The Promotion of a Stable Society, 1953–1985 (Edexcel A Level History): Revision Note

Summary

• This note will examine how successfully Soviet leaders established a 'stable society' in the USSR

• After Stalin’s death, both Khrushchev and Brezhnev sought to stabilise Soviet society after decades of fear and upheaval

  • Khrushchev focused on raising living standards to prove that socialism could deliver prosperity

  • Brezhnev emphasised security and predictability

• Historians disagree over whether this period represented a golden age of stability or a slow decline in disguise

Social reforms under Khrushchev

What was the concept of the ‘stable society’?

• Khrushchev believed stability would come from material well-being, not fear

• His goal was to prove that socialism could outperform capitalism by providing better homes, healthcare, and education

  • This was part of his promise to reach “Communism within 20 years”

Khrushchev's healthcare reforms

• Khrushchev doubled the Soviet healthcare budget

• He improved rural access to healthcare by:

  • Building thousands of clinics

  • Introducing mobile medical teams

Impact

• Infant mortality rates dropped from 81 per 1,000 births (1950) to 27 per 1,000 (1965)

• Life expectancy rose to 68 years by the mid-1960s

Khrushchev's welfare reforms

• Increased state investment in pensions as:

  • Pension rates improved

  • There was an increase in pensioners

    • This included farmers for the first time

• Free lunches are provided in

  • Schools

  • Offices

  • Factories

• Free public transport

Impact

• Significantly improved living standards, especially for the most vulnerable in society

Khrushchev's housing reforms

• Khrushchev doubled the amount of urban housing from 1950 to 1965

• He stopped the construction of communal housing buildings

The Khrushchyovka

• The khrushchyovki were prefabricated apartment blocks, aimed to reduce overcrowding

  • Khrushchev argued that, when the state achieved Communism, they would replace these buildings with more permanent buildings

• Most apartments had private kitchens, bathrooms, and heating

  • This was a major improvement from Stalin’s kommunalki

  • Apartments were 10 times bigger than the kommunalki

• Buildings were plain and functional

  • This marked a move away from Stalinist Classicism

Impact

• Khrushchyovki transformed urban life

  • Families gained privacy and independence for the first time

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

• Khrushchyovki worried the state

  • Soviet authorities could not rely on informants to keep control of the population

Social reforms under Brezhnev

The 'social contract'

• Brezhnev built his rule on an unspoken agreement between the state and its citizens

  • This is sometimes called the 'Little Deal'

Brezhnev's healthcare reforms

• Government spending on health increased by 4-5% each year

Impact

• Public health stagnated despite free care

  • Life expectancy declined from 68 years to 64 years in the 1970s

  • Alcoholism became a national crisis

    • This caused rates of liver disease and workplace accidents to increase

Brezhnev's welfare reforms

• Welfare spending rose steadily

  • Pensions and maternity benefits were expanded

  • Workers received a guaranteed annual holiday and sick pay

• Living standards improved

  • People benefited from the booming black market

Impact

• By 1980, hidden unemployment was 20%

  • There were at least 1 million vacancies in Soviet industry

  • Around 10% of women in Central Asia and the Caucasus were unemployed by 1985

    • Gender discrimination and employment centred on heavy industry caused this

Brezhnev's housing reforms

• Soviet people received subsidies:

  • Rent

  • Utilities, such as water and electricity

• Continued Khrushchev’s mass housing drive

  • However, construction slowed, and rural housing lagged behind

Impact

• Urban citizens enjoyed stability and predictability in housing

• Rural families felt left behind, deepening the urban–rural divide

Did the USSR achieve a 'stable society' by 1985?

• Historians debate whether, by 1985, the USSR had reached a 'golden age' of social stability or if this stability was not genuine

Evidence of stability

• The USSR remained politically calm

  • There were no major revolts or famines

• Citizens felt secure as the state guaranteed jobs, housing, and pensions

Key historians

"Russians tended to remember the Brezhnev era as a ‘Golden Age’. A third of opinion poll respondents in 1995 and 1997, and half of those polled in 2002, named that period as the best time to have lived in Russia. In 1998, 36 per cent of respondents wished for the level of well-being they enjoyed under Brezhnev... Gradually, their living standards began to improve. Particularly significant in that respect was the mass housing campaign, which brought millions of Soviet families out of the cramped rooms in shared flats and into their own separate apartments... The social processes triggered by Khrushchev’s reforms merged with the outcomes of the Brezhnev government’s own economic and ideological policies to transform the Soviet way of life. Living standards reached heights unprecedented for the Soviet Union. With prices artificially suppressed for two decades, and wages rising, ordinary people got the opportunity to enjoy modern consumer goods, such as furniture, fashionable clothing and household appliances, on a new scale." - Natalya Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era (2013)

"By the Brezhnev era, the Soviet dictatorship had eliminated many social risks and dangers and minimized the worst consequences of others. Elaborate social policies had been put in place that ameliorated the risks associated with work and unemployment, old age, the loss of a breadwinner, childbirth, and ill health...Between the end of World War II and the onset of Brezhnev's leadership nearly 20 years later, the Soviet Union shifted from being a society defined by danger to one characterized by predictability, equipped with the capacity to measure social risks and to make expert-based judgments about them... these reforms were characteristic of a wider transformation in the Soviet Union, which might be conceptualized as “the withering away of the danger society” after 1953 and to a much more limited extent after 1945. The history of social policy in the USSR shows that Stalinism in its basic sense did not survive Stalin's death. By moving the object of social policy to the immediate and rights-based improvement of individuals' lives, Khrushchev fundamentally reformed one sphere of the Soviet system." - Mark B. Smith, The Withering Away of the Danger Society: The Pensions Reforms of 1956 and 1964 in the Soviet Union (2015)

Evidence of decline

• The economy stagnated

  • This limited the improvements made in welfare and housing

• Citizens became apathetic

  • Social peace was maintained only through routine and fear of change

Key historians

"Some of the most vexing problems of urbanization and town building are being traced to the same vedomstvennost that has afflicted communal construction. A professor complained in Pravda ten years ago, and a sociologist found it worth quoting five years later, about the city of Bratsk in Siberia: 'Bratsk is one of the most graphic and depressing demonstrations of departmental chaos: it consists of a dozen workers’ settlements distant from each other and almost isolated from each other, belonging to different ministries. In addition to offering poor living conditions, constructing it cost much more than anticipated. Yet it is impossible to find who was responsible for all this’. Bratsk, built between 1955 and 1973, today has 220,000 inhabitants and cascading imbalances: more industrial plant than labor, more labor than housing and schools, and far more men than women." - Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (1988)

"In the long run, subsidies were at an unsustainable level.. There was ample grounds for dissatisfaction within the Soviet status quo. The Brezhnev era was one of growing social problems and disturbing long-term trends. In the first category came the growth of alcoholism and drunkenness and its consequences for health. Alcohol abuse was one of the major reasons why the life expectancy of men in the Soviet Union declined from 66 in 1964 to 62 in the early 1980s. It was unusual to have such a decline over a period of less than two decades in an industrialised, developed country. There were also long-term demographic problems. Whereas the population was growing quite quickly in Soviet Central Asia, in the European parts of the USSR it was stagnating or even declining. Some Soviet analysts worried about the thinly populated Siberia, where so many of Russia's mineral resources were located." - Archie Brown, The Rise & Fall of Communism (2010)