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Stalin to Putin (The Great Patriotic War and the Last Years of Stalin’s…

- - - - o Vindicated some of the wrongdoings of the 1930s
      - o Legitimated the regime
      - o “without collectivisation, this country would not have won the war” Molotov memoirs
      - o Stalin and the generals were very popular
- - - - • The issue was that soviet citizens were now impressed by western culture
      - • His plan might have backfired
      - • New freedoms in terms of arts
      - • Still censorship but with limits writers were allowed to criticise and comment
      - • Censorship eventually became much stricter and even some show trials against intellectuals
  - - - Party
        
         Revival of the party was paramount
        
         Party doubled in size under Khrushchev
        
         Penetrated workplaces and society
        
         Secret police changed to KGB and reorganised in 1954
        
         Central committee was revived as a key institution
      - housing
        
        • Large proportion of investments towards oridinary people rather than military and industrial complex
        
        • Increased spending on housing and consumer goods e.g. fridges
        
        • Wage system but bare bones
        
        • Discipoline was relaxed slightly – not arresting for absences
        
        • Life in the cities became much more bareable
        
        • “you pretend to pay us and we pretend to work”
        
        • Khrushchyovka – big housing movement
        
        • Dealing with migration from villages to cities especially after the world war and migrating veterans
        
        • 5.8sqm of living space in 1921 – 8.8sqm by the end of Khrushchev era
        
        • But most people still living in communal appartments
        
        • Contruction of housing began under stalin but Khrushchev doubled investment and expanded greatly
        
        • 1961 party promised – the housing shortage will be eliminated
        
        • Poor construction because of the need for quantity
      - Agriculture
        
        • The aim to develop the virgin lands
        
        • The peasant were encouraged to grow more on private plots
        
        • Increased payments to collective farms
        
        • Much more investment into agricultural sector
        
        • Merges between collective farms
        
        • This would hopefully make so much grain that the ussr could export grain to invest into other sectors
        
        • 1953 – promoted virgin land campaign as a solution to grain issue
        
        o The issue with this was it wasn’t arable land – Siberia
        
        • The extension of corn cultivation to help with livestock
        
        • The expansion came at the expense of other areas and many areas were not suitable to certain crops
        
        • 1960 – 70-80 percent of crops died so incredibly low yields as a disaster
    - - peaceful coexistence
      - space race
        
        Sputnik october 4th 1957
        
        Yuri Gagarin 12th april 1961
        
        metaphor for the battle betweeen communism and capitalism