Make sure that you look at key groups. Do NOT assume that a group necessarily was better or worse off, it may be that they were better off in some areas and worse off in others. Of course, there will be groups who were decidedly worse off, such as the kulaks, and groups who were decidedly better off, such as Stalin’s creatures.
GROUP 1 – APPARATCHIKS
These were members of the Party who were slavishly loyal to Stalin, men like Khrushchev, who helped him carry out the Terror. They were generally better off as they held important positions, had luxurious accommodation, a good standard of living. All they had to do was carry out Stalin’s orders without question. Of course there was always the danger that you might offend Stalin.
GROUP 2 – PARTY MEMBERS
Unless you were an apparatchik, life in the Party could be problematical. If you knew Lenin, you were a threat to Stalin. If you were seen to support someone suspected by Stalin, you too would be under suspicion. Whilst things went well you enjoyed a reasonable lifestyle, but Stalin purged the party, killing many people and his suspicious nature was a constant danger.
GROUP 3 – KULAKS
Life as a kulak was impossible under Stalin. He resented their independence and saw them as an easy scapegoat to account for failures. He ordered the liquidation of the kulaks, de-kulakisation. Kulaks were killed or moved to areas where they were worked to death. Stalin used the term beyond its original meaning to include anyone he suspected of disloyalty.
GROUP 4 – RELIGIOUS GROUPS
Stalin despised religion. It was anti-communist. He ordered churches to be destroyed, their property confiscated and religious groups persecuted. However in the late 1930s as war approached, Stalin wanted to generate a patriotic spirit in Russia so people would fight for the Motherland. The persecution ceased and churches re-opened. Once the war ended the persecution returned.
GROUP 4 – PEASANTS
This is a mixed picture. There were some benefits. You were taught to read and write. If you moved to the new cities, there would be parks, schools, libraries, cinemas etc. However, your land was taken from you, you were made to work on a collective or forced into the factories. Your life was rigidly controlled and monitored, with severe punishments. Life in the cities was not all good. Police spies, informers, long hours and poor accommodation with few luxuries.
GROUP 5 – INDUSTRIAL WORKERS
You were given targets and punished if they were not met. You could be fined or executed for absenteeism. You worked long hours with no union rights. Yet you had the facilities offered by the new cities.
GROUP 6 – ARTISTS
Your work was censored. You were told what to produce. Socialist realism was everything. Works were banned and artists persecuted.
GROUP 7 – PARTY MANAGERS
You ran the factories. You had rewards but were also blamed of things went wrong. Many managers falsified figures to avoid punishment or ignored quality controls. The target was everything. Yet there was always the danger that your target would not be met and you would be blamed.
GROUP 8 – RACIAL MINORITIES
Stalin moved whole populations away from their native lands to distant areas. Sometimes because he wanted their land, sometimes in the hope of eliminating them, sometimes to keep a closer eye on them.
GROUP 9 – WOMEN
Divorce and abortions were made harder under Stalin. Women were still very much second class citizens, although they were encouraged to join in the building of the new society.
GROUP 10 – CHILDREN
Indoctrination, being told to spy on your parents, the large number of orphans created by Stalin all made life difficult. School was to indoctrinate you. You would be expected to become a young communist and to work for the new society and its great leader.
MODEL ANSWERS
QUESTIONS ON LIFE UNDER STALIN
In what ways did Stalin control education and religion in the years 1928-1945? (6)
Stalin was very eager to control education because he had to raise a new generation of Soviet citizens who had absolute faith in their leader. This was achieved in several ways.
Education was closely monitored by the government and the curriculum was designed to stress the greatness of the Soviet Union in general and Stalin in particular. Strict censorship was carried out and the official history text book became Stalin’s own ‘a short history of the communist party’. Young people also joined the communist youth organisation (Komsomol) where they learned more about glories of communism
Religion (whether it was Christianity, Judaism or Islam) was also discouraged since it provided a rival source of authority to the communist state. Priests were stereotyped as enemies of the state in much the same way as Kulaks were, while many churches were destroyed or turned into museums of atheism with displays and artefacts ‘proving’ the wickedness of religion. Synagogues and mosques were closed and pilgrimage to Mecca banned. People were encouraged to join the Godless League, which organised anti religious events, while Soviet propaganda continually contrasted the backwardness of religion with progressive communism. By 1939, 159 of Russia’s 163 bishops had been arrested!
In what ways did the status of women change under Stalin?
In theory the Communist Party believed that all people were equal. In practice there were very few women in the higher ranks on the Party under Lenin and under Stalin there were none. However, the overall status of women did improve during the 1930s.
Women were encouraged to stay on in education (the number of women in higher education was 28% of the total in 1927, by 1937 it had risen to 43%), while they were also encouraged to compete with men in the work place. The total number of women in the work place also rose by a similar percentage. However females were generally employed in traditionally female jobs such as the textile industry and were poorly represented in new heavy industries such as steel production. They also tended to get paid less than men and to have less of a chance of promotion! However, one exception was in medicine. The number of female doctors rose rapidly in the 1930s and women also were able to develop careers in engineering.
Initially the revolution had made abortion, divorce and contraception easier for women to obtain. However these ‘reforms’ were not adhered to by Stalin’s government since it was feared that they were leading to a breakdown in family life. Therefore during the 1930’s a new stricter approach to female emancipation was introduced. Abortion , contraception and divorce were all made more difficult to obtain indeed, as official propaganda put it, ‘the state cannot exist without the family’
QUESTION ON THE CULT OF PERSONALITY
Describe the key features of the ‘cult of personality’. (5)
The cult of personality was Stalin’s attempt to achieve total power in the Soviet Union. Stalin wanted total power in the Soviet Union and appreciated that this could only be achieved if the Soviet people had absolute and unshaken faith in him as their leader. As undisputed leader he would not have to fear any opposition and would be able to implement all the industrial and agricultural policies he wished.
Stalin was portrayed in the propaganda of the time as a godlike figure, the saviour of the Soviet Union and a benign leader who worked tirelessly for the good of Soviet citizens. Cities like Stalingrad were named in Stalin's honour and school textbooks were rewritten to reflect his great achievements. He was quite simply an infallible leader. Socialist realist art concentrated on building up this image.
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