Employment in the USSR, 1917–1953 (Edexcel A Level History): Revision Note

Summary

• This note will examine the importance of employment to the development of the Soviet state

• The Bolsheviks promised to create a classless workers’ state where everyone had a job

• Lenin initially aimed for worker empowerment

  • However, Lenin faced huge economic disruption during the Civil War

    • This led to greater state control and compulsory labour

• Under Stalin, employment became a tool of industrial growth and social discipline

• The USSR achieved full employment by the 1930s

  • However, living standards, safety, and welfare remained low

• Historians still debate whether this achievement represented genuine social progress or merely another form of state control

The labour market under Lenin

Marxism and work

• Marx viewed work as a creative and collective activity

  • It should not be something exploited for private profit

• Under Communism, work was meant to:

  • Unite workers in shared purpose

  • Abolish class divisions between workers and owners

  • Create a society where labour served need, not greed

Work and benefits under Lenin (1917–1918)

Decree on Workers’ Control (1917)

• This allowed workers to oversee factory management

  • Workers’ committees were formed but lacked experience, leading to:

    • Disruption and conflict with managers

    • Declines in productivity

  • In response, Lenin argued for state supervision to bring order

The Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People (1918)

• This promised to abolish private ownership

  • It guaranteed:

    • The right to employment and rest

    • Protection through social welfare

    • The goal of ending exploitation by employers

  • In theory, this gave workers political and economic rights

Work under War Communism (1918–1921)

Compulsory labour

• Economic collapse during the Civil War and War Communism caused mass unemployment and food shortages

• The 1918 Constitution declared, “He who does not work shall not eat”

• To restore production, the state introduced labour conscription

  • This meant that all able-bodied people between 16 and 50 were required to work

  • Labour brigades were formed

  • The state drafted workers into industries vital to the war effort

Rationing and worker facilities

• Rationing determined food supplies based on social class:

  • Workers and soldiers received the largest rations

  • Bourgeois professionals received the least

• Workers were provided with:

  • Basic canteens

  • Communal housing

  • Crèches

  • Limited healthcare and welfare services

• However, corruption, low morale, and food shortages persisted

Failures of War Communism

• Productivity collapsed by over 70%, and factory output plummeted

• Many workers fled the cities for food in the countryside

  • By 1921, the urban population had fallen by almost half

• A black market emerged, undermining the state economy

• Labour conscription became unpopular and unworkable, contributing to strikes and uprisings

Work and benefits under the NEP (1921–1928)

Employment and productivity

• The New Economic Policy (NEP)

  • Ended compulsory labour

  • Allowed some private enterprise

    • Small workshops and private traders (Nepmen) reappeared

    • This employed thousands

• Agricultural recovery created a surplus of labour, especially as soldiers returned from the Civil War

  • Urban unemployment rose to around 1.2 million by 1924

    • This was mostly among young people and women

1922 Labour Law

• Introduced to stabilise the post-war economy and formalise workers’ rights

• The act:

  • Legalised collective bargaining

  • Guaranteed sick pay and maternity leave

  • Standardised working hours and conditions

• However, these rights mostly applied to state workers, not those in private trade

Social insurance (1922–1924)

• Lenin’s government introduced social insurance for industrial workers, covering:

  • Accidents

  • Sickness

  • Unemployment

• By 1924, over 9 million workers were insured

  • Funding came from taxes on employers and local soviets, not workers’ contributions

• However, peasants did not receive social insurance

  • This accounts for the majority of the population

Employment policies under Stalin

The drive for full employment

• Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan (1928) transformed employment:

  • Millions moved from the countryside to cities

  • New industrial centres like Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk were built

• By the early 1930s, the USSR officially claimed to have eliminated unemployment

Labour discipline and social control

• Harsh labour laws ensured obedience:

  • Absenteeism was criminalised in 1940

  • Internal passports (1932) restricted movement between jobs or cities

• Employment was tied to ration cards, housing, and social status

  • This made it impossible to survive outside the system

• Forced labour through the GULAG system provided a vast supply of manual labour

Work conditions

• Factories were often:

  • Unsafe

  • Overcrowded

  • Poorly ventilated

• Sanitation and healthcare lagged behind industrial growth

• Accidents were frequent

  • Industrial deaths rose sharply during the first two Five-Year plans

Social conditions

Wages and living standards

• Real wages fell in the 1930s despite economic growth

• Shortages of food and consumer goods remained common

Health and welfare

• Infant mortality was high

  • Around 160 deaths per 1,000 births in 1930

• Limited medical care was available at workplaces,

  • However, hospitals could not cope with demand

• Welfare improved slightly post-1945, but remained uneven

Women in the workforce

• Female employment rose dramatically:

  • By 1940, 43% of industrial workers were women

  • By 1950, this had risen to 53%

• However, women were concentrated in low-paid and unskilled roles, such as:

  • Textiles

  • Food production

• Propaganda promoted the 'double burden' ideal

  • Women were expected to work and manage the household

Did the USSR achieve 'full employment'?

