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German Democratic Republic

2020-12-10T00:06:30Z

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The German Democratic Republic (abbreviated '''GDR''' or '''DDR''', and unofficially known as '''East Germany''') was a [[people's republic]] in central Europe that existed from 1949 to 1990.

{{Infobox country
| englishname = German Democratic Republic
| nativename = Deutsche Demokratische Republik
| shortname = GDR
| mapfile = [[File:East_Germany_1956-1990.svg.png|300px|frameless|Map of the GDR]]
| flagfile = [[File:Flag_of_the_German_Democratic_Republic.svg.png|125x63px|frameless|Flag of the GDR]]
| emblemfile = [[File:State_arms_of_German_Democratic_Republic.svg.png|85x88px|frameless|Emblem of the GDR]]
}}

== History ==
[[World War II]] left Germany a shadow of its former self. Cities had been leveled, and the economy had been utterly devastated. Eastern Germany in particular was at a serious disadvantage; it had always been far less industrialized than Western Germany, and as such, it had depended largely upon the West for its economic needs.

{{quote|Before World War II, the area that later became East Germany was not well developed industrially. Because this area lacked raw materials, heavy industry was generally located in other parts of the German state. Compounding the problems for the newly created East German state in 1949 was the massive destruction during World War II of the industrial plant that had existed there and the subsequent Soviet dismantling and removal of factories and equipment that had survived the war. [...] During the interwar years, the territory that is now East Germany was profoundly dependent on external economic ties. In the mid-1930s, it shipped almost half of its total production to the other parts of Germany. […] This domestic trade featured sales of agricultural products; textiles; products of light industry, such as cameras, typewriters, and optical equipment; and purchases of industrial goods and equipment.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Thus, Eastern Germany depended totally on the West for its heavy industrial needs, and paid for these needs by selling its agricultural and light industrial products. However, this balance between East and West was thrown off after the war:

{{quote|Major dislocations occurred after World War II, when Germany was divided into two sections, one part dominated by the Soviet Union, and the other by the Western Allies. Because it could no longer rely on its former system of internal and external trading, the Soviet Zone of Occupation had to be restructured and made more self-sufficient through the construction of basic industry.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This was challenging for the young GDR, especially seeing as it received virtually no large-scale economic aid from the USSR (which was too busy reconstructing itself after WWII to worry about funding the GDR). In addition, the GDR had to pay heavy reparations to the USSR for the damage caused during WWII. This acted as a major obstacle to development. According to ''The East German Economy, 1945–2010'', published by the German Historical Institute, direct and indirect reparations paid by East Germany between 1946 and 1953 amounted to $14 billion in 1938 prices.

{{quote|The reorientation and restructuring of the East German economy would have been difficult in any case. The substantial reparations costs that the Soviet Union imposed on its occupied zone, and later on East Germany, made the process even more difficult. Payments continued into the early 1950s, ending only with the death of Stalin. According to Western estimates, these payments amounted to about 25 percent of total East German production through 1953.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This is in direct contrast to the West, which received large aid investments from the United States as part of the Marshall Plan, as well as lucrative trade relationships with the developed nations. After the war on the second of August, 1945 the allies presented the Postdam agreement which described the demilitarization of Germany, repayments that Germany needed to pay and the control of allied powers.<ref>https://www.nato.int/ebookshop/video/declassified/doc_files/Potsdam%20Agreement.pdf</ref> While the agreement was supposed to cause allies to control Germany jointly their differing economic and political goals made it impossible. By the start of 1950s, two German states existed: the market capitalist Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and the socialist planned German Democratic Republic (GDR). The war losses USSR had during the war amounted to 1,700 cities and urban areas, 70,000 villages, 32,000 enterprises and 65 kilometers of railway, thousands of schools and hospitals and about 20 million people lost their home. The 30% of national wealth was lost. The numbers were released by Izvestia, a government run newspaper and were thought of by Western powers as made up for propaganda purposes. The numbers released after the fall of USSR show that was not the case.<ref> Figures from Dimitri Wolkogonow, Stalin. Triumpf und Tragödie. Ein politisches Porträt (Düsseldorf, 1993), 681–2; Rainer Karlsch and Jochen Laufer, eds., Sowjetische Demontagen in Deutschland 1944– 1949 (Berlin, 2002), 31–2; Uhl, Teilung, 7–9. On the validity of the figures, see the more recent publications Jochen Laufer, Pax Sovietica. Stalin, die Westmächte und die deutsche Frage 1941–1945 (Cologne, 2009), 263; Bogdan Musial, Stalins Beutezug. Die Plünderung Deutschlands und der Aufstieg der Sowjetunion zur Weltmacht (Berlin, 2010), 249, 452.</ref> The Soviet zone was divided economically into two parts, the north which was predominantly agricultural, and the south which was heavily industrialized, being the Third Reich industrial core. The south focused on metal working, electrical, chemical and machine tools. Despite that the Soviet zone had problems with lack of raw materials like copper. Iron and hard coal. At the other hand the quantity of brown coal, potash, gravel and uranium which was to become important in Soviet nuclear industry were plentiful, with the GDR becoming the third largest uranium producer in the world. <ref>Rainer Karlsch, Uran für Moskau. Die Wismut – Eine populäre Geschichte (Berlin, 2007), 231–7; Matthias Judt, ed., DDR-Geschichte in Dokumenten (Berlin, 1997), 89–91; Karlsch, Allein bezahlt, 35; Steiner, Plan zu Plan, 19–24.</ref> Overall the German industry did not suffer great losses in the war with 15% lost in industrial capacity.<ref>Wolfgang Zank, Wirtschaft und Arbeit in Ostdeutschland</ref>

In 1989, the [[PRC]] offered to save the GDR from collapse:

{{quote|Comrade Egon Krenz 
Today I held extensive talks with comrade Lin Hanxiong, minister of urban planning (who first visited the GDR in 1982 to revitalise relations). Comrade Lin Hanxiong stated that the fate of socialism in the GDR is of utmost strategic importance for world socialism and for the victory of socialism in the PRC. The CPC leadership is ready to do whatever is necessary to support the survival of socialism in the GDR. In light of complicated labour shortages in the GDR, the PRC is willing to offer any required amount of skilled labour in any necessary qualification. 
The PRC does not expect any payment in foreign exchange, because they consider it political assistance. Balance settlement could be done by goods. 
Comrade Lin Hanxiong announced his willingness to travel to Berlin on short notice to engage in direct talks with the responsible state organs. The PRC is ready for very short term decisions. Comrade Lin Hanxiong stressed that ideally a reply by the GDR should arrive before the 5th congress of the CC CPC at the beginning of November. 
Request answer. 
berthold 
27.10. 14.00|Peking|https://img.welt.de/img/geschichte/mobile202839650/5722502937-ci102l-w1024/Printfoto1.jpg}}

=== Aftermath ===

Most people in the West imagine the fall of the GDR as a time of widespread euphoria and freedom; however, for millions of people in the GDR this was far from the case. One account of this time was written for the ''Guardian'' by Bruni de la Motte, an East German woman who has since become a British trade union negotiator. She reports that widespread unemployment and misery occurred after the [[short twentieth century]]:

{{quote|Little is known here [the West] about what happened to the GDR economy when the wall fell. Once the border was open the government decided to set up a trusteeship to ensure that “publicly owned enterprises” (the majority of businesses) would be transferred to the citizens who’d created the wealth. However, a few months before unification, the then newly elected conservative government handed over the trusteeship to west German appointees, many representing big business interests. The idea of “publicly owned” assets being transferred to citizens was quietly dropped. Instead all assets were privatized at breakneck speed. More then 85% were bought by West Germans and many were closed soon after. In the countryside 1.7 million hectares of agricultural and forest land were sold off and 80% of agricultural workers lost their job.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

Another article from the ''Guardian'' reports on the long-term impact this has had on the economy in Eastern Germany, noting that there has been virtually no advancement in the East-to-West productivity ratio since 1991:

{{quote|Productivity in the former east was 70% of that in the west in 1991 and rose to just 73% in 2012, in part a legacy of the number of factories that were bought by West German industrialists and deliberately run into the ground to scotch competition. […] Experts say the fact that most of the large industry and production bases are in the west and that those in the east are far smaller — with most employers in agriculture or service industries like meat-processing and call centres — will have a long-term effect of increasingly holding back the economy in the east and ensuring that the wage discrepancy remains and likely worsens.|Kate Connolly|[https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/german-reunification-25-years-on-how-different-are-east-and-west-really]}}

A mass-purging of academia and professional life likewise took place after the short twentieth century:

{{quote|Large numbers of ordinary workers lost their jobs, but so too did thousands of research workers and academics. As a result of the purging of academia, research and scientific establishments in a process of political vetting, more than a million individuals with degrees lost their jobs. This constituted about 50% of that group, creating in East Germany the highest percentage of professional unemployment in the world; all university chancellors and directors of state enterprises as well as 75,000 teachers lost their jobs and many were blacklisted. This process was in stark contrast to what happened in West Germany after the war, when few ex-Nazis were treated in this manner.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

This coincided with a housing crisis as well as the mass seizure of workers’ homes:

{{quote|In the GDR everyone had a legally guaranteed security of tenure and ownership to the properties where they lived. After unification, 2.2m claims by non-GDR citizens were made on their homes. Many lost houses they’d lived in for decades; a number committed suicide rather than give them up. Ironically, claims for restitution the other way around, by East Germans on properties in the West, were rejected as “out of time”.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

She remarks that since the short twentieth century, many people have come to appreciate the benefits that the socialists offered:

{{quote|Since the demise of the GDR, many have come to recognize and regret that the genuine “social achievements” they enjoyed were dismantled: social and gender equality, full employment and lack of existential fears, as well as subsidized rents, public transport, culture and sports facilities. Unfortunately, the collapse of the GDR and “state socialism” came shortly before the collapse of the “free market” system in the west.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

This is supported by the fact that (as mentioned above) 57% of former East Germans say that life was better in the planned economy.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Artery Publications| isbn = 9978-0-9558228-3-4| last1 = de la Motte| first1 = Bruni| last2 = Green |first2 = John| title = Stasi Hell or Workers' Paradise? Socialism in the GDR: What Can We Learn From It?| year = 2009| url = https://archive.org/stream/StasiHellOrWorkersParadise}}</ref> <ref>https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html</ref> Bruni de la Motte explains this thus:

