Lenin

• Work and Benefits under Lenin overview

  • Work from 1917-1918.
  • Work and benefits, 1918-21.
  • Work and benefits in the 1920s.
• Work 1917-1918

  • High unemployment; 1917 Revolutions had caused economic chaos; 570 industrial enterprises closed between March and August 1917; unemployment reached 100k by 1918.
  • By March 1918, 75% of chemical workers in Petrograd were unemployed.
  • Lenin encouraged cooperation between former bosses as 'bourgeois specialists' and their workers - they received a wage for their work in running factories.
  • These plans failed to stop economic chaos - War Communism now in place.
• Work and Benefits, 1918-21

  • Compulsory labour; from September 1918, able-bodied men between 16 and 50 lost the right to refuse employment; work cards issued which entitled workers to rations.
  • Food rationing; rations allocated based on occupation; working-class people received the highest rations versus aristocrats who received 25% of that.
  • Benefits; work card entitled workers to free public transport in Moscow and Petrograd; government claim that 93% of people in Moscow fed by food halls in 1920.
  • Unsuccessful; Petrograd population down 50%; never provided more than 50% of food required.
• Work and Benefits in the 1920s

  • Unemployment surged; in 1924, unemployment reached 18%; demobilised Red Army soldiers struggled to find work; government tried to 'rationalise' industry; As War Communism ended, government sacked 225K administrators.
  • Creches ended.
  • In 1922, 62% of unemployed were women.
  • Social benefits; 1922 Labour Law gave unions the right to negotiate pay and working conditions with employers; social insurance such as disability and unemployment benefits covered 9 million people; most comprehensive welfare state in the world.
  • By 1926, urban workers paid 10% more than 1913.