Social Developments Flashcards

Question

What was the impact of the Bolshevik measures to improve the status of women? 1) Although the Soviet constitution of 1918 declared that men and women were equal... 2) rise in what did little to help as? 3) what did feminists hope for but what actually happened? 4) what were slow to have an impact and what were slow to change?

Answer 1

Although the Soviet constitution of 1918 declared that men and women were equal, the status of women in society did not automatically improve. The rise in the divorce rate did little to help women support children: few received financial support from the father of their child. Feminists in the Party had hoped that easier divorce would prevent women becoming trapped in abusive relationships, but the reality was that 70% of divorces were initiated by men, often abandoning women who had become pregnant. The laws giving women equal rights in employment and equal pay were slow to have an impact and the attitudes of the male population were slow to change.

Answer 2

The need for industrial workers during the civil war temporarily changed the status of women. More women worked: Over 70,000 women fought in the Red Army during the war, and some were recruited into factories, but few held high rank. - short lived as returning soldiers meant the unskilled (most women) lost their job. The government also lacked the resources to implement creches for childcare. The famine of 1921-22 left many women homeless and reliant on prostitution.

Answer 3

Muslim areas of Central Asia where polygamous, male-dominated family was well entrenched, was particularly resistant to change. In these areas, the women were shielded from public view and denied education. The Bolsheviks used young female activists to encourage unveiling and explain basic contraception, personal hygiene and childcare. The campaign against the veiling of the women in 1927 was successful and the opportunities for Islamic women increased e.g. some became brigade leaders. Despite these changes, traditional Islamic attitudes were slow to change, and resistance was often violent e.g. a Zhenotdel meeting was attacked by Muslim men with dogs and boiling water.

Answer 4

Forced collectivisation in the countryside resulted in many men migrating to the towns in search of better jobs. Some sent money back to their wives; others deserted them. The most able-bodied men from the collectives were conscripted into the armed forces to fight in WW2 so collectivisation relied more on the labours of women and offered lower wages as agriculture was less a priority than industry. After WW2, rural areas still lacked able bodied men because of the lives lost in the war. Even as late as 1950, it was possible to find villages entirely populated by women and children. Conditions were made worse by the Red Army’s requisitioning of machinery and draft animals which meant women had to shackle themselves to ploughs to till the soil. In the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years, the status of rural women improved slowly as social provision, such as health care and maternity benefits, was extended to the countryside. E.g. the internal passport system for collective workers was extended to the countryside in 1974 so it provided women more freedom to move to towns in search of better jobs.

Answer 5

The five-year plans and economic hardships of the 1930s provided pressure for women to work in industry out of economic necessity. - The number of female workers rose from three million in 1928 to over 13 million in 1940. There were better higher education prospects in the towns for women were to take advantage of which was the key if they wanted to improve their status E.g. by 1940 over 40 percent of engineering students were female. Women dominated the workforce in light industry, e.g. textiles, but also found in occupations previously regarded as masculine e.g. construction industry -parts of the Moscow underground were built by brigades of female workers. The number of women in skilled jobs and management remained disproportionately low but showed an increase throughout the 1930s. The 1930s saw the emergence of a more privileged group of urban women, the wives of the Soviet elite or party officials were encouraged do social work such as providing classes on hygiene, and organising cultural productions in the workplace.

Answer 6

The importance of women in industry continued to increase as women could improve their status by joining the red army due to heavy losses – 800,000 women served. The line between what was considered female and male work was blurred. By the 1950s, women were expected to work in a wide range of occupations, but they were still expected to play the key role in domestic duties. This double burden put considerable pressure on women and made career progression difficult.

Answer 7

The Provisional Government of 1917 had given women the vote. Limited number of women played an active role in politics as in the Communist Party women were severely under-represented. - In 1932, 16% of party membership were women. Alexandra Kollontai was the first woman to become a people’s commissar, serving as Commissar for Public Welfare from 1917 to 1918. Only seven women were members of the Central Committee before the Second World War including Kollontai and Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife. Ekaterina Furtseva became the first female member of the presidium in 1957 due to Khrushchev and consequently her career declined when he was dismissed in 1964.

Answer 8

Propaganda material presented images of the ideal socialist woman playing her part in the development of socialism to encourage women to play an active part in the Soviet state. Role models of individual women who excelled in their field were also available to the female population. famous ballerinas, including Natalia Bessmertnova. The actress Ludmila Savelyeva became famous for her role in the Soviet film War and Peace (1967). Sport was given high status by the Soviet government, e.g. figure skater, Irina Rodnina, who with different partners won three successive Olympic titles. In gymnastics, Ludmilla Tourischeva won nine Olympic medals. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963.

Answer 9

To more radical Bolsheviks, the family was an outdated institution that deserved to be swept away. - although there were attacks on the family, the complete destruction of the traditional family was never a serious policy. Youth groups were encouraged to attack the ‘capitalist tyranny of parents’. Party sections were set up to educate women members to become more assertive and independent. Wives were encouraged to refuse obedience to their husbands e.g. Alexandra Kollontai led the calls for greater sexual freedom for women through the ‘new proletarian morality’ in place of ‘bourgeois marriage’: sexual intercourse should not be based on marriage but on a union of free love. To young, radical Bolsheviks, ‘free love’ was taken to mean casual sex and many considered it to be a right to which they were entitled. These attitudes were shocking to older, more traditional Bolsheviks, including Lenin, and attempts were made to impose a more restrained attitude. Some of these radical ideas influenced the Family Code drawn up by the Bolsheviks after taking power.

