Social Developments in the USSR, 1917–1985 (Edexcel A Level History: Route E: Communist states in the twentieth century): Flashcards

The New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921–1928 ended compulsory labour and allowed some private enterprise.

By 1940, women made up 43% of industrial workers.

A kommunalka was a communal apartment in which each family occupied one room while kitchens, bathrooms and corridors were shared.

By 1940, the average kommunalka provided four square metres.

True.

Historians such as Orlando Figes argue the kommunalka became a means of extending state surveillance and encouraging citizens to inform on one another.

Under Stalin's industrialisation, the urban populations doubled between 1928 and 1939.

Collective living was Lenin's policy of several families sharing communal facilities, inspired by Marxist ideals of cooperation.

By the late 1930s, over 60% of urban families lived in communal housing.

Constructivist design used glass, steel and open layouts to symbolise efficiency, equality and progress.

The Second World War destroyed around one-third of the housing in Soviet towns.

False.

Khrushchev's Ukraine project was successful, building 4,500 farming villages between 1945 and 1950, but Stalin prevented its replication in Moscow due to cost.

The Zuyev Workers' Club (1928) in Moscow was designed by Ilya Golosov.

The Decree on Land (1917) gave local soviets authority over private property, allowing bourgeois housing to be seized and redistributed.

Under the NEP, rents were reintroduced and housing management passed to local authorities, cooperatives and private landlords.

Khrushchev doubled the Soviet healthcare budget and expanded rural access with clinics and mobile medical teams.

A khrushchyovka was a prefabricated apartment block built to reduce overcrowding, usually with private kitchens, bathrooms and heating.

False.

Life expectancy declined from 68 to 64 years in the 1970s, with alcoholism becoming a national crisis.

Khrushchev promised to reach 'Communism within 20 years'.

Infant mortality fell from 81 to 27 per 1,000 births between 1950 and 1965.

Brezhnev's 'social contract' was an unspoken agreement offering citizens job security, low prices and social benefits in return for conformity and obedience.

Brezhnev's welfare reforms gave workers a guaranteed annual holiday and sick pay, and expanded pensions and maternity benefits.

True.

Opinion polls in the 1990s and 2000s frequently named the Brezhnev era as the best time to have lived in Russia.

By 1980, hidden unemployment was 20%, with at least 1 million vacancies in Soviet industry.

Brezhnev's unspoken agreement with citizens is sometimes called the 'Little Deal'.

For Khrushchev, a 'stable society' meant stability delivered through material well-being rather than fear.

By 1964, around 108 million citizens had moved into new homes.

The Zhenotdel was the women's department of the Communist Party, founded in 1919 by Alexandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand to promote women's rights.

Alexandra Kollontai was appointed Commissar for Social Welfare, becoming the first woman in government in modern Europe.

False.

There was no equal pay; women earned on average 40% less than men and rarely reached managerial positions.

By the 1980s, women were 33% of Party members but held very few leadership roles.

The 'double burden' was the expectation that women work full-time while also carrying out all of the household duties.

The USSR legalised abortion in 1920, the first country in the world to do so.

The 'Stakhanovite Woman' was a propaganda ideal portraying women as heroic workers during Stalin's Five-Year Plans.

Women made up 29% of the industrial workforce in 1929, rising to 43% by 1940.

True.

By 1953, women held only 20% of local soviet seats and were almost absent from top-level positions.

Female pilots of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment were nicknamed the 'Night Witches'.

The BAM (Baikal–Amur Mainline) campaign recruited women, called the 'BAM brides', to remote regions to boost the labour supply.

By 1985, 90% of working-age women were employed in towns or state enterprises, mostly in low-paid sectors.

The 'triple shift' was the rural woman's burden of farm work, household chores and producing handicrafts to supplement the household income.

Dekulakisation meant many men were arrested, executed or deported, leaving women to run households alone.

False.

Bolshevik authority remained weak in the countryside, and decisions about land and politics stayed with men.

By 1983, 65% of farm work remained unmechanised.

Trudodni were the work-unit points earned on collective farms; women earned few because they did unskilled, non-mechanised jobs.

