modernisation of Russia
Historian Goeffrey Hosking describes this impact as ‘the fruits of female emancipation became building blocks of the Stalinist neo patriarchal social system’
Education
Nature:
Young people were encouraged to criticise bourgeois values and discover their revolutionary self and their proletarian values
Many teachers were forced out of their jobs, branded as ‘bourgeois specialists’
Teaching was to be based on a tight curriculum, strict programming and structured timetables
Values became increasingly conservative
There was an emphasis on the practical,” useful and non-practical” subjects such as physics, chemistry and mathematics
history was banned
Homework,
Stalin wanted the population literate in order for the soviet state to transform and modernise
Extent of transformation:
An official view of the soviet history was enforced, which played up stalin’s role and his ‘close’ relationship with Lenin, while removing trotsky from the story
Forced into the komsomol, the communist youth leagues, where taught about marxist thinking
Key features of the education system developed under stalin:
Ten years of compulsory schooling for all children
A core curriculum laid down: reading, writing, maths, science, history, geography, russian, marxist theory
State prescribed text books to be used
Impact:
Between 1929 and 1940 the number of children attending school rose from 12 million to 35 million
By 1939, schooling for eight to fourteen year olds had become universal in urban areas
Between 1926-1939 the literacy rate for the population over the age of nine increased from 51% - 88%
Health and religion
Nature:
1918 Lenin’s Bolshevik Government set up the People’s Commissariat of Health → aim of the commissariat was to provide free health service for all the people
The disruptions of the Civil War period made it impossible to develop a structured health service.
highly classist
Although medical care improved (treatment of tuberculosis, rest and retirement homes were created, and holiday centres), they were only a tiny fraction of workers. The beneficiaries of such improved medical care were not ordinary Russian civilians, but rather the upper class of political members and the nomenklatura.
An emphasis on women (link):
as there was an emphasis on women’s primary role as mothers producing children to be eventually absorbed into the workforce, general improvement and the creation of clinics in midwifery and gynaecology.
Famines and lack of food supply; health issues heightened in regards to starvation religion
Conformity was essential and had to be imposed. Religion, with its other-worldly values, was seen as an affront to the collective needs of the nation, religion had no place in a socialist society, according to Lenin
Organised attack on religion
Prohibition of the Orthodox Churches and monasteries, closure of synagogues and mosques
Clerics who refused to comply were arrested, thousands from Moscow and Leningrad were sent into exile ’Religion is poison’, those trying to continue the practice of religion depicted as evil and blocking industrialisation.
Extent of Transformation:
During the 1930s, beneath the Stalinist regime there was some positive change in regards to the advance of health standards - the number of qualified doctors and nurses increased, while they did not reach the majority of the population, they were regarded as spectacular successes within Stalinist propaganda - however, development within health remained largely unchanged and worsened
Impact:
In 1918, Lenin’s Bolshevik government set up the people’s commissariat of
Health
Aiming to provide a free health service for all people.
Such aim was disrupted due to soviet Russia’s lack of resources
NEP
Infant mortality dropped and the spread of contagious diseases was checked.
Collectivisation
Created the largest famine in Russian history. (Worst-hit areas - Ukraine and Kazakhssran, places of death and disease.)
resulted in rationing in urban areas.
The shortage of accommodation in urban areas resulted in highly dense and unhygienic conditions.
Famines continued to be a pervasive issue which impacted the population at large; malnourishment and starvation were additionally heightened through through rationing which only formally ended at 1947 (but this did not mean that shortages had been overcome)
Outbreak of WW2 1941-5
Intensified Soviet Health problems - experience for people within German occupied regions; German seizure of land prevented food supplies from being transported to populations (who were already malnourished and depleted of resources), with over 6 million civilian deaths resulting from starvation, in such circumstances it become meaningless to talk about
public health
Declining living conditions:
Worsened after attempts at trying to improve health standards following the war. There was no great improvement after the war (Stalin remained concerned with industrial recovery and national defence, showing decline in efforts towards
Religion
The destruction of the rural churches and the confiscation of the relics and icons that most peasants had in their homes led to revolts in many areas.
Priests were publicly humiliated by being forced to perform demeaning tasks, such as clearing out pigsties and latrines.
Such destruction of religion resulted in widespread resistance across the rural provinces of the USSR, to which authorities responded by accusing such resistance stemming from resistance to collectivisation, allowing for the the arresting of such resistance under the branding of ‘kulaks’ due to its broad term.
Secular authorities struggled to understand what they saw as merely superstitious practices, declaring anyone opposing the restrictions on religion as resisting collectivisation, this allowed these peasants to be branded as kulaks, and requisition squads were able to seize their property
Eventually caused so much misery that worldwide attention was drawn, Stalin halted the officials, concerned for the USSR’s reputation, taking a softer line against religion for diplomatic reasons, only temporarily, in the late 1930s during The Great Terror the assault on religion continued
Around 800 higher clergy members and 4000 ordinary priests were arrested, as well as thousands of the laity
Only 500 churches were left open by 1940, 1% of the figure in 1917
The only acceptable ideology is Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism which depicted Stalin as a god-like figure, the embodiment of the communist party.
