Soviet Society and Culture

Marx's stages and jumping ahead

• Think about the future  - more long-term - different concept of time
• Marx believed capitalism is exploitative - so at some point inevitably rise up and socialism brought in
• Problem Russia not at capitalism - still at feudalism
• So people thought the revolution would lead onto to capitalism and wait to develop
• Lenin made a speech to continue the revolution into socialism - wanted to simulate a capitalist system
• October was jumping ahead in time about 100 years
• Focus on future but they weren't sure what that was - Marx wasn't very clear

Stalin's economy

• 1928 - create an advanced economy over the next five years - Stalin's first Five Year Plan
• Idea to collect peasants into collectives
• Leading to an industrial society of the worker
• "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us..."
• Stalin said this in 1931, at the beginning of the rapid industrialization campaign. Ten years later, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
• A culture of targets
• Took the US and Britain 50 years to industrialise, it took the USSR 10
• Khrushchev set a date when communism would come - Reaching new heights - construction, technology, sputnik

Socialist people

• Creating socialist people - manual worker, educated, communal, selfless, rational
• Lenin wanted to artificially create these people
• 1961 "moral code of the builder of communism" written - set out the socialist future person
• Also negative side - removing those that don't belong - "former people"
• - Purges looking for those that didn't fit in - Stalin

Women as socialist people

• New person meant to be gender neutral
• 1920s idea that women became more like men
• Break bonds from family and work
• Backfires women start to work instead - birth rate drops
• 1930s work and household - but no politics because at home

Economy - Andropov

Andropov's 'reforms' 1982-1984

• Like Brezhnev Andropov refused to talk of reform
• Unlike Brezhnev he was willing to admit there were considerable economic problems that needed fixing
• Not willing to change the fundamentals of the economy
• Focus was on Labour discipline

To improve productivity Andropov started three campaigns...


Anti-Corruption Campaign

• November 1982 an investigation of senior party officials and industrial managers who were using Soviet resources to make themselves rich
• E.g. Brezhnev's Minister of interior Nikolai Shchelokov was sacked and put on trial for corruption - took his own life before the end of the trial

Anti-Alcohol Campaign

• Workers could be sacked for drunkenness and could be fined for damaging machinery if drunk at work

Operation Trawl - Anti-Drunkenness and Anti-Absenteeism Campaign

• KGB officers visited parks, restaurants and train stations arresting people who were drunk or absent from work

Results

• Did lead to reduction in consumption of traditional vodka
• However consumption of 'Andropovka' - a lower quality cheaper vodka - increased
• Also the campaigns were poorly enforced and so drunkenness and poor discipline continued

Economy - Brezhnev

• Reform discredited after Khrushchev's rejection from the party
• Brezhnev and the leaders after even abandoned the word 'reform'

Restoring the Economy

• Khrushchev's fall led to a rejection and undoing of his reforms
• - The party was reunited
• - Seven year plans were abandoned and in 1966 went back to five year plans

Aims

• Brezhnev content to just mind the system that Stalin had created
• Although like Brezhnev he hoped to produce more consumer goods
• Brezhnev was less ambitious in the quantity and quality of the consumer goods he expected

The 'Kosygin reforms'

What was it?

• Kosygin advocated reforms that were designed to cut investment in the most inefficient collective farms and divert it to light industry
• Also he proposed giving power over production to factory managers and judging success by profit not product levels
• Designed to make factories produce goods that consumers want

What happened?

• Introduced January 1968
• Similar reforms had been attempted in Czechoslovakia and was part of a series of reforms that lead to a rebellion against the Soviet Union
• This discredited Kosygin's programme
• Halted in August
• Authority back to central planners

Military investment

• Brezhnev increased military investment - 11% of GDP in 1964 to 13% in 1970
• Aim was to become equal with the US in terms of nuclear fire power
• Wanted to do this so that the Soviet Union wouldn't have to back down again (as had happened in Berlin Crisis of 1961 and Cuban missile of 1962)
• Success - nuclear parity was achieved by 1970
• However... Achieving and maintaining it was expensive and led to growing economic problems

'Developed Socialism'

• Brezhnev didn't follow through Khrushchev's commitment to reaching communism by 1980
• With the slow economic growth in the 1960 and 70s and increased military spending meant there was no way the Soviet Union could be turned into a land of plenty
• Instead Brezhnev argued that the Soviet Union should focus on improving living standards
• Meant abandoning reaching communism by 1980 and replacing it with 'developed socialism' - an economy with job security and low prices
• Low prices were achieved by importing large amounts of grain from the west rather than expanding the Virgin Land Scheme

Second Economy

• Brezhnev accepted the Black Market (or second economy) as a necessary evil
• Rather than trying to stop it let it continue because it made consumer goods and food more widely available and therefor helped his goal of improving living standards