To what extent was social policy successful at providing social stability in the Soviet Union
between 1953-1985? (20 marks)
After the death of Stalin in March 1953, the reduction in terror and promotion of the family
unit provided a more prosperous period with social cohesion, moving away from the ‘Great
retreat’ of 1936 and towards social security via improved housing, healthcare and living
condition as well as improved status of women, family and education which all had success
in providing social stability. However, there were areas of superficial change due to lack of
quality provisions. Moreover, it is highly debatable to what extent social policy was
successful at providing social stability.
The full employment achieved under Stalin in the 1930s with 27 million being employed
continued under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, significantly the gap between highest and
lowest paid was limited between 1967 and 1977 and role models such as Alexi Stakhanov
were used to motivate workers with rewards of honour/medals and more importantly
material rewards. Moreover, this led to a reduction in inequality moving towards a
communist utopia where its people are more motivated resulting in higher economic
productivity and social stability. On top of this, the introduction of minimum wage in 1956,
the working week reduced in 1957 and number of paid holidays increased would further
motivation and subsequent productivity of workers. However, although the limited pay gap
was assured, there were superficial aspects of full employment including seasonal work
causing short periods of unemployment, pointless repetitive jobs created to ensure full
employment, and moonlighting which exemplified the lack of care/control of managers and
more significantly insufficient pay as workers needed to moonlight to gain extra money. But
overall, job security was assured as there was full employment which meant everyone had
an income. Other social policies which improved social security was housing, under
Khrushchev Khrushchoby housing blocks were used to increase the housing space from 178
million square metres in 1951 to 394 million in 1961, this enabled families to have their own
apartments instead of a single room (in 1936 only 6% of rented units had more than one
room). Despite increase in privacy, the quality of housing was extremely poor, due to being
prefabricated and poorly finished. This points to the conclusion although there were areas
of successful change, the superficial quality outweighed improvements. Lastly, the final
areas of social security included healthcare and living conditions, due to Khrushchev's focus
on welfare, the healthcare budget increased from 21.4 billion roubles in 1950 to 44 billion in
1959, along with the pension budget quadrupling between 1950 and 1965 this meant death
rate dropped. With greater investment in rural areas through virgin land schemes in 1955,
income on collective farms increased. Moreover, this was clearly an assured change with
higher income equalling better living prospects. However, some areas of healthcare were
superficial due to in the central Asian republic's hospitals lacking water/heating as late as
1988. Additionally, with a generation growing up without role models, there were still social
problems including high divorce rates, hooliganism, and alcoholism with 20 million
alcoholics in 1987.
After 1953, the role of women improved, with the social provisions stretching to the rural
population and internal passports given to collective workers in 1974 gave freedom to
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