{{quote|The GDR experience of socialism stands in marked contrast to the dismantling of the welfare state and the concomitant rampant privatization of every aspect of life now taking place in Western Europe, from culture to healthcare and other essential services, as well as to the denial of social values and the extreme individualization of life. We live in an atomized society, rapidly falling apart, with little social ethos and no long-term goals. Many today, especially young people, are living without hope or sense of a secure future. Socialism can still offer an antidote and an alternative. And the experience of socialist countries like the GDR can provide pointers for a way forward and help renew one’s hope.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://archive.org/stream/StasiHellOrWorkersParadise]}}

== Economy ==
Despite all of the aforementioned significant disadvantages, the GDR’s economy managed to overcome its difficulties and develop at an unusually rapid rate. This is especially true in terms of heavy industry:

{{quote|During the 1950s, East Germany made significant economic progress, at least as indicated by the gross figures. By 1960 investment had grown by a factor of about 4.5, while gross industrial production had increased by a factor of about 2.9. Within that broad category of industrial production, the basic sectors, such as machinery and transport equipment, grew especially rapidly, while the consumer sectors such as textiles lagged behind.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Despite the priority given to heavy industry, consumption also increased steadily during this period:

{{quote|Consumption grew significantly in the first years, although from a very low base, and showed respectable growth rates over the entire decade.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

From 1949 to the late 1960s the consumption of meat, dairy, eggs, fish, sugar, tea, and alcohol all increased.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Monthly Review Press| last = Turgeon| first = Lynn| title = Transitional Economic Systems, The Polish-Czech Example| year = 1972| url = https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7iUwYR74MlbcFBxbWxsdHNLMHM| page = xv}}</ref>

At the end of the 1950s, some analysts feared an economic crisis in the East, spurred by the ‘brain drain’ from East to West; however, this did not occur, and the GDR’s economy continued to grow impressively in the 1960s.

{{quote|As the 1950s ended, pessimism about the future seemed rather appropriate. Surprisingly, however, after the construction of the [[Berlin Wall]] and several years of consolidation and realignment, East Germany entered a period of impressive economic growth that produced clear benefits for the people. For the years 1966–1970, GDP and national income grew at average annual rates of 6.3 and 5.2 percent, respectively. Simultaneously, investment grew at an average annual rate of 10.7 percent, retail trade at 4.6 percent, and real per capita income at 4.2 percent.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This growth continued on through the next decade:

{{quote|As of 1970, growth rates in the various sectors of the economy did not differ greatly from those of a decade earlier. […] Production reached about 140 to 150 percent of the levels of a decade earlier. […] The growth rates in production resulted in substantial increases in personal consumption. [T]hroughout the 1970s the East German economy as a whole enjoyed relatively strong and stable growth. In 1971, First Secretary Honecker declared the “raising of the material and cultural living standard” of the population to be a “principal task” of the economy; private consumption grew at an average annual rate of 4.8 percent from 1971 to 1975 and 4.0 percent from 1976 to 1980. […] The 1976–1980 Five Year Plan achieved an average annual growth rate of 4.1 percent.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The 1980s saw some economic difficulties for the GDR as Western banks clamped down on credit for the East and the USSR reduced oil deliveries by ten percent. This led to a period of slow growth as the GDR rushed to step up exports; despite this, the economy did manage to pull through and deliver impressive growth results during this period (though it did fall short of the plan).

{{quote|The 1981–1985 plan period proved to be a difficult time for the East German economy. […] However, by the end of the period the economy had chalked up a respectable overall performance, with an average annual growth rate of 4.5 percent (the plan target had been 5.1 percent).|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The overall impacts of the industrialization strategy of the GDR were extremely positive.

{{quote|Industry is the dominant sector of the East German economy, and is the principal basis for the relatively high standard of living. East Germany ranks among the world's top industrial nations, and in the Comecon it ranks second only to the Soviet Union.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

== Infrastructure ==
{{quote|The East German standard of living has improved greatly since 1949 [when the GDR was established]. Most observers, both East and West, agree that in the 1980s East Germans enjoyed the highest standard of living in Eastern Europe. Major improvements occurred, especially after 1971, when the Honecker regime announced its commitment to fulfilling the “principal task” of the economy, which was defined as the enhancement of the material and cultural well-being of all citizens.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This focus on increasing quality of life for all citizens, rather than providing profit for the capitalist class, is a unique feature of the planned economy, which provided steadily improving living standards:

{{quote|Since the inception of the regime, the monthly earned income of the average East German has increased steadily in terms of effective purchasing power. According to the 1986 East German statistical yearbook, the average monthly income for workers in the socialized sector of the economy increased from 311 GDR marks in 1950 to 555 GDR marks in 1960, 755 GDR marks in 1970, and 1,130 GDR marks in 1985. Because most consumer prices had been stable during this time, the 1985 figure represented a better-than-threefold increase over the past thirty-five years.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

State subsidies meant that basic necessities (food, housing, and so forth), public services (healthcare, education, etc.), and even small luxuries (restaurant meals, concerts, etc.) were all remarkably cheap, especially when compared to the capitalist West:

{{quote|In East Germany, the GDR mark can purchase a great number of basic necessities because the state subsidies their production and distribution to the people. Thus housing, which consumes a considerable portion of the earnings of an average family in the West, constituted less than 3 percent of the expenditures of a typical worker family in 1984. Milk, potatoes, bread, and public transportation were also relatively cheap. Many services, such as medical care and education, continued to be available without cost to all but a very few. Even restaurant meals, concerts, and postage stamps were inexpensive by Western standards. […] In the mid-1980s, East Germans had no difficulty obtaining meat, butter, potatoes, bread, clothing, and most other essentials.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The GDR also greatly improved the housing situation:

{{quote|Beginning in the 1960s, the government initiated a major campaign to provide modern housing facilities; it sought to eliminate the longstanding housing shortage, and modernize fully the existing stock by 1990. By the early 1980s, the program had provided nearly 2 million new or renovated units, and 2 million more were to be added by 1990. As of 1985, progress in this area appeared to be satisfactory, and plan targets were being met or exceeded.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The situation in terms of consumer goods was also improving; the US Federal Research Division reports that as of 1985 in the GDR, 99 percent of households had a refrigerator, 92 percent had a washing machine, and 93 percent had a television. These numbers are compatible to the United States in 2016 (though washing machine ownership was higher, and TV ownership slightly lower, in the GDR). Economists had often thought that the GDR mark was weaker in terms of purchasing power than the West German D-mark; however, a study from the Institute for Economic Research in West Berlin (as reported by the US Federal Research Division) disproved this idea:

{{quote|In 1983, the Institute for Economic Research in West Berlin undertook one of its periodic studies in which the purchasing power of the GDR mark was measured against that of the West German D-mark. […] The Institute concluded that, as a whole, the GDR mark should be considered to have 106 percent of the value of the D-mark in purchasing power, an impressive gain over the 76 percent estimated for 1960, 86 percent for 1969, and 100 percent for 1977. [T]he analysis clearly invalidated the view commonly held in the West that the GDR mark had very little purchasing power.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

=== Health ===
The GDR provided medical treatment free of charge to its people. This system allowed them to keep up with West Germany in terms of healthcare conditions, despite the latter being wealthier (by virtue of its extensive trade relations with developed nations). The ''Health Care Financing Review'' (a US government-affiliated publication) reports:

{{quote|In terms of real resources devoted to health services and in terms of health service activities, the two countries seem to have been fairly similar. The GDR was reported as having 2.3 physicians per thousand in 1985 (World Health Organization, 1987), compared with 2.6 in the FRG. In 1977, the GDR was reported as having 10.6 hospital beds per thousand, compared with 11.8 in the FRG, and both countries had similar levels of dentists and pharmacists per thousand. Hospital length of stay was reported as similar in the two countries, Given that hospital beds per thousand were similar, this suggests that admission rates were not very different. Finally, consultation rates with doctors seem to have been similar in the two countries at 9.0 per person in the GDR in 1976 and 10.9 per person in the FRG in 1975 (Health OECD: Facts and Trends, forthcoming). If the GDR enjoyed a similar volume of health services to the FRG but had much lower health expenditures per capita, then the prices of health services must have been much lower in the GDR.|Health Care Financing Review|[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193657]}}

The GDR maintained high healthcare standards, which improved steadily, and in some cases faster than those in the West (though starting at a lower level; Eastern Germany had always been worse-off in terms of health than the West):

{{quote|Turning to health status, in 1987, the reported expectation of life at birth in eastern Germany, 69.9 years for males and 76.0 for females, was not far behind that of western Germany at 72.2 for males and 78.9 for females. The infant mortality rate, which had been 7.2 per 100 in 1950, had fallen to 0.92 in 1986. Although the infant mortality rate was above that of western Germany in 1986 (0.85), the fall since 1950 had been larger. If the official figures can be believed, the former GDR had respectable health statistics for a country with its standard of living. […] Improvements to health status in eastern Germany seem to have kept up, more or less, with those in western Germany.|Health Care Financing Review|[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193657]}}

Life expectancy in the German Democratic Republic was higher than that in Austria, Australia, Belgium, the British Empire, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, and West Germany.<ref>https://www.nybooks.com/?p=24687</ref>

=== Education ===
{{quote|Attendance at kindergarten was not mandatory, but the majority of children from ages three to six attended. The state considered kindergartens an important element of the overall educational program. The schools focused on health and physical fitness, development of socialist values, and the teaching of rudimentary skills. The regime has experimented with combined schools of childcare centers and kindergartens, which introduce the child gradually into a more regimented program of activities and ease the pains of adjustment. In 1985 there were 13,148 preschools providing care for 788,095 children (about 91 percent of children eligible to attend).|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

After this, children entered the compulsory stage of education:

