Post-WW2 Social Developments under Stalin and Khrushchev

Question 1

What were social issues faced post-WW2 by StLin?

Answer 1

Peasants squeezed by quotas and had an income 20% of a town worker.
Diets, housing, services and goods all poor.
Working hours still 12 hours/day.
Stakhanovite programme meant workers had to be relocated wherever necessary.

Question 2

By 1950, what was the increase in household consumption from 1928?

Answer 2

Only 10%.

Question 3

What wiped out savings in 1947?

Answer 3

90% devaluation of the rouble.

Question 4

How did Khrushchev’s efforts to increase consumer goods help increase QOL?

Answer 4

Radios, television, sewing machines and refrigerators widely available and some foreign goods entered shops but sold out quickly.

Question 5

How did taxation changes help increase QOL?

Answer 5

In 1958 compulsory subscriptions to the State were abolished and bachelors tax removed. Pension arrangements improved.

Question 6

How did workers reform help increase QOL?

Answer 6

40-hour work week introduced, wage equalisation rose wages for lowest paid. Factory TUs given more responsibilities so they could negotiate better in employment negotiations.

Question 7

What large-scale improvements helped improve urban workers QOL?

Answer 7

Better education, improved medicine, welfare, technology and better transport.

Question 8

What undermined any claim that Khrushchev oversaw an equal society?

Answer 8

The fact that privileges remained in the form of non-wage payments, with access to scarce commodities, healthcare, cars and holidays reserved for the higher politicians.

Question 9

What was cultural change under Stalin 1945-53?

Answer 9

The Zhdanovschina, during which censorship tightened, ethnic minorities suffered and freedom of expression was non-existent. Despite adulation, his paranoia cast a grim shadow over social life breeding an atmosphere of fear and secrecy.

Question 10

How can we see the ‘thaw’ through policy change?

Answer 10

Restrictions on reading of foreign literature, listening to foreign broadcasts and censorship lifted. Some citizens could travel abroad. Cultural and sports tours arranged and TV showed Bolshoi international ballet and Moscow circus, as well as international games by the Moscow Dynamos football team.

Question 11

What was Intourist?

Answer 11

Khrushchev’s attempt to exploit the economic potential of international tourism, so in tourist was a company through which foreigners could visit the USSR and witness Soviet achievements fist hand.

Question 12

What was the impact of the World Festival of Youth?

Answer 12

In Moscow in 1957 had 34,000 people from 131 counties. Young people saw Western culture as exciting and modern. Jeans, music, makeup, slang, fashion. and Tarzan movies entered Soviet youth culture.

Question 13

What was the effect of changes in youth attitudes?

Answer 13

Brought more incidents of petty vandalism and hooliganism, while in the universities students boycotted lectures or dining halls in protest to controls.

Question 14

How many young people in 1961 were cynical of the ideals of the Oct Rev?

Answer 14

The majority, concerning because under 30s comprised 55% of the population.

Question 15

Who was Dudinstev?

Answer 15

A Soviet writer who wrote about an engineer whose creativity was stifled by the industrial bureaucracy.

Question 16

What did Solzhenitsyn publish?

Answer 16

One Day in the Life, describing and criticising conditions in the gulag. Sold a million copies in 6 months.

Question 17

Which Western writer was permitted to have his books sold in the USSR?

Answer 17

Ernest Hemingway

Question 18

In what ways did writes not enjoy complete freedom under Khrushchev?

Answer 18

Khrushchev’s tastes were quite conservative, he disliked modernism and criticised Moscow art gallery as result. However, culture was not judged solely by that, artistic endeavour was measured by its commitment to social responsibility.

Question 19

Who was Boris Pasternak?

Answer 19

He was not allowed to publish Dr Zhivago, a story of how peoples lives were destroyed by the CW. He had it printed in Italy in 1957 and earnt him the Nobel Prize, which Khrushchev didn’t let him accept. He was expelled from the Soviet Union of Writers and criticised in Pravda.

Question 20

How was atheism promoted under Khrushchev?

Answer 20

It was brought into the school curriculum, children were banned from Church services and it was forbidden for parents to teach religion to their children. All higher learning institutions had to deliver a mandatory course on the foundations of scientific atheism.

Question 21

How many Orthodox churches were closed by 1965?

Answer 21

14,000. Remaining seminaries also shut down.

Question 22

What were churches repurposed for?

Answer 22

Turned to secular use and became town museums championing socialist values or community centres.

Question 23

What was banned for Orthodox Christians?

Answer 23

Pilgrimages, church services, ringing of bells, criticism of atheism, and devout individuals could be arrested.

Question 24

What did the 1961 Party Doctrine state about national minorities?

Answer 24

‘The ultime aim was for ethnic distinctions to disappear and a single common language be adopted by all nationalities’. He spoke of rapprochement; greater unity and fusion of nationalities.

Question 25

What was Khrushchev’s position on Jews?

Answer 25

He denied being anti-Semite, but was strongly against permitting Jews to have their own schools and complained that Soviet Jews preferred to be intellectuals over workers. He refused emigration to Israel also.