Impact of the Russian Revolution on the Russian people?

[Module]

What was the impact of the 1917 revolution on the people and their quality of life? What improves were made? What got worse? etc.

[ComradeOm]

When? Do you mean during the revolution; immediately after the revolution; throughout the decades of the USSR's existence; or Russia today? If all of those then I would recommend you find a general history that deals with the last century of Russian history

[Comrade Anarchist]

Peoples lives became incredibly restricted mainly after the revolution and war communism was implemented but then they realized that communism fails so they had to meld it with capitalism and then they were still oppressed so ya life got worse.

[Jimmie Higgins]

No, in the short-term there was a great deal of liberation - women had the vote, homosexuality was de-criminalized, there was even legal sex-change that was performed at this time. People organized community child care and really took matters into their own hands for the first time. Of course, as we know this did not last and so after the civil war and famine and foreign intervention there was a lot of misery and the solidarity between workers and pesants and soldiers was broken and so eventually there was what I consider to be an internal-counterrevolution that finalized, symbolically, with Stalin and a turn away from revolution to an inward, nationalist "socialism in one country" model.

I'd suggest reading a little of the history to get acquainted and then read John Reed's "10 days that shook the world" for an eye-witness account of the revolution itself and its effects on people.

[#FF0000]

Peoples lives became incredibly restricted mainly after the revolution and war communism was implemented but then they realized that communism fails so they had to meld it with capitalism and then they were still oppressed so ya life got worse.

You're an idiot.

[Drace]

An immediate result of the creation of the USSR was a strong increase in political rights. Church and State were separated, meaning marriage was no longer a religious ceremony. This made it easier for women to divorce. Their property was also considered their own and not their husbands.
Women were also able to vote and hold government positions.

And laws against homosexuality, under Lenin, were removed.

Economically, there was an addition of free health care and education.

Although, the human cost and the burden created by the civil war against the Whites was tremendous.

You're an idiot.

How dare you! Have more compassion for the mentally-ill.

[LeftSideDown]

An immediate result of the creation of the USSR was a strong increase in political rights. Church and State were separated, meaning marriage was no longer a religious ceremony. This made it easier for women to divorce. Their property was also considered their own and not their husbands.
Women were also able to vote and hold government positions.

And laws against homosexuality, under Lenin, were removed.

Economically, there was an addition of free health care and education.

Although, the human cost and the burden created by the civil war against the Whites was tremendous.



How dare you! Have more compassion for the mentally-ill.

I would rather not have healthcare then have the "free healthcare" offered by Russia:

Moreover, the filth, odors, cats roaming the halls, drunken medical personnel, and absence of soap and cleaning supplies added to an overall impression of hopelessness and frustration that paralyzed the system. According to official Russian estimates, 78 percent of all AIDS victims in Russia contracted the virus through dirty needles or HIV-tainted blood in the state-run hospitals.

Irresponsibility, expressed by the popular Russian saying "They pretend they are paying us and we pretend we are working," resulted in appalling quality of service, widespread corruption, and extensive loss of life. My friend, a famous neurosurgeon in today's Russia, received a monthly salary of 150 rubles — one third of the average bus driver's salary.

In order to receive minimal attention by doctors and nursing personnel, patients had to pay bribes. I even witnessed a case of a "nonpaying" patient who died trying to reach a lavatory at the end of the long corridor after brain surgery. Anesthesia was usually "not available" for abortions or minor ear, nose, throat, and skin surgeries. This was used as a means of extortion by unscrupulous medical bureaucrats.

To improve the statistics concerning the numbers of people dying within the system, patients were routinely shoved out the door before taking their last breath.

Not surprisingly, government bureaucrats and Communist Party officials, as early as 1921 (three years after Lenin's socialization of medicine), realized that the egalitarian system of healthcare was good only for their personal interest as providers, managers, and rationers — but not as private users of the system.

So, as in all countries with socialized medicine, a two-tier system was created: one for the "gray masses" and the other, with a completely different level of service, for the bureaucrats and their intellectual servants. In the USSR, it was often the case that while workers and peasants were dying in the state hospitals, the medicine and equipment that could save their lives was sitting unused in the nomenklatura system.

At the end of the socialist experiment, the official infant-mortality rate in Russia was more than 2.5 times as high as in the United States and more than five times that of Japan. The rate of 24.5 deaths per 1,000 live births was questioned recently by several deputies to the Russian Parliament, who claim that it is seven times higher than in the United States. This would make the Russian death rate 55 compared to the US rate of 8.1 per 1,000 live births.

