Social Costs arid Social Effects:
-Moreover, heavy sacrifices were demanded of the people--including the liquidation of the kulaks, heavy use of “correctional labor,”
-austerity in consumer goods; heavy reinvestment of capital required long hours and low wages.
-By 1935 the USSR had recovered to levels of 1927. Minimum standards were set, but there was heavy economic inequality.
-The press was free to denounce industrial failings not to criticize the system.
-People did internalize the new values, as in Orwell’s 1984.
-Statistics showing fulfilled quotas were vital; no skepticism or opposition was tolerated. Art, science, and sport became
extensions of politics. Opponents in thought or deed disappeared.
The Purge Trials of the 1930s:
-The Soviet Constitution of 1936 guarantees the right to employment, leisure, and
economic security, not to mention civil liberties; suffrage is complete, and racism and sexism are denigrated. But internal
strains were evident in the 1930s. On the right, Bukharin favored a more gradual collectivization; on the left, Trotsky called
for world revolution. The party was purged ruthlessly in 1933, with expulsion of one-third its members. Assassination of
Kirov removed an enemy and provided Stalin with the excuse to launch the purge trials of the late 1930s.
-Numerous Old Bolshevik leaders were tried, forced to confess, and executed with Lenin’s friend Bukharin. Leaders of the highest party
and military rank and unknown millions of lesser figures were purged, to be executed or to disappear deep within the
Gulag. The USSR was now run by “new men,” products of the new order, loyal to Stalin.