• By the 1930s, the state declared unemployment abolished

• Historians debate whether this was a victory for the state or evidence of state control

Victory for the state - the Soviet perspective

• Stalin presented full employment as proof of socialism’s superiority over capitalism during the Great Depression

Key historians

"The labour legislation of 1922 reasserted some of the principles of past decrees, and laid down some new ones. Workers were entitled to an eight-hour day (less in heavy work), two weeks’ holiday with pay, social insurance benefits (including sick pay, unemployment pay, medical aid). Collective agreements between management and unions would regulate wages and working conditions. A disputes commission, with the union strongly represented, would consider grievances. The regime could point with pride to such legal enactments; they were well ahead of their time... Of course, one must also take into account the improvement in social services, the elimination of unemployment, and the undeniable fact that many ex-peasants who moved into industry were earning more than they would have earned had they remained on the farms." - Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917-1991 (1992)

"The Soviet Union was the workers’ state, and while historians have often emphasized the exploitation of the working class during and after Stalinism, worker culture, broadly defined, nevertheless coloured the whole of the Soviet experience. Workers were always celebrated. They were at the centre of the most transformative Soviet project of all, Stalin’s industrial revolution of 1928-41. During especially the first half of that revolution, workers benefited from specific privileges and from affirmative action, though they also suffered the dreadful misery of rapid industrial change. Many in the Brezhnev generation, born in the decade or so before 1917, started their careers as workers before gaining an industrial higher education and entering the ranks of the technical intelligentsia. Later in Soviet history, many such men and women, who had been formed by working class culture, could be found higher in the ruling order. Capable, at a stretch, of remembering what it was like to be a worker, such people had nevertheless risen out of the working class. For this lucky minority, the workers’ state offered a ladder into the technical and administrative elites. For those who remained, by the post-Stalin era, it offered a workers’ standard of living that was much closer to that of the bosses than in capitalist economies." - Mark B. Smith, The Life of the Soviet worker (2014)

State control- the Western perspective

• Employment was often compulsory, not voluntary

• Forced labour filled gaps, while genuine job satisfaction was rare

• Living standards were low, and workers lacked basic freedoms

• “Full employment” was achieved, but without dignity or choice

Key historians

"In the early period of Soviet power the Soviet leadership encouraged full employment primarily to bring about economic advance—to create the material basis of communism... There is a tension in Soviet society between the necessary requirements of the economy and the aspirations of many people. The provision of work is a traditional social goal, both for the individual and the society of which he or she is part, and has to be reconciled with the aspirations for different types of work expressed by individuals... Soviet policymakers are therefore constrained by two basic ideological objectives which have not been adopted by governments under capitalism: (a) the provision of work for all the population and (b) the requirement of giving opportunities to people to find satisfaction in work" - David Lane, Labour and employment in the USSR (1986)

"The official Soviet ideology contends that there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union; that every Soviet citizen has the right to work, guaranteed constitutionally; and that full employment of the able-bodied population has been ensured in the country. However, these claims must be taken with caution. The first means in effect merely that registered unemployment is absent, because unemployment benefits are not available. In connection with the second it should be remembered that work is not only a right but also a duty and a matter of honor, and that in practice the former neither eliminates open but unregistered unemployment nor assures employment at skill level and in the desired locality. And the third conceals the fact that full employment is economically irrational, i.e., characterized by considerable under-utilization and waste of working time and qualifications. Since in the Soviet Union full employment is economically irrational in the sense mentioned, it has on the one hand a pronounced social dimension which arises from the nature of command socialism, the regime's policies, and the vested interests of individual role-players; on the other hand, it has adverse economic, behavioral, and attitudinal consequences. And this also raises the question of social deprivation and of official and unofficial response to it." - J. L. Porket, Social deprivation under Soviet full employment (1988)