Even today, according to the State Statistics Committee, the average life expectancy for Russian men is less than 59 years — 58 years and 11 months — while that for Russian women is 72 years. The combined figure is 65 years and three months.[1] By comparison, the average life span for men in the United States is 73 years and for women 79 years. In the United States, life expectancy at birth for the total population has reached an all-time American high of 77.5 years, up from 49.2 years just a century ago. The Russian life expectancy at birth is 12 years lower.[2]

After seventy years of socialism, 57 percent of all Russian hospitals did not have running hot water, and 36 percent of hospitals located in rural areas of Russia did not have water or sewage at all. Isn't it amazing that socialist government, while developing space exploration and sophisticated weapons, would completely ignore the basic human needs of its citizens?

But yeah, you were saying?

From the article: "What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us"

[bailey_187]

[FONT=Verdana]The Russian revolution resulted in massive gains for the peasentry and working class of Russia and the other Soviet Republics.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]The census of 1959 reported that the USSR population had risen to 209million of which 75 million had been born since 1940, implying 209-75=134 million of these living in 1959 had been in existence before 1940. Combining the early 1939 Soviet population of 168 million with 24 million new soviet citizens (due to the regaining of land in '39) implies a population of 192 million at the end of 1939 (1). Given the estimates of 20million Soviet deaths in WW2, there are a total of 192-20-134=38 million deaths of people who could have died unrelated to the Nazis. This number of deaths, divided of the 20 year interval of 1939 to 1959, 38/20= 1.9 million per year, or under 1% of the population annually. Such an annuall death rate is low compared to the 3% annuall death rate under the Tsar in 1913 (2), less than the 1.9% death rate in 1928 before industrialisation(3), nearly the same of 1.1% in the last year of Socialism, and less than the 1.6% death rate under Yeltsin in the 90s[/FONT][FONT=Verdana]

(1) [/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Chalk and Jonaasohn – The History and Sociology of Genocide
(2) [/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Wheatcroft - Soviet Studies 42 (1990) pg: 355-367
(3) [/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Murphy – The Triumph of Evil [/FONT]

[#FF0000]

But yeah, you were saying?

It sounds like what you quoted is about the USSR after Kruschev was put in power and thoroughly gutted the planning bureau, so uh.

[LeftSideDown]

It sounds like what you quoted is about the USSR after Kruschev was put in power and thoroughly gutted the planning bureau, so uh.

After seventy years of socialism, 57 percent of all Russian hospitals did not have running hot water, and 36 percent of hospitals located in rural areas of Russia did not have water or sewage at all. Isn't it amazing that socialist government, while developing space exploration and sophisticated weapons, would completely ignore the basic human needs of its citizens?

Oh Kruschev went through and took away all these things from the hospitals when he gutted the planning bureau... riiiight.

[#FF0000]

After seventy years of socialism

More like 40, depending on when the statistics were taken, but...

57 percent of all Russian hospitals did not have running hot water, and 36 percent of hospitals located in rural areas of Russia did not have water or sewage at all.

I still agree that those conditions are absolutely appalling. Keep in mind, though, you're talking about a country that was basically a century behind the rest of the rest of the world before the revolution, and they did advance by leaps and bounds in other ways. I could ask how great would the hospitals be if the Bolsheviks DIDN'T rise to power, but that's all conjecture anyway, so.

Isn't it amazing that socialist government, while developing space exploration and sophisticated weapons, would completely ignore the basic human needs of its citizens?

Being realistic, any socialist country in the position the USSR was in is going to have to find a balance between providing a good quality of life and being able to defend itself, which is real hard when the entire western hemisphere is doing its damnedest to keep your massive, half-rural, and industrially weaker socialist experiment isolated and outgunned.

Tons of things ought to have been done differently up until that point in the USSR, but at that point in time, I can understand why they'd take the arms race seriously.

[Nolan]

Yes, it's silly to rail against the USSR for that. Before, there was no healthcare whatsoever. And I'm sure it had a lot to do with the fucking ridiculous military and space spending that the Soviets did.

The fact remains that the average person lived longer in a socialist country than in a capitalist country.