{{quote|Compulsory education began at the age of six, when every child entered the ten-grade, coeducational general poly-technical school. The program was divided into three sections. The primary stage included grades one through three, where children were taught the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. The primary stage also introduced children to the fundamentals of good citizenship and, in accordance with the 1965 education law, provided them with their “first knowledge and understanding of nature, work, and socialist society.” Instruction emphasized German language, literature, and art as a means of developing the child's expressive and linguistic skills; about 60 percent of classroom time was devoted to this component. Mathematics instruction accounted for about 24 percent of the curriculum and included an introduction to fundamental mathematical laws and relations. Another 8 percent was devoted to physical education, which comprised exercises, games, and activities designed to develop coordination and physical skill. Poly-technical instruction was also begun at the primary level and consisted of gardening and crafts that gave the child a basic appreciation of technology, the economy, and the worker; about 8 percent of classroom time was allotted to such instruction.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

After completing mandatory education, students had several choices:

{{quote|Upon completion of the compulsory ten-year education, the student had essentially three options. The most frequently chosen option was to begin a two-year period of vocational training. In 1985 about 86 percent of those who had completed their ten-year course of study began some kind of vocational training. During vocational training, the student became an apprentice, usually at a local or state enterprise. Students received eighteen months of training in selected vocations and specialized in the final six months. In 1985 approximately 6 percent of those who had completed their poly-technical education entered a three-year program of vocational training. This program led to the ''Abitur'', or end-of-school examination. Passing the ''Abitur'' enabled the student to apply to a technical institute or university, although this route to higher education was considered very difficult. In 1985 East Germany had a total of 963 vocational schools; 719 were connected with industries, and another 244 were municipal vocational schools. Vocational schools served 377,567 students.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Students were guaranteed a job upon completing the ten-year compulsory education:

{{quote|The educational system’s major goal was producing technically qualified personnel to fill the manpower needs of the economy. The government guaranteed employment to those who completed the mandatory ten-year program.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The university system was also of remarkably high-quality, and attendance was extremely inexpensive (though entrance requirements were very competitive):

{{quote|In 1985 East Germany had 54 universities and colleges, with a total enrollment of 129,628 students. Women made up about 50 percent of the student population. Courses in engineering and technology headed the list of popular subjects. Medicine, economics, and education were also popular choices. There were 239 technical institutions, with a total student population of 162,221. About 61 percent of the students studied full time, while the remainder enrolled in correspondence study or took evening classes. The three most popular fields of study at the institutes were medicine and health, engineering and technology, and economics. Courses at the university and technical institutes consisted primarily of lectures and examinations. Completion of the program led to a diploma or license, depending on the field of study.

As of the mid-1980s, higher education was very inexpensive, and many of the textbooks were provided free of charge. Full or partial financial assistance in the form of scholarships was available for most students, and living expenses were generally minimal because most students continued to live at home during their courses of study. Germans have a high regard for education, and the regime has generally supported young people who have wanted to upgrade their level of skills through further training or education.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

== Culture ==
Inexpensive cultural activities such as theaters and concerts were widely available.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Artery Publications| isbn = 9978-0-9558228-3-4| last1 = de la Motte| first1 = Bruni| last2 = Green |first2 = John| title = Stasi Hell or Workers' Paradise? Socialism in the GDR: What Can We Learn From It?| year = 2009| url = https://archive.org/stream/StasiHellOrWorkersParadise| pages = 29–30}}</ref>

=== Gender relations ===
{{quote|The East German record in the area of women’s rights has been good. Women have been well-represented in the work force, comprising about half of the economically active population. As of 1984, approx. 80 percent of women of working age (between eighteen and sixty) were employed. The state has encouraged women to seek work and pursue careers and has provided aid to working mothers in the form of day-care centers generous maternity benefits.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Women’s access to education was very strong in the GDR, again much stronger than in the capitalist West:

{{quote|The state also has made a concerted effort to provide educational opportunities for women. The number of women with a university or technical school education has increased over the years. Of the students enrolled in universities and colleges in 1985, about 50 percent were women.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Birth control was widely-available and free of cost, and abortion was available upon the bearer’s request:

{{quote|A liberal abortion law, promulgated in 1972 amid protests from religious circles, permits abortion upon request of the mother. […] As of the mid 1980s, information on contraceptive methods was available to the public, and women could obtain birth control pills at no cost.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

In addition, the GDR sought to provide assistance to working mothers through a highly-developed child-care system:

{{quote|An elaborate network of daycare centers provides care for the child while the mother is at work. In 1984 there were 6,605 year-round nurseries with room for 296,653 children. These nurseries provided care for 63 percent of eligible children.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

=== Cuisine ===
The German Democratic Republic had their own foods, such as Spreewald pickles, Mocha Fix, Schnittchen, and Schnitzel, among others.

== References ==

[[Category:GDR]][[Category:History]]

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

2020-12-10T00:05:56Z

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{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"
! colspan="2" | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик
|-
| colspan="2" |[[File:800px-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (orthographic projection).svg.png|frameless|300x300|center|The Soviet Union]] <div style="text-align:center">Map of the USSR</div>
|-
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center; vertical-align:bottom; padding-top: 5px;" |[[File:Ussrflag.jpg|125x63px|frameless|Flag of the Soviet Union]]
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center; vertical-align:bottom; padding-top: 5px;" | [[File:State Emblem of the Soviet Union.svg.png|85x88px|frameless|Emblem of the Soviet Union]]
|-
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center;" | Flag
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center;" | State Emblem
|}
The '''Union of Soviet Socialist Republics''' ('''USSR'''; or in Russian "СССР"), also known as the '''Soviet Union''', was a [[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] state on the Eurasian continent that existed between 1922 and 1991. It was governed as a single-party state by the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] with Moscow as its capital.

==History==

===Russian Revolution===
The RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) emerged out of the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]], with [[Bolshevism|Bolshevik]] revolutionary [[Vladimir Lenin]] as its first president. The new government created a constitution establishing itself as a Socialist republic.

===Red vs. White Civil War===
In 1918, following the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, a civil war between the Bolsheviks (or ‘Reds’) and the remaining monarchists (the ‘Whites’), along with various disgruntled social democrats and liberals such as their rival faction, the Mensheviks, tore apart the RSFSR. Despite support from the capitalist Western Powers, the Whites were ultimately defeated in 1920.

During the war, the Bolsheviks militarily intervened in Ukraine, which was under the control of anarcho-communists (led by [[Nestor Makhno]]) and Ukrainian ultranationalists. The anarchists made a treaty with the Bolsheviks in 1920, but the Bolsheviks refused to publicly acknowledge it, leading to the arrest of Nestor Makhno and his delegation upon confronting the Bolsheviks.

===New Economic Policy===
The New Economic Policy was part of what historian Brinton called the thermidor after the French Revolution's Thermidorian Reaction. It involved a variety of concessions to the backward strata of Soviet society, including the restoration of obstacles to divorce, laws against homosexuality, and the abolition of the age of consent laws.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Brinton|first=C.|title=The Anatomy of Revolution|year=1965|pages=225–226}}</ref> Economically, it meant that industrial state owner enterprises gained autonomy in its policies while in rural areas individual private initiative and enterprise was allowed to dominate economic conduct.

In 1928 the NEP ended when the Soviet government implemented the first Five Year Plan. This became known as central planning or a command economy, which lasted until circa 1991 when the economy had reached a critical point in the [[Crisis|crisis of the absolute over-accumulation of capital]].

===Socialism in one country===
In spite of an arguably overpowered bureaucracy and some of the reactionary concessions, the Soviets made extensive achievements which vastly improved life for hundreds of millions of people. These achievements were the result of the [[planned economy]] (built primarily during the 1930s). Even reactionaries<ref>{{cite book|last=Losurdo |first=Domenico |chapter=1 |chapterurl=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WS8cCjXDgdJaXFrkW9b1ldY3xlwiPPQ89AwZo53Amlk |title=Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend |url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/18K7U3g_ZsHwasqAS_BiokoWg5A0vXAsCkwYoO_xw93A |location=|publisher=|year= |page= |pageurl= |isbn= |oclc= |text=}}</ref> have been unable to deny this;<ref>{{cite book|last1=Downey |first1=Town |last2=Smith |first2=Nigel |chapter=6 |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYIqpmIgYZ4C&pg=PA37 |title=Russia and the USSR 1900–1995 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYIqpmIgYZ4C |location=Great Clarendon Street |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1996 |page=43 |pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYIqpmIgYZ4C&pg=PA43 |isbn=0-19-917248-X |oclc= |text=}}</ref> as antisocialist propagandist Nick Eberstadt admitted:

{{quote|[[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]’s results were incontestable. This is a point those of us in the West often overlook. Stalin inherited a country that was the primary casualty of World War I, and bequeathed to his successors a super-power. It is but a single measure of the success of the ‘Leader’, and his understanding of the endurance of his nation, that between 1940 and 1953, a period marked by an immensely destructive world war costing perhaps twenty million Soviet lives and a series of purges claiming perhaps not many less, the USSR doubled its production of coal and steel, tripled its output of cement and industrial goods, and increased its pool of skilled labor by a factor of ten. These rates of growth were geometrically higher than in the less devastated and Terror-free West.|Nick Eberstadt|<ref name=Eberstadt>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Eberstadt|first=Nick|title=The Health Crisis in the USSR*|url=https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/6/1384/660149|journal=International Journal of Epidemiology|volume=35|issue=6|date=2006-12-04|pages=1384–1394|doi=10.1093/ije/dyl238}}</ref>}}

The claim that the Soviets purged ‘perhaps not many less’ than twenty-million people, however, is obvious nonsense:

{{quote|The Stalinist regime was consequently responsible for about a million purposeful killings, and through its criminal neglect and irresponsibility it was probably responsible for the premature deaths of about another two million more victims amongst the repressed population, i.e. in the camps, colonies, prisons, exile, in transit and in the POW camps for Germans. These are clearly much lower figures than those for whom Hitler’s regime was responsible.|Stephen Wheatcroft|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen|title=The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf|publisher=University of Glasgow|volume=48|number=8|year=1996|pages=1319–1353}}</ref>}}

