How Did These Changes Affect the Soviet People? (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE History)

Unskilled workers

• Better housing in towns and cities

• Improved access to healthcare and education as it was free for all

• Unemployment was nearly non-existent

• Popularity of the Stakhanovite movement

• Collective farms had better access to healthcare and education

• After the Second World War, peasants suffered less from famine

Skilled workers

• Better training and wages for managers

• More access to skilled professions such as engineers and doctors. By 1940, the USSR had double the number of doctors per head than Britain

• The nomenklatura became the new ruling class. They had top government jobs

• New farming machinery and methods allowed workers to farm more efficiently

Women

• More women entered the workplace. By 1940, they made up 40% of the workforce

• Women could pursue skilled professions

• Businesses established creches to help female employees

• Paid holidays allowed women to split their time between work and home

• Women continued to be a key part of the labour force in the countryside

Unskilled workers

• Workers could not meet their production targets. This led to fines, the loss of jobs and, in severe cases, arrest

• Wages fell from 1928 to 1937

• Housing was expensive. Many lived in a komunalki. This was a communal apartment typically shared by multiple families

• Peasants had no choice but to collectivise. They lost their private farms and their freedom

• The state suppressed peasant opposition with violence and propaganda

Skilled workers

• The state gave internal passports to non-Soviet workers. This monitored workers who came to help with the Five-Year Plans

• Workers with more disposable income did not have much choice in consumer products

• Many people had to queue to buy clothes and food

• Kulaks no longer existed as a class

• Many victims of dekulakisation were not kulaks. The government had a quota of kulaks to persecute

Women

• The state expected women to continue their domestic duties and work

• Women were not treated equally to men in the workplace

• Women became a key opposition group to collectivisation

• Many women left the countryside to work in urban areas

Minorities

• Jewish people continued to face persecution. The Doctors' Plot in 1953 arrested nine doctors accused of murdering several party officials. At least six of these doctors were Jewish

• Many minorities were deported or used as slave labour in the GULAG system

• Many minority groups were victims of collectivisation. An example of this is the Holodomor