As for Russia, the life expectancy has dropped like a rock since the end of socialism, and infant mortality, domestic violence, etc. has gone through the roof. LeftSideDown, that's a nice cherrypicker there. Half the time it talks about AFTER socialism. This stuff happens in the US on a regular basis. It only occasionally gets on the news. Anyways, could you provide a date?

PS, don't tell me you've never seen a cockroach at your friendly local hospital. You should come to Holzer Hospital here in Ohio. HA. Pests, garbage on the floor, bad care, and paying with the arm you just got reattached are the norm here. People with money go to Charleston or Columbus.

[Barry Lyndon]

Yeah with regards to the health care system, it is important to recognize the incredibly backward conditions the Soviet Union was building itself out of. In Russia under the czars, it is estimated one out of every three babies died before their first birthday, due to disease, hunger, and/or cold. The Soviet health care system succeeded in reducing the infant mortality to 24 out of every 1,000 live births. By that estimate alone the Russian Revolution saved millions of lives.

The destruction of that system led to Russia's average life expectancy to fall from 68 to 58 in five years(1991-96), putting Russia on the level of countries like Ghana.

The article is classic libretarian schlock put out to throw dirt on Obama's health care plan by distorting socialist health care. Iv'e read the article, and if you read it carefully it describes these hospitals in the 1990's AFTER the USSR collapsed.

Of course, the living conditions in the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, and Cuba today were/are not easy compared to life in the capitalist countries, but they are a far cry from the utter misery, extreme poverty, starvation, and filth that abounds in the Third World . Notice how apologists for capitalism will only compare the socialist countries to advanced capitalist countries which have grown rich off the colonization of the rest of the world. They won't point to the "free-market" hellholes that sustain capitalist prosperity such as Haiti, Indonesia, Guatemala, Nigeria, Thailand, Mexico, etc. etc. etc.

[#FF0000]

The article is classic libretarian schlock put out to throw dirt on Obama's health care plan by distorting socialist health care. Iv'e read the article, and if you read it carefully it describes these hospitals in the 1990's AFTER the USSR collapsed.

Apparently I'm some kind of idiot who thinks AIDS existed in the 50's for some reason. Guess that's what I get for responding to something about an article I glanced over three days before.

[Drace]

After seventy years of socialism, 57 percent of all Russian hospitals did not have running hot water, and 36 percent of hospitals located in rural areas of Russia did not have water or sewage at all. Isn't it amazing that socialist government, while developing space exploration and sophisticated weapons, would completely ignore the basic human needs of its citizens?

My parents lived there. In fact, the whole of my family did, and they will tell you thats complete bullshit.

But hey, the life expectancy doubling by the USSR's end speaks for itself.

I read the article. Apperently it comes from the Mises Institute.
http://mises.org/daily/3650

In the depths of the socialist experiment, healthcare institutions in Russia were at least a hundred years behind the average US level.

The United State's health care system was pretty much non-existent in the 19th century. Also considering Russia was at least a 100 years back in overall development even during the start of the 20th century, this makes sense.

According to official Russian estimates, 78 percent of all AIDS victims in Russia contracted the virus through dirty needles or HIV-tainted blood in the state-run hospitals.

The source for this isn't mentioned in the footnotes. According to my sources, AIDS/HIV was virtually non-existent during the Soviet era. The new burst of HIV in Russia (now around 400,000 infected) occurred during after the collapse, due to increase in drug use. There have been other several negative down turns. Mortality has increased (60% since 1991), and homelessness and alcoholism have tripled. Birth rate also dropped rapidly, from 1.89 at the end of the collapse to a 1.16 in 1999.

Having said that, I should make it clear that the United States has one of the highest rates of the industrialized world only because it counts all dead infants, including premature babies, which is where most of the fatalities occur.

I don't know how much infant mortality tells us, but the Soviet Union actually passed the United States in terms of health care all the way up to the 60s.

[tradeunionsupporter]

good answers

[LeftSideDown]

The United State's health care system was pretty much non-existent in the 19th century. Also considering Russia was at least a 100 years back in overall development even during the start of the 20th century, this makes sense.

Source on this? Because I've read numerous articles about how the problem with healthcare in the early 1900's was that it was too cheap. Don't worry government fixed it with its magic wand!

[Nolan]

Don't worry government fixed it with its magic wand!

Because when the fairies can't do the job you need wizards.

[LeftSideDown]

Because when the fairies can't do the job you need wizards.

Exactly.