Every Day Life under Stalin
Tim Dobb
1/17/13
Hello my name is David Mcfudge, I am now 63, I am going to tell you what life was like under Stalin’s control, now let’s begin: Life for Russians in the 1930's was difficult. Housing was not easy to find and it nearly always involved living with a number of other families. Finding everyday goods was also very difficult. A great deal of attention was paid to heavy industry, but very little attention was paid to producing household goods or food. The result was a widespread shortage of goods and a system of ration cards. Despite these hardships, life conditions did improve for many. Before the revolution, over 90% of the population was illiterate. By the mid-1930's, nearly everyone could read at a very basic level. There was a high level of social mobility and even a barrack was an upgrade from what many people had previously lived in. Stalin mounted a massive propaganda campaign in order to convince the people that life was in fact getting better and that people were sacrificing now, but this sacrifice would pay huge dividends in the future. Heroes were created to give the population examples for them to follow. Education Education was at the heart of Soviet attempts to create a new society. While children from the peasantry and working classes were given priority in the new educational system, the initial, child-centered system failed, and Stalin, after 1932, returned the system to a more traditional, disciplined and expectation-driven one. This system, while again stressing the importance of education to the children of the masses, was strongly technological and scientific. While the study of Marxism-Leninism remained in the curriculum, technological education reined paramount, although accompanied by the state's overwhelming urge to indoctrinate the students into the benefits of communism. Throughout Stalin's era, the Soviet educational system was marked by an emphasis on engineering and related topics, and a concerted drive to eliminate illiteracy.
Socialist Realism
The basic principle of socialist realism was to portray "the truthful, historically concrete representations of reality in its revolutionary development," in all Soviet art. Its purpose was both to educate the observer about Soviet ideals and goals and to mobilize the observer to achieve those goals. Beginning in the 1930s, all Soviet art, including fine art, cinema, music and literature, had to fulfill the tenets of socialist realism.
Work
Between 1928 and 1940, the Soviet industrial work force grew from approximately 3.5 million workers to 15.7 million workers. Decimated by World War II, the work force added about 7 million new workers between 1945 and 1953, mostly conscripted young people who worked in construction, coal mining or metallurgy, in inhospitable areas. Despite the increase in the size of the work force, living standards declined from 1928 to 1953, and were particularly difficult during World War II and the famine of 1947. The political rights of workers were undermined, so strikes and protests became less common from 1928 to 1953, because of repression and violence. The Soviet state's emphasis on increasingly efficient work resulted in higher norms, and finally, a labor shortage, which the government moved against ineffectively by prohibiting freedom of movement from job to job. Are you still here?? Good more’s a comin. When I went to the bookstore to get the book of ultimate jazz but it was banned from the book store!!!! Gosh it makes me furious remembering how bad everything was back then. Well enough about me and back to my story.

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World War II poster urging people to fight the Nazis.
During World War II, Soviet citizens were again asked to sacrifice in order to successfully fight against Germany. A combination of the transfer of economic activity from west to east and the destruction brought on by the war made starvation a daily reality Even outside the combat areas, Soviet