The Russian Revolution: Making a Socialist Society

Making a Socialist Society:

During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks nationalised. They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had been socialised. Bolsheviks used confiscated land to demonstrate what collective work could be.

A process of centralised planning was introduced. Officials assessed how the economy could work and set targets for a five-year period. On this basis they made the Five Year Plans. The government fixed all prices to promote industrial growth during the first two ‘Plans’(1927-1932 and 1933-1938).

In 1928 the New Economic Policy was replaced with a Five Year Plan. Stalin argued that 'either we do it, or we are crushed,' as Soviet industry lagged well behind the Western European states in terms of productivity and qality. The Five Year Plans created targets for all sectors of Industry. These were set and monitored by central government with a view to improving the industrial capacity of the Soviet Union. The Industrial targets involved heavy investment in mining and the extraction of raw materials from Russia's vast interior. It required massive movement of workers to sites designated as being primae areas for production of specific items and it meant an end to profit based prodction in factories and on farms. Farming also changed as part of this policy. From 1928 onwards farming was collectivised. This involved closing small holdings and combining them into massive, mechanised farms that were state controled. These should be more efficient, would lead to better education, training and use of technology and were intended to increase productivity and efficiency. Ideologicaly they were also more in line with socialism as the benefits of the new system would be felt by all.

Centralised planning led to economic growth. Industrial production increased (between 1929 and 1933 by 100 per cent in the case of oil, coal and steel). New factory cities came into being. However, rapid construction led to poor working conditions. In the city of Magnitogorsk, the construction of a steel plant was achieved in three years. Workers lived hard lives and the result was 550 stoppages of work in the first year alone. In living quarters, ‘in the wintertime, at 40 degrees below, people had to climb down from the fourth floor and dash across the street in order to go to the toilet’.

An extended schooling system developed, and arrangements were made for factory workers and peasants to enter universities. Crèches were established in factories for the children of women workers. Cheap public health care was provided. Model living quarters were set up for workers. The effect of all this was uneven, though, since government resources were limited.

Socialist Cultivation in a Village in the Ukraine

'A commune was set up using two [confiscated] farms as a base. The commune consisted of thirteen families with a total of seventy persons..... The farm tools taken from the.... farms were turned over to the commune.....The members ate in a communal dining hall and income was divided in accordance with the principles of "cooperative communism". The entire proceeds of the members' labor, as well as all dwellings and facilities belonging to the commune were shared by the commune members'.

Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm (1955).

Dreams and Realities of a Soviet Childhood in 1933

Dear grandfather Kalinin…..

My family is large, there are four children. We don.t have a father- he died, fighting for the worker’s cause, and my mother…. is ailing…. I want to study very much, but I cannot go to school. I had some old boots, but they are completely torn and no one can mend them. My mother is sick, we have no money and no bread, but I want to study very much. …..there stands before us the task of studying, studying and studying. That is what Vladimir Ilich Lenin said. But I have to stop going to school. We have no relatives and there is no one to help us, so I have to go to work in a factory, to prevent the family from starving. Dear grandfather, I am 13, I study well and have no bad reports. I am in Class 5…..

Letter of 1933 from a 13-year-old worker to Kalinin, Soviet President

From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody (Moscow, 1997).
Reference:

http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/gcse/russia/a1_developmentofcommunistrule.htm#.Vh0V9eynJUE