The Stalin administration was thus responsible for about three million deaths, and even that is only if one includes Fascist POWs, victims of an unintentional but tragic famine (Wheatcroft’s own research proves that it was unintentional), and gulag prisoners. The purges of the late 1930s are a black mark on the USSR’s legacy; this much cannot be denied. That being said, they have been the subject of decades-worth of unjustified and intolerable distortions and exaggerations by bourgeois academics, necessitating a thorough reply. While Westerners are often treated to numbers ranging from 20 to 50 million, the true figures (while worrisome enough in their own right) are nowhere near that high. According to Professor J. Arch Getty:

{{quote|From 1921 to […] 1953, around 800,000 people were sentenced to death and shot, 85 percent of them in the years of the Great Terror of 1937–1938. From 1934 to Stalin’s death, more than a million perished in the gulag camps.|J. Arch Getty|<ref name=Future/>}}

To these figures must be added an important qualification: contrary to popular opinion, the vast majority of gulag inmates were not innocent political prisoners. Professor Getty notes that those convicted of ‘counterrevolutionary crimes’ made up between 12 and 33 percent (depending on the year) of the gulag population, with the rest having been convicted of ordinary crimes. He also rejects the common claim that non-Russian nationalities were disproportionately targeted. To quote from his article in the ''American Historical Review'', concerning the gulag inmates in particular:

{{quote|The long-awaited archival evidence on repression in the period of the Great Purges shows that the levels of arrests, political prisoners, executions, and general camp populations tend to confirm the orders of magnitude indicated by those labeled as "revisionists" and mocked by those proposing high estimates. […] Inferences that the terror fell particularly hard on non-Russian nationalities are not borne out by camp population data from the 1930s. The frequent assertion that most of the camp prisoners were "political" also appears not to be true.|J. Arch Getty|<ref name=Getty>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Getty|first1=J. Arch|last2=Rittersporn|first2=Gábor|last3=Zemskov|first3=Viktor|title=Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years|journal=The American Historical Review|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf|publisher=Oxford University Press|volume=98|number=4|year=1993|pages=1017–1049|doi=10.2307/2166597|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597}}</ref>}}

According to this research, alleged counterrevolutionaries never made up more than a third of the gulag population (and generally much less, around 12%). This is backed-up by a CIA report on the topic, which found that as many as 95% of camp prisoners were non-political in camps that they investigated.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Forced Labor Camps in the USSR|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf|date=1957-02-11|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200120215158/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf|archivedate=2020-01-20}}</ref> The majority of camp prisoners were thus genuine criminals, convicted of rape, murder, theft, and similar. In addition, the gulag camps were not death camps like those of the [[Third Reich]]; they were prisons, albeit harsh ones. Even noted antisocialist scholars (such as those who worked on the infamous ''[[Black Book of Communism]]'') have admitted this. To quote again from Professor Getty:

{{quote|Stalin’s camps were different from Hitler’s. Tens of thousands of prisoners were released every year upon completion of their sentences. We now know that before World War II more inmates escaped annually from the Soviet camps than died there. […] Werth, a well-regarded French specialist on the Soviet Union whose sections in the ''Black Book'' on the Soviet Communists are sober and damning, told ''Le Monde'', “Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union.”|J. Arch Getty|<ref name=Future>{{safesubst:Cite web| last = Getty| first = J. Arch| title = The Future Did Not Work| work = The Atlantic| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 2000-03-01| url = https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/03/the-future-did-not-work/378081/}}</ref>}}

It must also be noted that, contrary to the popular conception of the USSR as a place of ‘total terror’ (to quote Hannah Arendt), the majority of the population did not feel threatened by the purges. Referring to the time of the Great Purge, Professor<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Dr. Robert Thurston|url=https://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/departments/history/about/faculty/emeriti-faculty/thurston/index.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200118140600/http://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/departments/history/about/faculty/emeriti-faculty/thurston/index.html|archivedate=2020-10-18}}</ref> Thurston notes that the Great Purge was an exceptional occurrence, which cannot be used to characterize the USSR pre-1953 as a whole:

{{quote|I will not simply imply but will state outright that the ''Ezhovshchina'' (Great Purge) was an aberration. Torture was uncommon until August 1937, when it became the norm; it ended abruptly with Beria’s rise to head of the [[NKVD]] in late 1938. Mass arrests followed the same pattern. […] A campaign for more regular, fair, and systemic judicial procedures that began in 1933–1934 was interrupted and overwhelmed by the Terror in 1937. It resumed in the spring of 1938, more strongly and effectively than before. Thus more than one trend was broken by the ''Ezhovshchina'', only to reappear after it.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934–1941|publisher=Yale University Press|year=1996|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32bw0h}}</ref>}}

He also points out that some arrests which took place during the Great Purge were based on previously ignored (yet arguably still legitimate) crimes against the Soviet state, such as fighting with the reactionary forces during the Civil War:

{{quote|People were suddenly arrested in 1937 for things that had happened many years earlier but had been ignored since, for example, serving in a White army.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

The question arises: why arrest former White Army soldiers, among others? The answer lies in the general fear of counterrevolution which pervaded the party at this time. According to Professor<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Professor James Harris|url=https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/64/professor-james-harris|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119044120/https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/64/professor-james-harris|archivedate=2020-01-19}}</ref> James Harris:

{{quote|By the mid–1930s, the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the militarists in Japan, both stridently anti-communist, posed a very real threat to the USSR. War was then on the horizon, and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] felt he had no choice but to take preemptive action against what he saw as a potential fifth column — a group that would undermine the larger collective.|James Harris|<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Harris|first=James|title=Historian James Harris Says Russian Archives Show We’ve Misunderstood Stalin|publisher=History News Network|url=https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163498|accessdate=2020-01-03}}</ref>}}

Bear in mind that since the moment of its founding (still a recent event, at this time), Soviet Eurasia had been invaded by multiple capitalist powers<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Budanovic|first=Nikola|title=The Day That The USA Invaded Russia And Fought The Red Army|url=https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-day-that-the-usa-invaded-russia-and-fought-with-the-red-army-x.html|date=2016-11-17|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119044116/https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-day-that-the-usa-invaded-russia-and-fought-with-the-red-army-x.html|archivedate=2020-01-19}}</ref> (including the [[United States]]) in the early 1920s, and had also been subject to espionage and internal sabotage. Combined with the looming threat of war with an increasingly powerful Third Reich, it is hardly surprising that these factors came together to form an atmosphere of paranoia, which lent itself to the sort of violent excess seen during the Purge. This coincides with Professor Thurston’s interpretation of the events, from his book ''Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia'':

{{quote|[B]etween 1934 and 1936 police and court practice relaxed significantly. Then a series of events, together with the tense international situation and memories of real enemy activity during the savage Russian Civil War, combined to push leaders and people into a hysterical hunt for perceived ‘wreckers.’ After late 1938, however, the police and courts became dramatically milder.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

This general atmosphere of fear (not of the purges, but of external and internal enemies) is most likely why the majority of the Soviet people seemed to support the government’s actions during the Purge period:

{{quote|The various reactions to arrest cataloged above suggest that general fear did not exist in the USSR at any time in the late 1930s. […] People who remained at liberty often felt that some event in the backgrounds of the detained individuals justified their arrests. The sense that anyone could be next, the underpinning of theoretical systems of terror, rarely appears.|Robert Thurston|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=Fear and Belief in the USSR’s “Great Terror”: Response to Arrest, 1935-1939|journal=Slavic Review|publisher=Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies|year=1986|volume=45|issue=2|pages=213–34|doi=10.2307/2499175}}</ref>}}

===World War II===
''Main Article: [[World War II]]''

===Gorbachev-era reforms===
In 1987, Gorbachev passed a law that decentralized much of the economy and expanded market activity, however was not by itself a restoration of capitalism. Nowhere within the law were capitalist relations of production legalized.
{{quote|The Basic Provisions stress that the economy shall continue to be planned and managed as "a unified national economic complex" as the principal means for carrying out the Party's economic policies. These policies are to be embodied in a 15-year plan that sets goals and priorities and outlines a program for implementing them. This plan, which is to contain specific targets for the 15- year period, is to be the basis for detailed formulation of the plan for the initial 5-year period, with a breakdown by years. Per the current procedure, this plan will be worked out by Gosplan and sent down to republic Councils of Ministers and to ministries. These bodies, in turn, send "initial planning data" to firms, on the basis of which the latter work out and ratify their own 5-year and annual plans. Plans are reviewed annually and revised if required. Proposals for revisions are submitted to Gosplan, which reviews them, revises the 5-year plan if necessary, and submits a report to the Council of Ministers and to the Central Committee, along with the draft state budget.
 
The firms receive: (1) "non-binding control figures" that specify the value of output, profit, foreign currency receipts, and major indicators of scientific and technical progress and social development; (2) a mandatory bill of state orders for output that "ensure meeting society's priority needs"; (3) limits, which include rationed goods and centralized investment allocations; (4) long-term economic normatives based on a list approved by the Council of Ministers regulating, among other things, growth of total wages, payments for capital and labor, and the allocation of profits among various kinds of taxes and reserve funds set up by ministries and enterprises. Three major funds are the bonus fund, the social development fund, and the fund for financing research and development and investment.
 
Clearly, the state intends to determine the rate and direction of the bulk of investment. To what extent will depend on how state centralized investment is defined. The state also intends to determine the directions of economic development and to enforce programs of scientific-technical progress that are worked out from the top.|Gertrude E. Schroeder|"Anatomy of Gorbachev's Economic Reform" in ''Milestones in Glasnost and Perestroyka: The Economy'', pp. 205-206}}

The 1987 reforms were still somewhat "moderate" compared to Yugoslavia's system, and clearly didn't go nearly as far as Deng's reforms.

One of the reasons used to justify Perestroika was because the USSR had problems with shortages beforehand. The continued existence of shortages are evidence the reforms didn't work and instead made the situation far worse than it had been before. Shortages clearly weren't an unknown phenomenon in socialist economies during the 20th century. It's something bourgeois economists usually focus on when criticizing socialism, hence the two-volume Economics of Shortage by János Kornai. Not coincidentally, Kornai's text had a lot of influence among Chinese reformers and he personally worked to convince them to enact market reforms at the 1985 Bashan conference, whereas Kornai's influence on Soviet reformers (at least those who advised Gorbachev) was a lot more limited. Furthermore, shortages are not proof of capitalist restoration. Marxists frequently argue that capitalism displays a very different problem: a crisis of overproduction caused by the purchasing power of workers declining amid an ever greater abundance of goods flooding the market.