By August 1958, 6,400 women had been recruited, though fewer than 450 were in well-paid professions.

The Virgin Lands scheme (1954–1974) recruited women to farm as milkmaids, gardeners, manual labourers and carers.

By 1980, only 2% of farm managers were women, even though women were 80% of rural teachers.

True.

Recruitment focused on women aged around 25, while women aged 26 and over and single mothers were rejected.

The number of female tractor drivers rose from eight during the NEP to 50,000 in 1940.

The Kolkhoz was the Soviet collective farm, whose workforce women became the backbone of after dekulakisation and male migration.

By 1970, 72% of the lowest-paid farm workers were women.

The family was seen as essential for shaping the 'new socialist citizen' and maintaining social order during periods of rapid change.

'Postcard divorce' was Lenin's 1926 reform treating marriage as a simple contract that either husband or wife could easily end.

True.

Through the Zhenotdel, the Soviet Union became the first country to grant women equal working and voting rights in 1919.

Under Khrushchev, state-paid maternity leave increased to 112 days in 1956, up from 77 days.

In 1936, Stalin made abortion illegal (unless the mother's life was in danger) and banned contraception.

De facto marriage, established by the 1926 Marriage Code, gave couples who lived together the same legal status as married couples.

Abortion became legal again in 1955 under Khrushchev.

False.

Under Brezhnev, homosexuality continued to be a crime and lesbianism was still regarded as a mental disorder.

Brezhnev's government claimed equality had been achieved and blamed the shortfall on women's supposed 'natural desire' to focus on the family.

Stalin's 1944 financial incentives gave women with seven children 2,000 roubles a year for five years.

Medical virginity checks were carried out by collective farm managers under Stalin to enforce abstinence and stigmatise sex outside marriage.

Wendy Goldman argued the 1918 Family Code radically broke with the past and took decisive steps toward women's liberation.

Lunacharsky was the People's Commissar of Enlightenment, who argued only certain individuals should be educated to help the revolution.

Unified labour schools, established by decree in October 1918, provided free vocational education to children aged eight to 17.

True.

In 1943, Stalin introduced gender segregation in schools to ensure discipline and focus.

By 1932, 95% of children were enrolled in primary schools under Stalin.

In 1914, approximately 32% of the population could not read or write.

The Decree on Illiteracy (1919) required all people aged between five and 50 to learn to read and write.

By 1939, over 94% of adults were literate in the Soviet Union.

False.

Brezhnev repealed many of Khrushchev's reforms between 1964 and 1966, seeing them as unpopular.

University attendance rose from 127,000 students in 1914 to 811,000 in 1939.

Khrushchev's 1959 Education Law made education compulsory for children aged seven to 15.

Polytechnic education, introduced by Lunacharsky and Krupskaya, combined academic learning with practical and vocational activity.

McCauley argued expansion was extremely impressive, so that by the 1980s the gap between developed and underdeveloped nations had almost disappeared.

Youth groups were used to shape loyal, disciplined citizens committed to Marxism and to secure the future of the Revolution.

The Komsomol was the Communist youth organisation established in 1918 for young people aged 14 to 28.

True.

Bolshevik youth groups such as the Young Pioneers replaced the Scouts, which were banned in 1922.

The Young Pioneers wore a white shirt with a red neckerchief.

In the 1930s, Stalin encouraged Komsomol members to spy on their parents.

The Young Pioneers was a youth organisation established in 1922 for children aged 10 to 25, who were taught to build and defend Communism.

Khrushchev used the Komsomol to recruit for the Virgin Lands Scheme and to help hold factory managers and Party officials accountable.

False.

Brezhnev instead wanted the Komsomol to celebrate Party achievements and monitor the discipline of young people.

Fainsod argued Komsomol enrolment was weakest in rural areas, where family and religious loyalties remained strong.

Brezhnev saw the leadership of the Komsomol as potentially dangerous and changed their focus.

Komsomolskaya Pravda was a youth magazine created in 1925 to promote Communist ideology and government policies.

Kelly argued the early Young Pioneers was an eminently serious political organisation whose members modelled behaviour for 'unorganised children'.