Occasionally, there would be times where religion would come into use, especially during wartime, where the lift on the ban of religion would raise morale and strengthened the population’s resolve to endure the war
Socialist culture
Nature:
During the Stalin era, art and culture was put under strict control and public displays of Soviet life were limited to optimistic, positive, and realistic depictions of the Soviet man and woman, a style called socialist realism.
Despite the strict censorship of the arts and the repression of political dissidence during this period, the Soviet people benefited from some social liberalisation, including more equal education and social roles for women, free and improved health care, and other social benefits.
Starting in the early 1930s, the Soviet government began an all-out war on organised religion in the country, and atheism was vigorously promoted by the government.
Between 1928 and 1931, the cultural revolution was an attempt to create an image of a socialist future - a society that reflected proletarian values rather than the old middle class values
After 1931 there was a return to more traditional values in soviet life
The creation of a new ‘soviet man’ was the aim of propaganda through the arts - a citizen of a society of a new industrialised and a moral servant of the state who was self sacrificing and hard working
Established by Anatoly Lunacharsky
Proletkult the term given to a new form of culture by Alexander Bogdanov was a proletarian culture movement that encouraged workers to create their own culture and art movement and arts forms that catered to the needs of the workers
Encouraged collective culture that focused on the group rather than the individual
Proletkult clubs and studios were established: by 1920 around 400,000 people had joined the movement and 80,000 took part in activities such as writing, theatre and art exhibitions
During Stalin’s rule, Soviet culture was characterised by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of socialist realism, with all other trends severely repressed. At the same time, a degree of social liberalisation included more equality for women.
extent of the transformation:
Soviet Culture:
Lenin declared that ‘the purpose of art and literature is to serve the people’ → Stalin equally determined that culture should perform a social and political role in Russia; arts had the same driving purpose that his economic policies had.
Culture was an expressions of society’s values and was shaped and directed the same way that agriculture and industry was dealt
Stalin yielded power in the deposition of cultural worlds in various forms; buildings, paintings, novels, operas → all had to conform to the standards Stalin set
Stalin became a great cultural judge and arbiter
Socialist Realism:
1932 Stalin declared a gathering of Soviet writers claiming they were ‘engineers for the human soul.’ → highly revealing remark
Writers task was simply a social construct not an artistic, one
Regard themselves not as individuals concerned with self-expression but contributors to the great collective effort of reshaping the thinking/behaviour of the Soviet people.
Radical departure from European tradition → traditionally valued the right of the artist to express themselves as they wished
Artists were to be treated as if they were part of an industrial system → to create a useful product
Writers:
SU first objective was to convince all writers that they must struggle for ‘socialist realism’ in their works → achieved through conforming to guidelines
Acceptable to the party in theme and presentation
wa s written in a style and vocabulary that would be immediately understandable to the workers who would read it
Contained characters whom the readers could identify as socialist role models/directly recognized as examples of class enemies
optimistic/uplifting in its message and thus advanced the cause of socialism
Rules applied to creative writing in all forms: novels, plays, poems, film scripts
Difficult for genuine writers to continue working with restrictions → conformity was the price of acceptance/survival
Maxim Gorky, leading voice among Russian writers, used skills to praise Stalin’s FYP’s not merely as industrial achievements but as something of ‘the highest spiritual value.’
Boris Pastenak, restricted himself by translating historical works into Russian.
Ostracised → film of his was banned in Russia
Others not prepared to compromise their artistic integrity lost their position, their liberty and sometimes their lives (terror - purging/gulags)
Stalin was tightly controlling the socio-cultural aspects of Soviet life where the arts could only contribute towards the reconstruction of society and to be treated as an effort to contribute to the state, not the individual
Impact:
Cultural works, in all their various forms from building to paintings, to novels, to operas etc had to conform to the standards set by Joseph Stalin- “He became the great cultural judge and arbiter:
Arts pervaded by Stalinist terror; artists who did not conform were likely to be purged
Art
“Prolekult” and Prolekult clubs were initially free of political control, yet were shut down in 1922 following critiques of Lenin as an independent, working class organisation
Monumental propaganda and processions celebrating Marxist ideology and statues of ”figures of social and revolutionary activity”
Highly organised celebrations held on May Day and the anniversary of the October Revolution
Socialist realism
Socialist realism achieved by conforming to a set of guidelines. Many who were not prepared to compromise their artistic integrity lost their position, liberty and sometimes their lives- many sent to gulags, arrested and imprisoned.
Writing
Conformity: some artists would denounce their contemporaries to advance their own careers (common characteristic of totalitarian regimes)
Some writers practised a “genre of silence”, and stopped writing for publication
Theatre and production
Many films, plays, ballets and theatre productions halted. Many theatre directors that advocated for artistic liberty were shot, such as Vsevolod Meyerhold.
Artists encouraged to produce propaganda and pro-Bolshevik themes, but the Politburo did not interfere with form and style → to some degree, there was a period of creativity and experimentation
Music
Music that was regarded as “bourgeois and formalistic” was banned. However, Dmitri Shostokovich (1900-75) spent his creative life trying to keep one step ahead of the censors by exploiting their musical ignorance. He managed to survive Stalin and became recognised as one of the 20th century’s great composers
Education
Teachers who were not Party members replaced by Party members
By 1932, ¼ of all students in higher education were workers or communists
