Economic and social developments
Cards (46)
- To help rebuild industry, 2 more 5 year plans were introduced.
- Results: USSR became 2nd to the USA in industrial capacity, most targets in heavy industry met, production doubled and urban and urban workforce increased from 67 to 77 million. By 1947, Dniper Dam up and working again.
- Results: most growth targets met National income increased 71%, Malenkovs changes met opposition resulting in his loss of leadership in 1955.
- Khrushchev opposed Malenkov's proposal to move the economic focus away from heavy to light industry. Malenkov criticised K's agricultural policies so K adopted them to be more similar to his
- Output targets were weighted by weight to heavier were favoured rather than lighter regardless of if that's what consumers wanted.
- Decentralisation: 60 Moscow Ministers were abolished and 105 economic regions, each in its own local economic council (sovnarkhoz) to plan and supervise the economy. Extended K's patronage network into localities.
- Both had the slogan of 'Catch up and overtake the USA by 1970' and there was shift to modern industries.
- greater exploitation of USSR's resources - natural gas, oil and coal - and building of power stations.
- In 1957, the USSR launched the Erath's first artificial satellite (Sputnik) and pictures of the dark side of the moon were taken
- TV sets: 495 thousands by 1955 and 1675 in 1965.
- Consumer growth: only 2% by 1964
- 1945 harvest produced less than 60% of pre-war and 1946 saw rost draught since 1891
- Results: State procured 70% of harvest leaving peasants with little, output to kolkhozes increased by not to 30s level, lagged behind industry
- Khrushchev prided himself on his agricultural expertise. Coming from a peasant background himself, he enjoyed spending time in the countryside, talking with the peasants in an earthy' language which at least suggested (and probably meant) he was interested in farming matters.
- Stalin's encouragement of particular farming methods was also criticised as counter-productive, although Khrushchev continued to favour some whose ideas were scientifically dubious, such as Lysenko.
- Khrushchev therefore increased investment and put forward a number of proposals for change. As with industry, he placed the implementation of reforms in the hands of the local Party organisations. The Ministry of Agricultures powers were thus reduced so that it became little more than a consultative and advisory Body.
- peasants who did not possess animals were no longer to be required to deliver meat to the State collectives were allowed to set their own production targets and choose how to use their land.
- encouragement to merge collectives to create larger farms.
- The result was that the number of collectives was halved 1950-60 and the number of state farms' (generally double the size of the collectives) was increased.
- Members of the Soviet youth movement, the Komsomol, were also encouraged to spend time on the new farms, helping to build settlements, put up fences, dig ditches and build roads.
- By 1956, 35.9 million hectares of virgin land' had been ploughed for wheat; the equivalent of the total cultivated area of Canada.
- This was despite the fact that private plots represented only around 3 per cent of the total cultivated area.
- Frustrations at the low prices the State paid for products and the interference of Party officials in farm management brought plenty of grumbling, and sometimes had the effect of reducing peasant output.
- A particularly bad harvest in 1963 did not help matters but, embarrassingly for Khrushchev, the USSR was forced to import grain as a result - some from North America.
- There was only a limited rise in milk production when cows were transferred to the collectives while crops, such as maize, were often grown in unsuitable soil and sometimes to the detriment of much-needed wheat. In any case, Khrushchey's cornflakes did not go down well with a population more used to buckwheat porridge.
- Khrushchev's USSR was, in reality, a time of too many different initiatives, carried out with insufficient thought.
- Women were expected to make up for the war dead (and in the building trade represented a third of all workers).
- There were some ambitious new housing initiatives too.
- In 1958, compulsory voluntary subscriptions to the State were abolished, and both the bachelors' tax and that on childless couples were removed. Pension arrangements were improved and even peasants became eligible for a state pension.
- Factory trade unions were also given more responsibilities and this enabled them to take a more active role in employment negotiations.
- Although cars became more common in the early 1960s, for example, they were generally beyond the reach of ordinary citizens and reserved for Party officials.
- The post-war years had seen the grim 'Zhdanovshchina during which censorship had grown tighter, the ethnic minorities had suffered, and freedom of cultural expression was non-existent. Despite the adulation he received, Stalin's paranoia had cast a grim shadow over social life breeding an atmosphere of fear and secrecy.
- A limited number of citizens were allowed to travel abroad. Cultural and sports tours were arranged and televisions showed international performances by companies such as the Bolshoi and Kirov Ballet and the Moscow state circus, as well as by sports teams such as the Moscow Dynamos football team.
- Khrushchev also realised the economic potential of international tourism, and established 'Intourist' through which foreigners could visit the USSR and witness Soviet achievements at first hand. For ordinary citizens, and particularly for young people, seeing Westerners at close range was a transformative experience which opened new horizons.
- this comes from a novel of the same name (Ottepel in Russian) by llya Ehrenburg, published in 1954; it tells of a woman who finds the courage to leave her husband - a tyrannical factory manager and 'little Stalin'
- Young people saw the dress, music and behaviour of Westerners as exciting and 'modern? Jeans, rock and roll, jazz, make-up, greased hair, slang and teddy boys.
- Changes in youth attitudes brought more incidents of petty vandalism and hooliganism, while in the universities there were incidents of students boycotting lectures or the communist dining rooms in protest against controls. According to a survey carried out by Soviet authorities in 1961, the majority of young people were cynical about the ideals of the October Revolution and were more motivated by material ambitions. Since 55 per cent of the population was under 30 years of age, this was a serious threat to the system.
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is another. He was released from labour camp and allowed to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962, in which he described conditions in the gulag. Both books, which were highly critical of Stalinist times, achieved impressive sales; the latter sold a million copies in six months.
- He disliked 'modernism' in literature and art and was quite outspoken and critical after a visit to a Moscow art gallery displaying modernist works in 1962. Nevertheless, 'culture was not judged solely by his personal taste. Artistic endeavour was, as it always had been, measured by its commitment to 'social responsibility.