Did urban living standards improve during the plans?

L/O – To assess whether the Five-Year Plans improved living standards

Living conditions in the cities• In the 1930s, the central planning system

did not improve the standard of living of the very citizens for whom the plans were designed.

• There was a lack of consumer goods and food was rationed. Especially during the First-Five Year Plan.

• In 1928-33 in Leningrad and Moscow, meat, milk and fruit consumption declined by 2/3.

Living conditions in the cities• Cities and towns were growing at a rate of

200,000 a month. This created extraordinary pressures and there was little planning for all these people.

• Newcomers were mainly peasants who had already suffered the torment of being forced from their land.

• Overcrowding was intense, towns lacked paved roads and adequate sanitation. Workers lived in barracks in appalling conditions. Life was brutish, violent and crime ridden.

Living conditions in the cities• In 1935, Stalin announced that ‘Life has

become better, comrades, life has become more joyous.’

• However planners were not able to meet the needs of urban dwellers. Accommodation was sub-standard as building materials were diverted to industry.

• There was a shortage of water, shops and catering. Most workers ate in their factory canteens.

Living conditions in the cities• There was some expansion of shops during

the Second Five-Year Plan but the centralised distribution system was poor and shops lacked basic commodities.

• Long queues were a feature of life however some industries set up their own shops, bringing in food from farms. Peasants supplied towns with milk, eggs, vegetables and meat from their private plots.

• Some workers did benefit but it is clear that the majority did not.

Urban Housing in the First Five-Year Plan• Housing• Plan = 33% increase• Actual = 16% increase• Result = 50% shortfall

• Urban Population• Plan = 32.5 million• Actual = 38.7 million• Result = 20% higher than expected

• Moscow Population• 1929 – 2.2 million• 1932 – 3.7 million

By the end of the 1930s, 40% of the

Soviet urban population were former peasants who had moved

within the decade.