===Collapse and dissolution===
{{hatnote|Main article: [[Collapse of the USSR]]}}
In the 1980s, [[Imperial America]] expanded its arms chase, terrorizing the Soviets into catching up, a process made more stressful by the struggle in the Afghan war. Antisocialist officials also pressured banks and other businesses, and even the Swedish state, into ignoring the Soviet Union.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Krehbiel|first=Paul|title=The Demise of the Soviet Union: The Secret War that Helped Destroy Soviet Socialism, 1981–1991|url=http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/RR-PAUL-SECRETWAR.pdf|accessdate=2020-03-13}}</ref> Gorbachev introduced new reforms to both the economy and politics, which worsened the condition of the workers by increasing wealth inequality — though it never reached the same rate as it had in capitalist countries, e.g. the U.S. — as well as breadlines, and allowed more critical opinions to be voiced politically. But heads of newspapers were now in fact being replaced or pushed towards a more right-wing view by that same government, meaning such policies did not actually result in more discourse. Nonetheless it became a more and more accepted view to advocate for regulated or even free markets, which then led to the rising popularity of Yeltsin. He criticized the Soviet elite and advocated for market reforms, promising less waiting lines and a decrease in inequality. In April 1990 Yeltsin became the chairman of the Russian parliament. The direction the country was taking triggered a [[1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt|coup attempt in August 1991]], but which failed as Yeltsin called for a strike against it. While according to a referendum from 1991 most people did not want a complete dissolution of the Soviet republics, this is exactly what happened until the end of 1991: Parts of the government were simply dismantled, the party lost its power, and eventually republics started declaring independence — the union, in a sense, was falling apart.

After the Soviet Union’s discontinuation, living standards decreased dramatically and to this day many former citizens of it regret its fall, as many polls show, though the results sometimes strongly vary among some of the former republics.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=People who lived under communism more convinced ordinary people did not benefit from societal changes|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/global/?p=44546|date=2019-10-09}}</ref>

==Politics==
Modern evidence suggests that the masses did indeed support the Stalin administration, which likewise encouraged mass participation from the working people:

{{quote|Stalin, the press, and the Stakhanovite movement all regularly encouraged ordinary people to criticize those in authority. […] If the citizenry was supposed to be terrorized and stop thinking, why encourage criticism and input from below on a large scale? […] my evidence suggests that widespread fear did not exist in the case at hand [the ‘Great Terror’ period].|Robert Thurston|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest|journal=Slavic Review|publisher=Cambridge University Press|volume=45|number=2|year=1986|pages=238–244|doi=10.2307/2499177|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2499177}}</ref>}}

These states were not entirely non-participatory as some have suggested; the working masses did have a genuine voice in political affairs.<ref name=vincesherman>{{safesubst:cite web|author=vincesherman|title=The Trade Unions & Actually Existing Socialism: A Point of Comparison for the American Worker|url=https://return2source.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/the-trade-unions-actually-existing-socialism-a-point-of-comparison-for-the-american-worker/amp|date=2013-02-19|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180920140818/https://return2source.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/the-trade-unions-actually-existing-socialism-a-point-of-comparison-for-the-american-worker/amp|archivedate=2018-09-20}}</ref> Professor Thurston states that ‘at the lower levels of society, in day-to-day affairs and the implementation of policy, [the Soviet system] was participatory.’ He notes that workers were frequently encouraged to take part in decision making:

{{quote|The regime regularly urged its people to criticize local conditions and their leaders, at least below a certain exalted level. For example, in March 1937 Stalin emphasized the importance of the party’s ‘ties to the masses.’ To maintain them, it was necessary ‘to listen carefully to the voice of the masses, to the voice of rank and file members of the party, to the voice of so-called “little people,” to the voice of ordinary folk.’|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=Reassessing the History of Soviet Workers: Opportunities to Criticize and Participate in Decision-Making, 1935–1941|journal=International Council for Central and East European Studies|url=https://www.docdroid.net/t9gG4jQ/thurston-robert-reassessing-the-history-of-soviet-workers-opportunities-to-criticize-and-participate-in-decision-making.pdf|pages=160–188}}</ref>}}

While there were limits to criticism, Professor Thurston notes that ‘such bounds allowed a great deal that was deeply significant to workers, including some aspects of production norms, pay rates and classifications, safety on the job, housing, and treatment by managers.’ The workers had a voice in various official bodies, and they generally had their demands met:

{{quote|The Commissariat of Justice also heard and responded to workers’ appeals. In August 1935 the Saratov city prosecutor reported that of 118 cases regarding pay recently handled by his office, 90, or 73.6 percent, had been resolved in favor of workers.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

Workers also took part in direct oversight of managers:

{{quote|Workers participated by the hundreds of thousands in special inspectorates, commissions, and brigades which checked the work of managers and institutions. These agencies sometimes wielded significant power.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

The rights of Soviet workers were often noted in later accounts of the pre-1953 era:

{{quote|One émigré recalled that his stepmother, a factory worker, ‘often scolded the boss,’ and also complained about living conditions, but was never arrested. John Scott, an American employed for years in the late 1930s as a welder in Magnitogorsk, attended a meeting at a Moscow factory in 1940 where workers were able to ‘criticize the plant director, make suggestions as to how to increase production, increase quality, and lower costs.’|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

Professor Thurston makes the following observation:

{{quote|Far from basing its rule on the negative means of coercion, the Soviet regime in the late 1930s fostered a limited but positive political role for the populace. […] Earlier concepts of the Soviet state require rethinking: the workers who ousted managers, achieved the imprisonment of their targets, and won reinstatement at factories did so through organizations which constituted part of the state apparatus and wielded state powers.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

These facts are all the more impressive when we recall the dismal state of workers’ rights in the market economies at this time:

{{quote|This occurred at a time when American workers in particular were struggling for basic union recognition, which even when won did not provide much formal influence at the work place.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

Professor Thurston also states:

{{quote|Stalin did not intend to terrorize the country and did not need to rule by fear. Memoirs and interviews with Soviet people indicate that many more believed in Stalin’s quest to eliminate internal enemies than were frightened by it.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

Perhaps one of his most interesting statements (indeed, one of the most statements from any bourgeois historian dealing with the Stalin administration) and perhaps the most succinct summary of this issue is the following:

{{quote|There was never a long period of Stalinism without a serious foreign threat, major internal dislocation, or both, which makes identifying its true nature impossible.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

This relates to how the Soviet government reacted to the genuine material conditions faced by the Soviet Union, rather than simply following its own whims and desires. Working people did not only have the right to take part in decision-making at the workplace; they also had a voice in national policy decisions. Professor Kawamoto (Hitotsubashi University) states that the USSR had ‘a more democratic face than what is usually imagined, especially among Western people.’ As they put it:

{{quote|The Soviet regime was democratic in its own sense of the word. [P]articipation through sending letters and attending discussions gave self-government a certain reality and helped to legitimize the Soviet regime. Therefore, listening to the people was an important obligation for the authorities. [T]he government encouraged people to send letters to the authorities and actively used the all-people’s discussions.|Kazuko Kawamoto|<ref name=Kawamoto>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Kawamoto|first=Kazuko|title=Rethinking Soviet Democracy|journal=Japanese Political Science Review|url=https://researchmap.jp/read0148263/?lang=english}}</ref>}}

It is also noted that Soviet citizens ‘believed that they were entitled to demand policy changes, and the draft writers, including specialists, officials, and deputies, felt obliged to respond to those demands.’ The process of gathering public opinion was intensive enough that it often slowed down the process of legislation:

{{quote|Regarding the process of creating the Principles, direct participation worked largely as expected in the ideology of Soviet democracy, although it took many years.|Kazuko Kawamoto|<ref name=Kawamoto/>}}

As Professor Kawamoto says, ‘the reason why it took so long was deeply rooted in the ideas of Soviet democracy.’

In addition to the aforementioned means of popular participation, Soviet officials also traveled throughout the nation to gather information on popular opinion. Using the development of Soviet family law as an example, Professor Kawamoto states:

{{quote|The draft makers were not only passive recipients of letters but also traveled throughout the Soviet Union to listen to the people. When the work in the Commissions of Legislative Proposals was reaching its end, members of the subcommittee and officials working for them visited several union republics from April to June 1962 to research the practice of family law and collect opinions on important standards in the draft of the Principles… After these research trips, the commission finished the draft and presented it to the Central Committee of the Party in July.|Kazuko Kawamoto|<ref name=Kawamoto/>}}

While Soviet democracy was not without its flaws (as mentioned, the process was often rather slow, and there were limits on the extent of criticism), it would be highly inaccurate to describe the USSR as a ‘totalitarian’ society, with no democratic structures; on the contrary, the USSR did practice its own form of democracy, and it did so rather effectively.

===Scope of authority===
The government's authority over cities was uncontested throughout its existence, bar areas which were under foreign occupation during the Great Patriotic War. There were however cases of villages being seized by the Basmachi movement in Central Asia, which was in essence defeated in 1931, with its remnants extinguished in Kirghizia by 1934. In the Baltics there were the "Forest Brothers", who were anti-Soviet resistance forces that were pretty much defeated by Stalin's death. There were also some anti-collectivization rebellions.<ref>[https://b-ok.cc/book/831235/8b358a Peasant Rebels under Stalin]</ref>

==Political Economy of the Soviet Union==

===Wage Labour===

In capitalist theories of the Soviet Union labour-power is considered a commodity in the Soviet Union, bought and sold on a labour-market.

===Commodity Production===

In capitalist theories of the Soviet Union, commodity production is regarded to have had a generalised character, with inputs and outputs being commodities. Labour-power was sold to and bought by individual state enterprises, the means of production were sold between individual enterprises, and outputs, capital and consumer goods, were likewise sold to a market of consumers.

===Competition of Capitals===

In capitalist theories of the Soviet Union there is some debate about the existence of the competition of capitals. Tony Cliff and Raya Dunayevskaya claim that the law of value operated nonetheless due to international trade. [[Paresh Chattopadhyay]] disagrees, arguing that the law of value couldn't exist under such conditions and maintains that enterprises were reciprocally independent and were 'competitive' in the Marxist sense by confronting each other through the exchange of commodities.

