Transcript Stalin`s Domestic Policies

Stalin’s Domestic Policies
Stalin’s Domestic policies: what did
they try to achieve?
• Control over
education
• Control over leisure
• Cult of the Personality
Education
• Purpose
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Support
Indoctrination
Propaganda
Increase in political consciousness
Vocational training
Careers
Raise literacy levels
Training for military or other careers
Education
• Primary education was compulsory for all
In 1930 it was for 4 years and later increased to 7 years.
• Adults encouraged to take classes to improve literacy.
• Traditional education was emphasized with emphasis on
traditional subjects and of course Marxism-Leninism
• Universities with specialized departments were set up
• Students encouraged to study specialist courses to
prepare them to serve the needs of the Five year Plans
• Tests and examinations reintroduced
• Uniforms reintroduced
• Eventually higher education was fee paying and no longer
free
Education
• Newspapers available at low prices
• Newspapers provided to factory workers
• Publishers printed the Russian classis
and foreign literature at low prices thus
making books accessible to most people
• Youth groups such as Young Pioneers
and Komosomols compulsory for
students and future members of the
party were drawn from these groups.
• Creation of stereotypical role models
Results
• 96% literacy for males in USSR by 1939
• 82% literacy for females in 1939
• Changes in the form and structure of
schools
• Emphasis on narrow specialist courses
• Preferences to proletarian background
was withdrawn
How effective were Stalin’s
Education policies?
Control of the Arts and Culture
• Media
– Broadcasts
– Films
– Publications
Radio
Set up in every village , every hamlet across the country to
hear the voice of Stalin
“The Soviet Radio carries to the masses the inspired
words of Bolshevik truth, aids the people in tis struggle for
the full victory of Communism in our country, summons
them to heroic deeds in the name of the further
strengthening of the power of the economic and cultural
prosperity of the USSR”
What was Marxist proletarian
Culture?
• Not defined : except that it was supposed
to be new
• Thus in the early days a tendency to
develop abstract art and music
• Under Stalin this was changed to
represent his propaganda and develop the
‘cult of the personality’
• The arts eventually came to achieve one
thing: glorify the Soviet state.
Cinema
Cinema
• Patriotic themes
• End of experimentation that had been so
much a part of the Proletkult
• References to historical past to create the
myth of the Soviet state
• From 1930’s the tone was intensely
patriotic
Socialist realism
• It was the new approved
style for books ,creative
art and media.
• The aim was to glorify the
worker, the Stakhanovite,
the Kolhozes: in short to
show what it should be
rather what it really was
Sergei Gerasimov and Kazimir
Malevich
Literatii
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Mayakovsky
Osip Mandelstam
Maxim Gorky
Mikhail Sokolov
Boris Pasternak
RAPP and Union of Russian
Writers
• Membership to RAPP was compulsory for
writers
• Censorship of works by RAPP
• Eventually RAPP disbanded because it
was too avant garde
• Maxim Gorky came back to head RUW
• Writers , composers artists were supposed
to toe the ideological line but what was it?
Rebuilding Projects
• Moscow given a face lift
• Tall gigantic buildings became
the norm an expression of the
gigantomania that was so
characteristic of Stalin’s
economic policies
• Buildings : tall and soaring
• Decorated with stained glass
and huge gigantic murals and
themes that reflected Soviet
socialist realism
• Metro, the Hermitage, Sports
stadia all a part of the grand
scheme
Impact on families and family life?
• Under Stalin there was a reversal of many
of the policies that had been formulated
under Lenin
• Why?
– Part of the change was necessary because of
the huge disruptions caused by migration to
cities or deportations of families to labour
camps
– In some cases families left in the care of
relatives or brought up on Collective farms
Family life
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Life in the cities was harsh
Livng conditions claustrophobic
Housing shortage
Sharing of facilities
Enormous strain on family life
Abandonment of families was common
Rise of street gangs and juvenile crime a serious
problem
• Hooliganism
• Falling birth rate
Solutions
• Death penalty for juvenile delinquents over the
age of 12
• Juvenile delinquents to be held under state
custody and parents to pay for upkeep
• Abortion illegal and doctors punished
• Divorce very difficult
• Homosexuality banned
• Rewards to mothers for having numerous
children
• Childcare in factories to allow women to work