society under Khrushchev

Question 1

changes for workers:

Answer 1

-focus on improving living standards - K aware of inevitable ideological contamination
-40 hour working week introduced
-wage equalisation campaign
-more responsibilities given to trade unions
-lives appeared to be improved through more education, improvements in medicine and welfare services, and better transport
-pension arrangements improved
BUT
-living standards significantly lower than in other industrialised countries
-preferential access - e.g. only high up party officials could get a car (hardly any of them produced)

Question 2

changes to elite culture:

Answer 2

-rehabilitation of those affected by Zhadanovschina
-works criticising Stalin did very well e.g. book describing conditions in a gulag sold 1mil copies in 6 months
-works by western writers could be sold in USSR
-but k was conservative and disliked modernism
-works that questioned communism/ the soviet state were firmly outlawed e.g. Pasternak’s book Dr Zhivago (which told stories of lives destroyed by civil war) was banned in the USSR, he was expelled from the union of writers and wasn’t allowed to collect nobel prize he won for it, forced to apologise in Pravda

Question 3

changes to culture:

Answer 3

-cultural thaw = personal freedom for citizens
-no more restrictions on foreign literature or radio
-limited number of citizens could travel abroad
-cultural and sports tours were arranged, russian companies e.g. moscow state circus
-created Intourist - foreigners could visit USSR

Question 4

changes to young people:

Answer 4

-greater contact with western culture led to discontent with the rigidity of soviet life within the youth
-they saw western culture as exciting and modern and it influenced youth culture e.g. version of the Teddy Boys
-1961 survey revealed majority of the youth were cynical about ideals of oct. revolution and were motivated by material ambitions - this was a serious threat to the system as over half of the pop. were under 30
-not as much engrained communist understanding amongst the youth

Question 5

changes to religion:

Answer 5

-Khrushchev revived the socialist campaign against churches - both orthodox and islamic faith
-atheism was brought into the curriculum
-1961 onwards = children banned from church services
-illegal for parents to teach children religion
-mass closures of churches - 22,000 in 1959 to less than 8000 by 1965
-churches often turned to secular use e.g. became town museums with an emphasis on the triumph of socialist values
-clergymen could be sent to labour camps, strong believers could be arrested

Question 6

changes to ethnic minorities:

Answer 6

-Khrushchev made no moves towards greater independence for the nationalities (despite being Ukrainian)
-party doctrine at 22nd party congress stated the ultimate aim was for ethnic distinctions to disappear and a single language to be adopted by all in the USSR
-spoke of ‘rapprochement’ - greater unity and the fusion of nationalities
-Khrushchev strongly denied being an anti-semite but he was against letting jews have their own schools, and complained that they preferred intellectual pursuits to ‘mass occupations’
-also didn’t allow jews to emigrate to the new state of israel