=== Accusations of imperialism ===

The USSR has been accused of [[imperialism]] by Left Communists, Trotskyists, and Hoxhaists.

=== Non-mode of production ===
Some Marxists provide an alternative theory of the nature of the political economy of the Soviet Union. The theory was first formulated by [[Hillel Ticktin]].

== Economy ==
{{hatnote|Main article: [[economics of the Soviet Union]]}}

With the exceptional periods of the 1910s and the 1990s, the Soviet Union was a [[planned economy]]. It achieved massively positive economic results until the 1970s, when revisionist policies and the [[Cold War]] began to cause a stagnation.

=== Prerevolutionary background ===
In 1917, Russia was a backwards, semicapitalist and feudal society. They had only recently abolished the manor system, and replaced it with the most brutal and primitive form of capitalism. The nation was dreadfully underdeveloped, with no sign of improving in the future, and what little growth did occur led to massive inequalities. According to a Professor of Economic History at Oxford University:

{{quote|Not only were the bases of Imperial advance narrow, but the process of growth gave rise to such inequitable changes in income distribution that revolution was hardly a surprise. Real wages for urban workers were static in the late Imperial period despite a significant increase in output per worker[.] The revolution was also a peasant revolt, and the interests of the peasants were different[.] As in the cities, there was no gain in real wages.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Allen|first=Robert|title=A Reassessment of the Soviet Industrial Revolution|url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf|journal=Comparative Economic Studies|publisher=Oxford University|volume=47|issue=2|year=2005|pages=315–332|doi=10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100101|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119044114/https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf|archivedate=2020-01-19}}</ref>}}

The University of Warwick corroborates these observations:

{{quote|Agriculture had reached North American levels of productivity by 1913 and wheat prices collapsed after 1914. The expansion of the railroads had run its course and there was no prospect of protected light industry becoming internationally competitive. The appropriate comparators for the prospects for Russian capitalism in the twentieth century are not Japan but Argentina or even India. Moreover, Russian capitalist development had brought little if any benefit to the urban and rural working class, intensifying the class conflicts that erupted in Revolution.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Clarke|first=Simon|title=Reviewed Work: Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution|journal=Labour / Le Travail|url=https://homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/FarmtoFactory.pdf|publisher=Princeton University Press|volume=55|year=2005|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200118140746/https://homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/FarmtoFactory.pdf|pages=300–302|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25149595|archivedate=2020-01-18}}</ref>}}

=== Revolutionary period ===
With the 1917 revolution (and after the bloody civil war, with its policy of [[war communism]]), the Soviet economy began to grow rapidly.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Allen|first=Robert|title=The Standard of Living in the Soviet Union, 1928–1940|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/standard-of-living-in-the-soviet-union-19281940/2922A641CA53F7BF592ECDDAF3316070|journal=The Journal of Economic History|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1998|date_published=2009-03-03|doi=10.1017/S0022050700021732}}</ref> The New Economic Policy (which nationalized large-scale industry and redistributed land, while allowing for the private sale of agricultural surplus) succeeded in transforming Russia from a semicapitalist existence into a developing state capitalist society, laying the groundwork for a [[planned economy]].

{{quote|Following War Communism, the New Economic Policy (NEP) sought to develop the Russian economy within a quasi-capitalist framework.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Economic circumstances came to require the transition to a planned economy:

{{quote|However, the institutional and structural barriers to Russian economic development were now compounded by the unfavorable circumstances of the world economy, so that there was no prospect of export-led development, while low domestic incomes provided only a limited market for domestic industry. Without a state coordinated investment program, the Soviet economy would be caught in the low-income trap typical of the underdeveloped world.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

In 1928 (after they selected the new head of the Communist Party), the [[RSFSR]] instituted a fully planned economy, and the first Five Year Plan was enacted. This resulted in rapid economic growth:

{{quote|Soviet GDP increased rapidly with the start of the first Five Year Plan in 1928. […] The expansion of heavy industry and the use of output targets and soft-budgets to direct firms were appropriate to the conditions of the 1930s, they were adopted quickly, and they led to rapid growth of investment and consumption.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Bourgeois economists often alleged that this rapid growth came at the cost of per-capita consumption and living standards. However, more recent research has shown this to be false:

{{quote|There has been no debate that ‘collective consumption’ (principally education and health services) rose sharply, but the standard view was that private consumption declined. Recent research, however, calls that conclusion into question. […] While investment certainly increased rapidly, recent research shows that the standard of living also increased briskly. […] Calories are the most basic dimension of the standard of living, and their consumption was higher in the late 1930s than in the 1920s. […] There has been no debate that ‘collective consumption’ (principally education and health services) rose sharply, but the standard view was that private consumption declined. Recent research, however, calls that conclusion into question. […] Consumption per head rose about one quarter between 1928 and the late 1930s.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Calorie consumption rose rapidly during this period:

{{quote|Calories are the most basic dimension of the standard of living, and their consumption was higher in the late 1930s than in the 1920s. […] In 1895-1910, calorie availability was only 2100 per day, which is very low by modern standards. By the late 1920s, calorie availability advanced to 2500. […] By the late 1930s, the recovery of agriculture increased calorie availability to 2900 per day, a significant increase over the late 1920s. The food situation during the Second World War was severe, but by 1970 calorie consumption rose to 3400, which was on a par with western Europe.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Overall, the development of the Soviet economy during the interbellum period was extremely impressive:

{{quote|The Soviet economy performed well. […] Planning led to high rates of capital accumulation, rapid GDP growth, and rising per capita consumption even in the 1930s. […] The expansion of heavy industry and the use of output targets and soft-budgets to direct firms were appropriate to the conditions of the 1930s, they were adopted quickly, and they led to rapid growth of investment and consumption.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

The USSR’s growth during the interbellum period exceeded that of the market economies:

{{quote|The USSR led the non-OECD countries and, indeed, achieved a growth rate in this period that exceeded the OECD catch-up regression as well as the OECD average.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

This success is also attributed specifically to the revolution and the planned economy:

{{quote|This success would not have occurred without the 1917 revolution or the planned development of state owned industry.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

The benefits of the planned economy become obvious upon closer study:

{{quote|A capitalist economy would not have created the industrial jobs required to employ the surplus labour, since capitalists would only employ labour so long as the marginal product of labour exceeded the wage. State-sponsored industrialization faced no such constraints, since enterprises were encouraged to expand employment in line with the demands of the plan.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Economic growth was also aided by the liberation of women, and the resulting control over the birth rate, as well as women's participation in the workforce:

{{quote|The rapid growth in per capita income was contingent not just on the rapid expansion of GDP but also on the slow growth of the population. This was primarily due to a rapid fertility transition rather than a rise in mortality from collectivization, political repression, or the Second World War. Falling birth rates were primarily due to the education and employment of women outside the home. These policies, in turn, were the results of enlightenment ideology in its communist variant.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Reviews of Allen’s work have backed up his statements:

{{quote|Allen shows that the Stalinist strategy worked, in strictly economic terms, until around 1970. […] Allen’s book convincingly establishes the superiority of a planned over a capitalist economy in conditions of labour surplus (which is the condition of most of the world most of the time).|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Other studies have backed-up the findings that the USSR’s living standards rose rapidly:

{{quote|Remarkably large and rapid improvements in child height, adult stature and infant mortality were recorded from approximately 1945 to 1970. […] Both Western and Soviet estimates of GNP growth in the Soviet Union indicate that GNP per capita grew in every decade in the postwar era, at times far surpassing the growth rates of the developed western economies. […] The conventional measures of GNP growth and household consumption indicate a long, uninterrupted upward climb in the Soviet standard of living from 1928 to 1985; even Western estimates of these measures support this view, albeit at a slower rate of growth than the Soviet measures.|Williams College|<ref name=Brainerd>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Brainerd|first=Elizabeth|title=Reassessing the Standard of Living in the Soviet Union: An Analysis Using Archival and Anthropometric Data|url=https://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf|publisher=Williams College|year=2008|doi=10.2139/ssrn.906590|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150318181223/http://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf|archivedate=2015-03-18|accessdate=2020-03-20}}</ref>}}

As early as 1917, forest conservation became one of Bolshevism’s duties.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Lenin|first=Vladimir|chapter=8|title=The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch08.htm#v24zz99h-071-GUESS|year=1917}}</ref> With one minor exception, the Politburo consistently rejected the drive toward hyperindustrialism in the forest: Moscow capitulated only briefly to the industrialists in 1929, and in the 1930s and 1940s it set aside larger tracts of the RSFSR’s most valuable forests as preserves, off-limits to industrial exploitation.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Brain|first=Stephen|title=Stalin’s Environmentalism|url=https://drive.google.com/file/d/13QiQYmG65Vlr7ncIJI44ynMIWwOzWOWR|journal=The Russian Review|publisher=Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review|year=2010|month=January|volume=69|number=1|pages=93–118}}</ref>

=== Cold War ===
While the Soviet economy outperformed the market economies in numerous ways, the introduction of market reforms and other revisionist policies after 1953 may have contributed to the system’s deceleration and delayed the increase of living standards:

{{quote|Three different measures of population health show a consistent and large improvement between approximately 1945 and 1969: child height, adult height and infant mortality all improved significantly during this period. These three biological measures of the standard of living also corroborate the evidence of some deterioration in living conditions beginning around 1970, when infant and adult mortality were rising and child and adult height stopped increasing and in some regions began to decline.|Williams College|<ref name=Brainerd/>}}

Economic growth also began to slow around this time:

{{quote|After the Second World War, the Soviet economy resumed rapid growth. By 1970, the growth rate was sagging, and per capita output was static by 1985.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

The [[Cold War]] was another factor which contributed to slowing growth rates:

