Social & Economic Consequences

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Living and Working Conditions in Towns and the Countryside

Living and working conditions varied hugely across the Soviet Union. It depended upon where you lived and who you were.

The towns

Housing in towns was low quality and living standards were low. Many people lived in barracks or communal accommodation.
Between 1928 and 1933, fruit and meat consumption went down 66% in Leningrad. Queuing for food was a daily experience in the Soviet Union during the 1930s.

The workplace and international movement

There was no concern for health and safety in the workplace, and industrial accidents resulted in many deaths.
One day off work without good reason could lead to a worker losing their job. Early ideas about equality of wages were abandoned.
Internal passports were introduced in 1932 to stop the free movement of people around the country.
Arrest and imprisonment could result from failing to prove a ‘right’ to be in a particular city.

The countryside

In the countryside, there was only basic housing, with outside toilets and no running water. There were rations in the countryside too, allowing Stalin to confiscate excess food to take to the cities.
Productivity was so poor in the countryside that in 1939 the government allowed peasants to sell produce from garden plots for a profit to incentivise them to produce more.
Peasants were not allowed to leave their farms, and also had internal passports.

Party officials

Party officials, by contrast, lived in relative luxury. This included access to special shops for consumer goods. This was how loyalty was rewarded.
- This created a new ruling class within a ‘classless society’.
Although the quality of life for some workers improved, these elites had become more important than the workers.

Kulaks

Kulaks were one of the supposed enemy groups of the regime. They were 'wealthy' peasants who had benefited from the New Economic Policy (NEP).

Who were kulaks?

Bolsheviks believed that the NEP had led to kulaks emerging.
Kulaks were peasants who benefited more than others from the grain trade.
They were also known as 'Nepmen' after the New Economic Policy.

Very few kulaks

Historians have found that almost no peasants actually held large amounts of extra grain.
The small improvements in nutrition in Russian villages led to the Bolsheviks accusing those with extra grain of trying to sabotage communism.

Land ownership

Many peasants believed that they should be left alone on the land they had seized in 1917.
They did not want the state to interfere in their farming.

Finding kulaks

Many revolutionaries believed that the government should do more to bring villages under control.
This led them to look for more kulaks to use as examples of enemies of communism.
Overall, this caused peasants to be even more sceptical of outside interference.

1The End of Tsardom

1.1Russia's Economy & Society

1.1.1Industrialisation

1.1.2Living & Working Conditions

1.2Nicholas II's Autocracy & the Court

1.2.1Growth of Revolutionary Opposition

1.2.2The 1905 Revolution & the October Manifesto

1.2.3Reforming Russia Before 1914 - Stolypin

1.2.4The Duma & Political Stalemate

1.3The First World War

1.3.1The Impact of Military Defeats

1.3.2Social & Economic Effects of WW1

1.3.3Romanov Unpopularity

1.3.4The Tsar's Abdication

1.3.5Top Grade AO2/3 - The End of Tsardom

2Lenin's New Society

2.1The Provisional Government

2.1.1The Failure of the Government

2.1.2Social & Economic Problems

2.1.3Lenin & Trotsky

2.1.4The Growth of the Bolsheviks

2.1.5The October / November Revolution

2.1.6Top Grade AO2/3 - The Provisional Government

2.2The Impact of Lenin's Dictatorship

2.2.1The End of the First World War

2.2.2The Cheka

2.2.3Red Terror & Centralisation

2.2.4The Civil War & The Red Army

2.2.5Propaganda

2.2.6Top Grade AO2/3 - Early Bolshevism & the Civil War

2.3Social & Economic Developments

2.3.1War Communism

2.3.2The Kronstadt Rising

2.3.3The New Economic Policy (NEP)

2.3.4The Achievements of Lenin & Trotsky

2.3.5Top Grade AO2/3 - Social & Economic Developments

3Stalin's USSR

3.1Stalin the Dictator

3.1.1The Power Struggle to Succeed Lenin

3.1.2The Communist Party & Government

3.1.3The Terror & the Purges

3.1.4The Secret Police

3.1.5Cult of Personality

3.1.6Propaganda & Censorship under Stalin

3.1.7Top Grade AO2/3 - Stalin's Dictatorship

3.2Stalin's Modernisation of the USSR

3.2.1Collectivisation

3.2.2Five Year Plans

3.2.3Social & Economic Consequences

3.2.4Social & Economic Consequences 2

3.2.5The Extent of Modernisation

3.3Impact of the Second World War

3.3.1Stalin's Wartime Leadership

3.3.2Political, Economic & Social Consequences of War

3.3.3Top Grade AO2/3 - Modernisation of the USSR

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