applying abstract Marxist formulas where they did not fit, exaggerated it beyond all measure and ended by, in effect, condemning and punishing all peasants who did not behave in the prescribed manner.
The respite during the N.E.P., in the course of which rural Russia recovered and in part even began to experience something akin to prosperity, was followed by the all-out offensive of the First Five-Year Plan. Five million kulaks and members of their families disappeared. Countless peasants, recalcitrant or relatively prosperous or simply unlucky, populated forced-labor camps. Other uncounted peasants starved to death. Scenes of horror in once bounteous Ukraine defied description. But, as we know, the peasants, in spite of their resistance, were finally pushed and pulled into collectives. The typical member of a kolkhoz was a new phenomenon in Russian history. The novelty resided not in his wretched poverty, not even in the extremely heavy exactions imposed upon him, but in the minute state organization and control of his work and life. While peasants profited from certain Soviet policies, notably the spread of education, and while some of them rose to higher stations in society, on the whole the condition of the rural masses, the bulk of the Soviet people, remained miserable and at times desperate. Largely supporting the five-year plans by their labor, as already explained, Soviet peasants received very little in return. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev and other leaders admitted the grave condition of the Soviet countryside, while writers presented some unforgettable pictures of it during the relative freedom of expression that prevailed for several months in 1956. Subsequent years, to be sure, witnessed an improvement. Yet rural Russia remains poor. Moreover, the party and the government continued their social engineering, as clearly indicated in such postwar measures and projects as the increase in the size of the collective farms, the abortive agrogoroda, the temporary emphasis on the sovkhoz form of agriculture, and the periodic campaigns against the private plots of kolkhoz members. Indeed - logically, from their point of view - Communists were not likely to relax until peasants disappeared as a separate group, having been integrated into a completely socialized, mechanized, and urbanized economy. No wonder that the coming of perestroika made peasant landownership a central issue and one very difficult to handle.
The Workers
Industrial workers in many ways profited most from the Bolshevik revolution. That revolution was made in their name, and they gave the new regime its greatest social support. Because of this, perhaps a million and a half workers and their children rose to new importance. They became Party functionaries, Red Army officers, and even organizers of collective farms. Many received rapid training to be graduated as technologists. Persons of a proletarian background enjoyed priorities in institutions of higher learning and elsewhere. The upward social mobility of workers was all the more remarkable because their total number was not
very large, and it contrasted sharply with the relatively static nature of tsarist society. Many prominent people in all walks of life today owe their positions to that rise.
But, of course, while many workers went up the social ladder, new men and women entered the factories. After the inauguration of the five-year plans the influx turned into a deluge. Peasants of yesterday became workers of today. Russia finally acquired vast crowds of proletarians characteristic of the industrial revolution. Whether the condition of the workers in the Soviet Union improved compared to tsarist times remains an open question. That it continued to be miserable cannot be reasonably doubted. Soviet workers profited from increased educational and cultural opportunities, but their pitiful real wages probably remained below the prerevolutionary level as late as the early 'fifties. After all, the huge industrialization was made possible by keeping industrial wages down as well as by squeezing the peasants. In addition, workers suffered from the totally inadequate and deteriorating urban housing, and, together with other Soviet citizens, they had to contribute their efforts and their scarce time to various "voluntary" projects, to their own and others' political education, and to other prescribed activities. In contrast to tsarist days, they could not strike or otherwise openly express their discontent. The material condition of the Soviet proletariat did improve, however, after the death of Stalin. Still, it remained quite poor as the Soviet system came to its end.
The "New Class"
Whereas the initial impact of the Bolshevik revolution, coupled with famine and other catastrophes, did much to level Russian society, smashing the rigid class structure of imperial Russia and even destroying entire classes, before long social differentiation began to grow again. In particular, the five-year plans produced a tremendous expansion of administrative and technical personnel, which, together with the already existing Party and government bureaucracies, became, broadly speaking, the leading class in the country. One author estimated that the Soviet economy employed 1,700,000 bookkeepers alone! Scientists, writers, artists, professors, and other intellectuals, purged and integrated into the new system, became prominent members of the privileged group. Army and naval officers and their families provided additional members. Altogether, the privileged, distinguished primarily by their education and nonmanual occupations, came to compose about 15 per cent of the total population. Relatively speaking - paradoxically, if you will - they enjoyed greater advantages compared to the masses than their counterparts in Western capitalist societies. It is also of interest that material differences within the educated class and within the worker and peasant classes, who were often paid according to some form of the piece rate, were very marked in Soviet Russia. Paid vacations and other rewards supplied by the regime were distributed in a similarly uneven manner. In fact,
wages and salaries tended to show a greater differentiation in the U.S.S.R. than in the West, although, of course, Soviet citizens could not accumulate fortunes based on profits, rent, or interest.
The "Great Retreat"
As the new Soviet elite advanced to the fore, Soviet society lost many of its revolutionary traits and began to acquire in certain respects a strikingly conservative character. The transformation occurred essentially during the thirties, but on the whole it continued and developed further during the Second World War and in the postwar years. While state laws and regulations were crucial in this process, they reflected, as well as contributed to, basic social and economic changes.
Initially the Bolshevik regime took a disdainful and even negative view of the family. Marriages became matters of little importance in the eyes of the state, while divorce could be obtained simply by declaration of one of the parties involved. Abortions were legal and extremely common. In the thirties, all that changed. Authorities declared themselves in favor of a strong Soviet family. Particular emphasis was placed on having many children. Mothers with five or six living offspring received the Motherhood Medal, those with seven or eight were awarded a decoration known as Motherhood Glory, while those with ten achieved the status of Heroine Mother. Financial grants to large families helped further the implementation of the new policy. At the same time abortions lost their legal sanction, while divorce became much more difficult to obtain in the U.S.S.R. than in most countries in the West. The family - the proper, Marxist, Soviet family, to be sure - was hailed as a mainstay of the socialist order.