{{quote|The Cold War was an additional factor that lowered Soviet growth after 1968. The creation of high tech weaponry required a disproportionate allocation of R & D personnel and resources to the military. Innovation in civilian machinery and products declined accordingly. Half of the decreased in the growth rate of per capita GDP was due to the decline in productivity growth, and that decrease provides an upper bound to the impact of the arms race with the United States.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Despite the delayed growth rates, food consumption remained at acceptable levels. By 1976 the average caloric intake of the Soviet population was 3,330.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book| publisher = Springer| isbn = 978-1-349-10349-2| last = Birman| first = Igor| title = Personal Consumption in the USSR and the USA| date = 1989-06-18| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=_hexCwAAQBAJ|page=36|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=_hexCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA36}}</ref> Similarly, a 1983 report confirmed that Soviets and U.S. citizens ate about the same amount of food quotidianly, but the Soviet diet may have be more eutrophic; they put the daily caloric intake at 3,280.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=STRENGTH‐DIET|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf|date=1983-01-08|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200224040849/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf|archivedate=2020-02-24}}</ref> <ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=The Nutrient Content of the Soviet Food Supply|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf|year=1984|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200203193608/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf|archivedate=2020-02-03}}</ref> Dr. Kenneth Gray, the White House’s top expert on Soviet agriculture, confirmed in his testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that ‘the food shortages in the USSR are occurring at fairly respectable levels of consumption.’<ref name=Medley>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Medley|first=Joseph| accessdate = 2019-10-09| title = Soviet Agriculture: A Critique of the Myths Constructed by Western Critics|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611145106/http://www.usm.maine.edu/eco/joe/works/Soviet.html}}</ref>

While the USSR did become a major importer of grain by the 1980s,<ref name=Medley/> they intended these imports strictly for feeding livestock, since it takes between seven and fourteen pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. They thereby increased their consumption of meat and dairy.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book |last=Syzmański |first=Albert |authorlink= |chapter=5 |title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union |url=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion |location=London |publisher=Zed Books Ltd. |year=1984 |section=Imports |page=132 |pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion#page/n74/mode/1up |isbn=0 086232 018 6 |oclc=}}</ref> Per capita meat consumption in the USSR doubled from the 1960s to the 1980s and exceeded such nations as the [[Kingdom of Norway]], Italy, Greece, the [[Kingdom of Spain]],<ref name=HRSU72>{{safesubst:cite book |last=Syzmański |first=Albert |authorlink= |chapter=5 |title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union |url=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion |location=London |publisher=Zed Books Ltd. |year=1984 |section=Living Standards|pages=128–9 |pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion#page/n72/mode/1up |isbn=0 086232 018 6 |oclc=}}</ref> [[Japan]], and the [[State of Israel]]. Milk production increased almost sixty percent in two decades, to the point when during the 1980s the USSR became by far the world’s largest milk-producing country. According to the 1982 [[CIA]] report on the Soviet economy, ‘The Soviet Union remains basically self-sufficient with respect to food.’<ref>{{safesubst:cite book| publisher = Transaction Publishers| isbn = 978-1-4128-3909-9| last1 = Hoffmann| first1 = Erik P.| last2 = Laird| first2 = Robbin Frederick| title = The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era| page = 431|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=63_obglArrMC&pg=PA431}}</ref> These were the accomplishments of an agrarian labour force that decreased from 42% in 1960 to 20% in 1980, working in a country where over 90% of the land is either too arid or too frigid for farming.<ref>{{safesubst:cite news| issn = 0882-7729| title = Soviet farming: more success than failure?| work = Christian Science Monitor| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 1982-12-13| url = https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/1213/121323.html}}</ref>

Although Vladimir Lenin would inspire many ecosocialists in the U.S.S.R.,<ref>{{safesubst:Cite news| title = Lenin’s Eco-Warriors - The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/opinion/lenin-environment-siberia.html| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 2017-08-15|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170815005108/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/opinion/lenin-environment-siberia.html|archivedate=2017-08-15}}</ref> and Moscow initiated history’s first state-directed effort to reverse artificially induced climate change,<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Brain|first=Stephen|title=The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature|journal=Environmental History|publisher=Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History|year=2010|month=October|volume=15|number=4|page=671|JSTOR=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25764488}}</ref> the immense pressure to compete with antisocialist régimes meant that pollution and irresponsible use of the environment would become very significant issues in later decades.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Szymański|first=Albert|chapter=5|title=Is the Red Flag Flying?|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-6/red-flag.pdf|location=London|publisher=Zed Press|year=1979|page=83|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/IsTheRedFlagFlying#page/n45/mode/1up|ISBN=0 905762 35 5}}</ref> <ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = Environmental Policy and Law in the USSR| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://elr.info/sites/default/files/articles/17.10068.htm}}</ref> For example, a series of dry years in the 1970s (particularly 1974–1975) and low flows between 1982 and 1986 contributed to the Aral Sea’s desiccation, but overconsumption of the water for irrigation was another factor. Starting in the 1960s, the Soviets proposed a large-scale project to redirect part of the flow of the Ob basin’s rivers to Central Asia over a gigantic canal system; replenishing the Aral Sea was considered as one of the project’s main goals.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Cambridge University Press| isbn = 978-1-139-42941-2| last = Glantz| first = Michael| title = Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin| date = 1999-05-13|pageurl = https://books.google.com/books?id=2YXnBxZg7c4C&pg=PA174| page = 174}}</ref> It was only due to its staggering costs and the negative public opinion in the R.S.F.S.R. that the federal authorities unfortunately relinquished the project by 1986. (The worst effects of the sea’s desiccation manifested '''after''' the short twentieth century:<ref>https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:AralSea1989_2014.jpg</ref> when a market economy was well in place.) The discontinuation of many Soviet industries also lead to a temporary reduction in CO₂ emissions in the Eastern world;<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Schierhorn|first1=Florian|last2=Kastner|first2=Thomas|last3=Kuemmerle|first3=Tobias|last4=Meyfroidt|first4=Patrick|last5=Kurganova|first5=Irina|last6=V Prishchepov|first6=Alexander|last7=Erb|first7=Karl-Heinz|last8=A Houghton|first8=Richard|last9=Müller|first9=Daniel|title=Large greenhouse gas savings due to changes in the post-Soviet food systems|journal=Environmental Research Letters|url=https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab1cf1|publisher=IOP Publishing Ltd|date=2019-06-21|volume=14|number=6}}</ref> United Nations data from 1990 indicate that the Soviet Union was emitting 13.5 tons of CO₂ per capita (lower than antisocialist states such as Australia (17.2), Canada (16.2), and Imperial America (19.1)).<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (CDIAC)|url=http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx|publisher=United Nations Statistics Division and United States Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)|accessdate=2020-02-11}}</ref>

In summary:

{{quote|Compared with the later period it is justifiable to talk of the indisputable advantages of the command over the market economy in Russian conditions. […] [T]hese advantages are evident even in comparison with the degenerate mid-1980s version of the command economy, which was very different from the classical model. […] The USSR economy also exceeded the main capitalist countries in this period in terms of a number of indicators of economic efficiency. […] [T]he fading of the rate of economic growth which began at the end of the 1950s was not an inevitable consequence of the faults of command economy as an economic system but was the result of its gradual dismantling and the incompetent actions of the political and economic leadership in this period.|G.I. Khanin|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Khanin|first=G.I.|title=The 1950s: The Triumph of the Soviet Economy|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3594504|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|publisher=Taylor & Francis, Ltd.|volume=55|number=8|year=2003|pages=1187–1211|ISSN=0966-8136|DOI=10.1080/0966813032000141088}}</ref>}}

== Infrastructure ==

=== Health ===
The USSR placed importance on the health of its people, and alongside quality food products, provided health care as a constitutional right. 
''ARTICLE 120. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.'' - (Soviet Constitution of 1936 Chapter 10: FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS)</ref>[https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html#chap10]</ref>
 
''- Article 41: Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure. This right is ensured by the establishment of a working week not exceeding 41 hours, for workers and other employees, a shorter working day in a number of trades and industries, and shorter hours for night work; by the provision of paid annual holidays, weekly days of rest, extension of the network of cultural, educational, and health-building institutions, and the development on a mass scale of sport, physical culture, and camping and tourism; by the provision of neighborhood recreational facilities, and of other opportunities for rational use of free time. The length of collective farmers' working and leisure time is established by their collective farms.

- Article 42: Citizens of the USSR have the right to health protection. This right is ensured by free, qualified medical care provided by state health institutions; by extension of the network of therapeutic and health-building institutions; by the development and improvement of safety and hygiene in industry; by carrying out broad prophylactic measures; by measures to improve the environment; by special care for the health of the rising generation, including prohibition of child labour, excluding the work done by children as part of the school curriculum; and by developing research to prevent and reduce the incidence of disease and ensure citizens a long and active life.'' - (Soviet Constitution of 1977, Part II. The State And The Individual; Chapter 7: The Basic Rights, Freedoms, And Duties Of Citizens Of The USSR) </ref>[https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.html#chap07 ''CONSTITUTION (FUNDAMENTAL LAW) OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS: Part II, Chapter 7'']</ref>

Health conditions in Imperial Russia had been deplorable; it was among the unhealthiest nations in Europe, if not Earth in general:

{{quote|Without doubt the Soviet Union was one of the most underdeveloped European countries at the time of the October Revolution. In terms of life-expectancy it lagged behind the other industrialized countries of Europe by a gap of about 15 years.|University of Munich|<ref name=Dinkel>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Dinkel|first=Reiner|title=Declining Life Expectancy in a Highly Developed Nation: Paradox or Statistical Artifact?|url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-95874-8_22|journal=Paradoxical Effects of Social Behavior|publisher=Physica-Verlag HD|year=1986|pages=311–321|doi=10.1007/978-3-642-95874-8_22|ISBN=978-3-7908-0350-1}}</ref>}}

However, after the October Revolution, healthcare conditions began to improve rapidly.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book
|author=Howard M. Leichter
|authorlink=
|chapter=7
|editor=|editors=
|title=A Comparative Approach to Policy Analysis: Health Care Policy in Four Nations
|url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cfI6AAAAIAAJ
|archiveurl=https://wp.me/pa7b25-X
|archivedate=27/July/2018
|edition=
|location=New York
|publisher=Cambridge University Press
|year=1979
|volume=
|section=
|page=200
|pageurl=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cfI6AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA200
|isbn=0-521-22648
|oclc=
|text=In this hospital great pains were taken to keep surgical areas antiseptic and patient areas clean. The patients could enjoy fresh air and relaxation in an outdoor garden. In general, the patients, who included persons of varied ethnic and social backgrounds, were getting good medical attention. […] As the two literary descriptions suggest, the quality of medical care has improved substantially under communist rule.}}</ref> By the end of the interbellum period, healthcare standards (measured by life expectancy and mortality rates) were superior to those of Western Europe and the USA:

