USSR 4: Life in the USSR Flashcards
Towns
Housing
- Moscows pop = 2.2 mil in 1929 to 4.1mil in 1936
- Average family apartment from 5.5 m(2) in 1930 to 4 m(2) in 1940
- “Corner dwellers” = homeless waiting for housing
- New towns had tents, mud huts etc.
Towns
Everyday items
- Everyday items seen as luxurious and in short supply
- Queues sometimes than longer than 1,000 for shoes
- Bread rationed until 1935
Towns
Leisure opportunities
- Gorky Park, built 1928: pool, music, bars
- Cinema in magnitogorsk had annual audience of 600k
- Magnitogorsk “Mini Olympics” workers of different factories compete
Countryside
Living Conditions
- Conditions had always been and remained bad
- Basic one room housing
- Some had to travel to nearest towns to get bread
- No leisure opportunities
Towns
Working conditions: Negatives
- Internal passports to prevent job changes
- “Progressive piecework” = workers paid by volume produced, not equal
- 1940 Labour Code: Working day to 8 hours, 6 days a week, job changing was a criminal offence
Towns
Working Conditions: Positives
- Everyone had a job, during Great Depression
- 73% unemployment in Jarrow
- 0% unemployment in USSR
- Factories gave workers basic clothing and some hot meals
Countryside
Working conditions
- Collectivisation: wages 20% of workers, no land or freedom, long hours
- Slow work and little effort
Women
1917-24
Good:
* Zhenotdel made to help with womens issues
* Legalised abortion + divorce
* More freedom and rights
Bad:
* 1/2 of marriages ended in divorce
* Abortions 3x more than live births
* Divorce used by men to abandon
Women
Under Stalin
Bad:
* Closed Zhenotdel
* 1936 Family Code: divorce more expensive, abortions illegal, mother with 6+ kids got money
* Wanted traditional family values
Good:
* Birth rate rose from 25 per 1k in 1935 to 31 per 1k in 1940
* Less divorce (less abandonment)
Women
Employment: NEP
- 1928, 3 million women working
- Unemployment in NEP affected women first
Women
Employment: Stalin’s industrialisation
- By 1940, 13 million women working
- 1940, 41% of heavy industry workers women
- Pasha Angelina, first female Stakhanovite
Women
Employments: Negatives
- Double Burden
- Paid 60% less than men
- Less chance of success
- 20 of 328 factory directors in Leningrad were women
Women
Politics
- 1917 - Given same rights as men, could hold power
- Alexandra Kollontai, first female People’s Commisar
- The Party failed to advance women 1924-41 (harassed and held back by old attitudes)
- Great Retreat - Housewives Movement 1936, message was that women were for mothering (not politics)
Education
1917-1924
- “Project method” - children followed workers to learn the trade
- Traditional teaching, respect and values discarded
- Led to undereducation and lack of academics in Uni’s
Education
Under Stalin
- Compulsory to age 15
- Traditional subjects + Communist Ideology
- Exams, discipline and official textbooks
Consequences:
Primary attendance 60% to 95%
Literacy 55% to 94%
Ethnic Minorities
1917-1924
- 1926 Census showed over 180 nationalities in Russia
- Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia
- Equality, acceptance
- “Family of nations” was used to describe the ethnicities
Ethnic Minorities
Under Stalin
- New form of Russification:
- No celebration of local languages or culture
- Russian taught as a second language in all schools
- 1937 171K Koreans deported
Ethnic Minorities
Stalin and Religion
- 1939 all factories had 7 day work week (no sabbath for religious)
- 1939 only a few hundred churches in the USSR
- Continuation of Lenin’s policies