Answer 10

Kollontai = ‘the family ceases to be necessary’ as the state could take over the role of bringing up children and providing social services. Women given new rights and freedoms, including rights within marriage. The Bolshevik’s Family Code of 1918 allowed a marriage to be dissolved at the request of either the husband or the wife, without the need to give grounds, such as adultery or cruelty. Abortion was made legal and crèches were encouraged. Reforms were driven partly by a need to get more women into work during the civil war, but also attacked the traditional oppression and maltreatment of women through the family. They reduced the hold of the Russian Orthodox Church on family life. The traditional institution of marriage was weakened further in 1927 by the new marriage law - gave equal status to registered and unregistered marriages. These measures had some success amongst the urban population - by the mid-1920s, Russia’s divorce rate was the highest in Europe and when the Family code was revised 1926, it led to so-called ‘postcard divorces, where a partner could simply notify their wife or husband of divorce by sending them a postcard. By 1926, 50 percent of all marriages in Moscow ended in divorce. Abortion became commonplace in the cities: contraception were in very short supply. In Moscow, abortions outnumbered live births by 3:1 and the birth rate remained low. The break-up of families led to an increase in orphans who roamed the streets of towns, to the concern of the authorities. The government was put under pressure by critics, often from poorer sections of society, to revert to more conservative policies.

Answer 11

1) By the mid-1930s, the government’s measures caused detrimental effects of family breakdowns so introduced measures to raise the status of marriage. 2) Led to the ‘Great Retreat’ of 1936, when Stalin issued a series of more conservative laws that went some way to restoring the importance of the traditional family: 3)Divorce was made more expensive, increasing from 4 roubles to 50. 4) Abortion was outlawed except in cases where the life of the mother was at risk. 5) Pregnant women were guaranteed job security and the right to be given lighter work. 6) Maternity leave was extended to 16 weeks. 7)More resources were devoted to building crèches and day-care centres. The number of nursery places doubled between 1928 and 1930 and continued to grow during the Second Five-Year Plan. 8)Two-year prison sentences for fathers who did not pay towards the upkeep of their children but conviction for this was of low priority. 9) During this ‘Great Retreat’ on social policy the idea of the family as an unnecessary ‘bourgeois’ concept was replaced by the view that the family was a necessary unit of socialist society. 10)Further strengthening of the family took place in July 1944: As an attempt to raise the status of the family, the government introduced awards for ‘mother- heroines’ who had ten or more children. 11)A tax on single people was introduced to encourage marriage.

Answer 12

Family was promoted as a social unit: Women were encouraged to care for the family and look after the household, as well as undertake paid employment, placing a double burden on them - 1960, 49% of the workforce was women. With wives in full-time employment, domestic duties were sometimes taken up by other family members such as Grandmothers (babushki) resulting in many multi-generational family units which helped reduce gov cost of supporting the old and sick. The Khrushchev years had lessened the strain on the family by the increasing provision of social benefits, such as housing, maternity arrangements, health care and childcare so the family was much better supported than during the Stalin years = provision inadequate as women still had to make up for the gap by working full time Abortion was once again legalised in 1955 in an attempt to reduce financial strain on the family. It continued to be used as a form of contraception.

Answer 13

Continuity in social policy with those of the Khrushchev era - gov continued to promote the family but became more aware of social problems that weakened the family. Gov reinforced traditional values. By the 1970s, threats to the stability of the family were taken seriously by the government. The declining rate of population growth put extra pressure on economically productive members of the family to support the old and sick. By 1982, the rate of growth had fallen to just 0.8 percent and the birth rate in the USSR was barely enough to replace the existing population. In the early 1980s, there were calls to use birth incentives to encourage bigger families in the western republics: A proposal to give women several years off work after having a child was discussed but not implemented. A shortage of adequate housing continued to put a strain on family relationships. The provision of housing had steady progress as in the 1970s a trend towards single-family occupancy of apartments and flats yet overcrowding remained an issue. Alcoholism significantly undermined the family as it contributed to the high levels of domestic abuse and divorce. By 1982, the average Soviet adult was consuming 18 litres of spirits per year, nearly double the figure for 1970. Alcohol caused deaths from pancreatitis, heart disease, road deaths. Historian Nemtsov concluded that the effects of alcohol contributed in over a quarter of all deaths in the early 1980s. Gov unable, and often unwilling to deal with this social problem. Health campaigns warned the population of the dangers of abusing alcohol, but shops were short of alcohol. Divorce rates remained high, with over a third of all marriages ending in divorce and much of the family strain was caused by the lack of a father figure within the household - WW2 highly responsible for this. This generation lacked role models in which Sociologists see this as a key factor in explaining the continuing high rate of divorce in the Soviet Union and alcoholism and suicide. Restrictions were placed on divorce, making it illegal to divorce a woman who was pregnant or within the year of the birth of a child.

Answer 14

The Soviet propaganda image of the industrial worker and peasant created a false image of the representativeness of the status of women when the industrial worker was always male, and it was the peasant who was female. Despite gaining equality under the law as early as 1918, the status of women in Soviet society were not equal to men. Improvements in employment and social provision had helped raise the status of women, especially in towns, but they were expected to do the majority of domestic work. Their influence in politics remained low and policies affecting women were largely decided by men in the Party. Attempts by the Soviet government to replace the traditional family unit with a collective approach to the provision of social support failed because of the inadequacies of the social policies, but also to a recognition that the family acted as a major force for social stability such as Stalin’s ‘Great Retreat of 1936 ; thereafter the Soviet government opted for measures that supported the traditional family rather than replacing it with a revolutionary alternative Social policy under Brezhnev was largely a continuation of that of Khrushchev. The biggest change was in the growing seriousness of the social problems that were, in part, a consequence of these policies and which the government seemed unable to resolve.

Social Developments Flashcards

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