{{quote|One of the most striking advances of socialism has been and was generally seen to be the improvement in public health provision for the population as a whole. In accordance with this assumption mortality-rates in the Soviet Union declined rapidly in the first two decades after World War II. In 1965 life-expectancy for men and women in all parts of the Soviet Union, which still included vast underdeveloped regions with unfavorable living conditions, were as high or even higher than in the United States. Such a development fits perfectly into the picture of emerging industrial development and generally improving conditions of living.|University of Munich|<ref name=Dinkel/>}}

Even reactionary intellectuals were forced to acknowledge these achievements; according to Nick Eberstadt (an antisocialist think-tank adviser), healthcare standards in the Soviet Union during the interbellum period surpassed those of the USA and Western Europe:

{{quote|Over much of this century the nation in the vanguard of the revolution in health was the Soviet Union. In 1897 Imperial Russia offered its people a life expectancy of perhaps thirty years. In European Russia, from what we can make out, infant mortality (that is, death in the first year) claimed about one child in four, and in Russia’s Asian hinterlands the toll was probably closer to one in three. Yet by the late 1950s the average Soviet citizen could expect to live 68.7 years: longer than his American counterpart, who had begun the century with a seventeen-year lead. By 1960 the Soviet infant mortality rate, higher than any in Europe as late as the Twenties, was lower than that of Italy, Austria, or East Germany, and seemed sure to undercut such nations as Belgium and West Germany any year.|Nick Eberstadt|<ref name=Eberstadt/>}}

He even notes that these achievements made planned economics seem nearly indefatigable:

{{quote|In the face of these and other equally impressive material accomplishments, Soviet claims about the superiority of their “socialist” system, its relevance to the poor countries, and the inevitability of its triumph over the capitalist order were not easily refuted.|Nick Eberstadt|<ref name=Eberstadt/>}}

While health conditions did start to decline after the introduction of revisionist policies in the mid-1960s, this was likely caused mostly by the substance abuse, lopsided age demographics due to WWII, and the disparities in mortality rates between the European and Asian regions of the union rather than actual deficiencies in the healthcare system.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Cockshott|first=Paul|title=Economic Factors in Soviet Collapse|url=https://invidio.us/embed/EE-kCZnlGZU|accessdate=2020-03-26}}</ref> Either way, the planned economy’s healthcare achievements remain unimpeachable.

In January of 1960, news of a smallpox epidemic reached Moscow, which immediately mobilized all the resources of its hospitals, clinics, police departments and the KGB to search for and contain probable carriers. For example, they interrupted university lectures to quarantine one hundred fifty students, and searched elsewhere for other contacts until they establish an entire chain, interrupting trains and flights to quarantine potentially infected people. They placed a total of 9,342 people under quarantine. The Soviets prevented the spread of smallpox by vaccinating all of Moscow’s and Moscow Region’s residents of all ages. Within only a week, they successfully vaccinated more then 9.5 million people, an unprecedented case in history. By mobilizing law enforcement, epidemiologists, and all medics, they successfully defeated the virus in only 19 days, concluding on February 3, 1960. In total, they found only forty-five Moscow residents suffering from smallpox, only three of whom died.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Egorov|first=Boris|title=How the USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days|url=https://www.rbth.com/history/331857|date=2020-03-19|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200321031034/https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox|archivedate=2020-03-21}}</ref>

===Education===
Already in 1919, despite the lackluster economic conditions, the Bolsheviki improved education substantially:

{{quote|Thousands of new schools have been opened in all parts of Russia and the Soviet Government seems to have done more for the education of the Russian people in a year and a half than Czardom did in 50 years. […] The achievements of the department of education under Lunacharsky have been very great. Not only have all the Russian classics been reprinted in editions of three and five million copies and sold at a low price to the people, but thousands of new schools for men, women, and children have been opened in all parts of Russia. Furthermore, workingmen’s and soldiers’ clubs have been organized in many of the palaces of yesteryear, where the people are instructed by means of moving pictures and lectures. In the art galleries one meets classes of working men and women being instructed in the beauties of the pictures. The children’s schools have been entirely reorganized, and an attempt is being made to give every child a good dinner at school every day. Furthermore, very remarkable schools have been opened for defective and over-nervous children. On the theory that genius and insanity are closely allied, these children are taught from the first to compose music, paint pictures, sculpt and write poetry, and it is asserted that some valuable results have been achieved, not only in the way of productions but also in the way of restoring the nervous systems of the children.|William C. Bullitt|<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Kominsky|first=Morris|IV|title=The Hoaxers: Plain Liars, Fancy Liars, and Damned Liars|url=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers|edition=|location=Boston|publisher=Branden Press, Inc.|year=1970|id=8283-1288-5|volume=I|page=256|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers#page/n250/mode/1up}}</ref>}}

Corporal punishment, common in Imperial Russia, became illegal and increasingly rare.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Gould|first1=Laurie|last2=Pate|first2=Matthew|chapter=1|editor=Graeme R. Newman|title=Corporal Punishment around the World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Uf-1r3SVVrYC|location=Santa Barbara|publisher=Praeger|year=2012|page=26|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=Uf-1r3SVVrYC&pg=PA26|ISBN=978-0-313-39131-6|LCCN=2012017133}}</ref> Education continued to improve from the 1920s to the 1960s, and various nonsocialist observers, including Western government officials, have attested to the high quality of Soviet education, noting the diverse range of subjects, support for students, and complexity compared to U.S. education.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Kominsky|first=Morris|IV|title=The Hoaxers: Plain Liars, Fancy Liars, and Damned Liars|url=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers|edition=|location=Boston|publisher=Branden Press, Inc.|year=1970|id=8283-1288-5|volume=I|pages=294–303|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers#page/n288/mode/1up}}</ref>

{{quote|In common with primary and secondary education, all higher education is free, and students in higher education who maintain a ‘B’ average also receive a stipend. Such stipends vary according to the year of study, the subject studied, the type of school and the student’s progress; no stipend is paid for a year that must be repeated. In the mid-1970s university students received 40–60 roubles a month and technical school students 30–45 roubles. Admission to higher education is by examinations for specific institutions; there are no IQ tests or general aptitude tests in the USSR. Students who fail one institution’s entrance exam can reapply in future years or apply to other institutions. Advantages are given to higher education applicants with work experience, for example, quotas, extra points on examinations, special tutorial programmes. In 1967, 30% of admissions to higher education were of people who had been working full time. In general, Soviets are actively encouraged to continue with formal education throughout their lives. Indeed, the Soviets have one of the highest rates of attendance at institutions of higher education in the world.|Albert Szymański|<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Syzmański|first=Albert|chapter=5 |title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union |url=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion|location=London |publisher=Zed Books Ltd.|year=1984|page=137|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion#page/n76/mode/1up |isbn=0 086232 018 6}}</ref>}}

==Environment==
===Environmentalism===
The USSR produced so little plastic that it was essential non-existent, and the plastic that was produced was made to last. Most bottles were made of glass, with old ones sent to factories to be sanitized and reused, with broken glass either swept up to be melted down or otherwise disposed of. Metal and paper waste was treated just like in wartime, similar to the US scrap collection system during World War II, resulting in minimal metal and paper waste. Littering was fined and weekly cleanup volunteers helped reduce trash in public places.

Widespread availability and use of public transport meant less CO2 produced as well. Cars also tended to have 4-6 cylinders meaning they used less gas, with trucks using diesel fuel which requires less refinement and is thus cheaper, while also using less energy from power plants.

The focus on nuclear power further reduced CO2 emissions, with nuclear power gradually coming to supersede coal-based power. Windmills were also used in areas for water pumps and flour production.
And furthermore Stalin, for one, had a series of ecological programs which replanted thousands of square kilometers of forests cut down or destroyed in preparation for and during World War II - [[The Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature]] (1948-1953). In all these ways, the Soviets sought to reduce the ecological effects of their rapid and massive industrialization necessary to survive their early years as a nation.

The Russian Federation, on the other hand, shirked environmental maintenance work which was regularly done in the USSR. The current system is to cut down a section of forest, dig a deep pit, dump waste in the pit, light it on fire, and then bury it while the methane and other fuel continue to let the fire burn under ground; leaking into the air and nearby villages. This has caused and still causes large protests, especially since this is a significant step down from the more efficient trash sorting and processing system present in the Soviet Union.

===The Aral Sea===
Aral Sea has been slowly drying up for a while naturally. If no humans effect it this would take a few millenia to eliminate. Obviously human impact has sped up this process. In the 1960s, Soviet researchers predicted the complete evaporation of the body of water, and a river used to irrigate farmland had the excess water siphoned into the lake and would have been rerouted to continue to do so. This was, however, expensive, and during the privatizations (and subsequent economic catastrophe) of the 1980s, that came with the rise of Gorbachev, the plan was abandoned. After Kazakhstan seceded, high-intensity cotton farming practices and infrastructure mismanagement - most water running through irrigation to the farms evaporated on the way there - accelerated the shrinkage. Most of the former Aral Sea is a desert. The destruction of the Aral Sea is a product of resource mismanagement both during the Soviet Union and after, with the latter being exemplified by Yeltsin's capitalist shock therapy which largely disregarded environmental sustainability rather than simple ignorance of impact.

===Radioactive dumping===
There is only one lake with high radiation levels as a result of radioactive dumping, Lake Karachay, but that was because radiation wasn't understood nearly as well at the time. Similarly, radioactive dumping by Soviets has occurred in the Barents and Kara Seas, however this was not a phenomenon unique to the USSR.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200609083923/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste Ocean disposal of radioactive waste]</ref>

==Railways==

From 1927 to 1941, the USSR expanded their freight rail network to be 20x larger than before, surpassing the US. From 1965 to 1980, the USSR build 639km of track a year (or about 1.5km a day).

==References==

[[Category:History]]
[[Category:USSR]]