Russian revolution. A very short introduction

with money-lending, kulaks could be variously defined as wealthy farmers, especially if they hired labour; as farmers who produced mainly for the market; as farmers who hired out heavy machinery or draft animals; or as peasants whose wealth derived from trade in such items as liquor. It is probably reasonable to conclude that the degree of differentiation among the peasantry was greater than many western historians allow; but it is unlikely that kulaks were flourishing at the expense of the middle peasants, if only because full-blown NEP was in operation for too short a time.

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If the regime was alarmed by the supposed increase in influence of kulaks, it was also greatly exercised by 'nepmen', i.e. the traders, manufacturers, and suppliers who seized the new opportunities to engage in private enterprise. Probably the biggest group of the 3 million so classified were engaged in handicrafts in the countryside, but it was those who traded or ran small businesses in the cities who came in for most obloquy, since some amassed considerable fortunes. There was surprisingly little overlap between them and the pre-revolutionary merchant class, except among the rarefied elite of large wholesalers. Among ordinary folk, struggling to feed and clothe themselves, traditional hatred of 'speculators' found a focus in the nepmen, some of it acquiring an anti- semitic tinge. Such antipathy was reinforced by the merciless caricature of nepmen in the official media as vulgar nouveaux riches, ignorant upstarts, swindlers, and philistines. In truth, many nepmen did flaunt their wealth, dining on caviar and champagne, hiring servants, buying houses, dressing in suits, silk dresses, or expensive fur coats. So far as the regime was concerned they existed on sufferance, necessary to revive a devastated market yet feared as polluters of the social body.

In an effort to master this threatening environment, the Bolsheviks classified society into 'exploiters/disenfranchised' - mainly, kulaks, nepmen, spetsy- and 'toilers', who comprised a hegemonic proletariat, the poor peasants and the less reliable middle peasants. Exploiters were deprived of the vote, penalized in terms of taxation, access to higher education and to housing, and barred from membership of the Komsomol or party. By 1927-8 the proportion of those deprived of the vote had risen to 7.7% in the towns and 3.5% in the countryside. From 1928 military service was made compulsory for all male toilers aged 19 to 40, but 'non-toilers' were not entrusted to defend the motherland, receiving a 'white ticket' and being required instead to enrol in the home guard and pay a large military tax. Compulsory military service thus reinforced a definition of citizenship in class as well as gendered terms. In practice class labels were applied fairly arbitrarily. Local Soviets

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16. Anti-capitalist demonstration, 1920s

might disenf ranchize middle and even poor peasants for hiring nurses or workers during harvest time on the grounds that this rendered them

exploiters. Members of religious sects or parish councils might be consigned to the ranks of the kulaks.

Insofar as the social structure was constituted in part by political mechanisms, the Bolshevik taxonomy bore a distinct resemblance to the tsarist system of social estates, rights and duties being ascribed to groups on the basis of their place in the politico-juridical order. Because

one's categorization had material consequences for one's life chances -after 1928 the disenf ranch ized did not qualify for rations and were likely to be expelled from state housing - it made real claims on one's social identity. The many who appealed against disenf ranchisement invariably made the point that they were workers and that any lapse into 'non-toiling activity' - i.e. trade - had been due to pressure of

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circumstances. 'I took up trade not for profit but to support my family.' Their appeals, moreover, attest to the regime's having a certain legitimacy, since even those who felt themselves unjustly treated appear to have believed that disenfranchizement was a legitimate means for weeding out of the system of distribution those who had become rich at the people's expense. Bolshevik ideologywas thus far more than imposed illusion, despite the many contradictions between it and the lived experience of ordinary citizens.

All my life since the age of eight, when I was left a total orphan, I have striven to earn a crust of bread by doing the hard work of a domestic servant Absolutely alone, illiterate, I have from my earliest childhood dragged out a pitiful existence as a worker. In 1917 I came as a refugee from Lithuania. Of course, I experienced what only someone without a single kopeck to their name endures. With great difficulty I got a job as a servant and remained there until 1919. Then I joined a Jewish kindergarten on the technical side. I lost my job when it shut down. Having barely a single acquaintance in Moscow, being completely alone and still not having mastered Russian, I was completely unable to find a permanent position. The labour exchange found temporary work for me several times. I worked as a day labourer, but to supplement my income I sold sunflower seeds and other bits and pieces for a time. When I began to earn more as a day labourer I gave up this trade. My health is now so broken that I can scarcely do the smallest amount of work and now suddenly I am put on a level with the bourgeoisie, with exploiters who have no understanding of such a dark proletarian life as mine.

Woman appealing against her loss of voting rights

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Designing a welfare state

In addition to categorizing the population, the Soviet state sought to refashion it through education, health care, housing, urban planning, and social work. In its commitment to improve the welfare of its people, it may be seen as an authoritarian variant of the welfare states that were emerging in Europe in this period. Healthcare was an area where the Bolshevik record was particularly impressive, although marred by inequality. War and revolution had led to a drastic deterioration in health standards, evinced by the fact that the average height of male conscripts fell from 1.69 metres in 1908 to 1.66 metres in 1924. During the first decade of Bolshevik power, health facilities, personnel, and services improved, as did their management. Perhaps the most striking index of this was the sharp fall in the death rate. Overall, however, the quantity and quality of health services remained low and the peasantry ? seriously disadvantaged. The ratio of doctors to population rose g significantly, yet in 1926 there was still only one doctor for every 18,900 e of the rural population. Central to the policy of the health commissariat jg was a programme of preventive medicine - obligatory vaccination 1 against smallpox was introduced - and health education. 'Sanitary-enlightenment' propaganda developed rapidly to combat disease and popular ignorance; campaigns such as that in the Red Army to 'Help the Country with a Toothbrush'were designed to convey the message that making one's life healthy was a sign of 'consciousness'. Another dimension of the drive to enhance the productive and reproductive power of socialist society lay in the official promotion of sport, something that had no parallel under the ancien regime. Trade unions and the Komsomol promoted team sports, although some saw these as 'bourgeois'- since they were competitive-favouring all-round fitness for the masses instead. Following party intervention in 1925, the emphasis was put on sport as a means of promoting health and fitness, clean living, rationality, group identification, and military training.

The Bolsheviks promised free primary and secondary education within a

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coeducational and comprehensive school system. Building on progressive educational theories influential in