Impact on the Upper + Middle Classes

• In 1917, attacks began on the "burzhui" aristocrats including landowners, priests, businessmen, lawyers and even doctors.
• Anyone well-dressed was at risk of being denounced as a member of the burzhui.
• Lenin encouraged a hostility to "class enemies" as it provided a useful distraction.
• Lenin formalised the persecution of the burzhui, calling them "former people".
• Houses were requisitioned and turned into communal apartments for workers and the burzhui were forced to carry out tasks such as cleaning the streets.
• A number of former nobles and bourgeoisie were assaulted, robbed and even killed.
• The persecution of the burzhui increased during the Civil War of 1918-21 when they were barely given enough to survive on.
• Things improved during the NEP but Nepmen and bourgeois socialists were merely being tolerated.
• Communist propaganda continued to denounced the bourgeois way of life as decadent, selfish and greedy.
• The Great Turn of 1928-29 was to mark a significant downturn in the fortunes of Nepmen, kulaks and specialists who had benefitted from the NEP.
• Managers and specialists were at greatest risk during Stalin's terror alongside any suspected kulaks.