Essay Plan: Social Conditions

I HATE SOCIAL CONDITIONS. Thought you should know.

Did the condition of the Soviet people improve or deteriorate during the era of Brezhnev and Gorbachev?

When Brezhnev took power in the USSR in 1964, the Soviet people had better rights and personal freedoms than ever before because of the comparative liberalism of Khrushchev's regime. However, living conditions in this period, and the treatment of suspect nationalities, for example, were not good, having not improved significantly since Stalin's day. Thus, the changes under Brezhnev and Gorbachev can be seen to have created definite improvements, leading to higher expectations from the Soviet people in the areas left unsolved, leading to one of the major causes of the fall of the USSR in 1991.

BREZHNEV

POSITIVE
- divorce, contraception, abortion
- 50% more fruit, veg, meat and fish eaten
- equal pay in almost all professions
- Jewish emigration

NEGATIVE
- tighter cultural control
- 1967 KGB wing against "ideological diversion"
- alcoholism
- poverty
- position of women

BUT the regime tried to tackle the latter three problems with large-scale propaganda campaigns (see www.sovietposter.blogspot.com).

ANDROPOV AND CHERNENKO

POSITIVE
- Andropov's education and anti-alcoholism policies

NEGATIVE
- no time to make real change

GORBACHEV

POSITIVE
- Glasnost raised expectation
- improvements in medical care
- campaign against alcoholism

NEGATIVE
- raised expectations
- LAVER: "Glasnost proved a double-edged sword for Gorbachev"
- no improvements in role of women

CONCLUSION
- improved in many areas but lead to unrealistic expectations from population

Hope this helps :) Questions?

- HistGrrl x