Essay
A* Russia and its Rulers Economy & Society Exemplar Essay 2
How far did the working classes suffer more from Bolshevik rule than Tsarist rule during the period ?
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Russia economy and society practice essay 2How far did the working classes suffer more from Bolshevik rule than Tsarist rule during the period
1855-1964?
In theory, the October Revolution should have resulted in a dictatorship of the proletariat in
a nation that should have become a utopia for the working classes according to Marxist theology.
This never happened because the Bolsheviks ruled Russia in the same repressive manner as the
tsars, putting the industrial interests of the state before that of the wellbeing of its working class
citizens. Through Five-Year Plans and arbitrary execution, the working classes seem to have suffered
more persecution under the communists than the tsars. At least during tsarist regimes no one was
pressured into joining the urban proletariat (quite the contrary), such was the ‘sacrifice’ denoted by
the establishment of a Marxist state. Manipulating this notion of ‘sacrifice’ gave the Bolsheviks a
degree of absolute control over the working classes which continued until the end of the period.
Far from being a haven of equality and freedom for the working classes, Bolshevik rule saw a
hierarchy among workers as about 1.5 million employees had been promoted to managerial
positions by the 1930s. Inevitably, this unbalanced system brought about injustices in the treatment
of those who were not promoted, thus suggesting that the theory of Marxism was a hoax used only
to control the working population. The rules of both Lenin and Stalin saw the deaths of millions of
workers, largely due to famines and agricultural shortcomings. The famine of 1920-1 claimed the
lives of around 5 million people, many of whom were workers who were not supplied sufficiently
because of Lenin’s policy of grain requisitioning during the Civil War. War Communism led directly to
the unstoppable growth of inflation which made the lives of the working classes a miserable strife;
by 1921, the rouble was worth only 1% of its 1917 value so that 90% of wages were paid ‘in kind’.
This was embarrassing for a state claiming to represent the interests of workers – a clear failure of
the Bolsheviks that is clearly demonstrated by the decision to return to a capitalist economic model
in the form of the New Economic Policy. Once the communist economic model was restored under
Stalin, the level of repression grew to the point where the suffering of the working classes
undoubtedly reached its peak during the period. Compared to the working day of 8 hours
established by the Provisional Government, Stalin rose the standard hours to between 10-12 hours;
the uncertainty together with the increased working duration highlights how the working classes
were used as economic tools by the Soviet government to catch up with the western democracies.
The launching of the state-run Five-Year Plans can also be viewed as sacrificing the wellbeing
of the working classes for the sake of economic growth, since mammoth projects at industrial sites
like Magnitogorsk resulted in the deaths of thousands of workers due to poor health and safety
management along with abysmal working conditions. Such was the pressure of meeting production
quotas, many managers committed suicide in fear of the consequences of telling the state
authorities that the targets were impossibly high to meet. In addition, wages fell by 50% after the
first Five-Year Plan; this substantial loss of income led to a deterioration in living standards and
accentuated the suffering of the urban proletariat. 25% of Moscow’s population was living in one
room shared between two or more households as their lives were clearly sacrificed in favour of
catching up with the West. While this desire was characteristic of the period and provided the
pretext for economic growth under the tsars, it became an obsession during Stalin’s rule and the
working classes consequently suffered most during his term in office. Even though Khrushchev
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