Russia- 2/12/09

• Soviet Union becomes a dictatorship under Stalin's single-party govt.
• Nobody challenged Stalin in fear of their lives
• Control Economy- Central economic plannin, didn't use market forces
• When Stalin died, he was remembered as a war hero for leading Russia during WWII
• Nikita Khrushchev, 1955-1964
• DeStalinization- Khrushchev's plan to move away from many of Stalin's ideas, such as setting up an Oligarchy (a small group of leaders will control the country as opposed to one)
• The oligarchy filled the politburo- the top people of the communist party that made important decisions
• They also revised the job selection system by using Nomenklatura
• What the Nomenklatura did was: it identified top jobs and had the communist party leaders look t hrough the rest of the party to write a list of reliable people. When an important job slot opened up, they would pick a name off of the list, and that person would now occupy said job.
• Problem: Many didn't know how to do several of these jobs. Leads to inefficient Command Economy
• However, it did allo the top members of the communist party to maintain control, since they decided who'll work for them
• Khrushchev, under his DeStalinization idea, gave a secret speech to the Communist Party that criticizes Stalin, calling him an imbecile
• Many supporters of Stalin were angered at this remark, and b/c the Cuban Missle Crisis was occurring at the same time, Khrushchev's popularity was low.
• In 1964, Lenod Breshnev takes control of the USSR
• He slows down Destalinization and tightens censorship
• Tacit Social Contract- Guaranteed that everyone had a job, there were fair working environments, low prices for goods, everyone would have housing and transportation, social services, health care, and less government involvement in lives.
• however, there were several problems, such as that it led to alcoholism, too many workers, etc.
• The Soviet leadership gets older and less effective. Breshnev becomes cenile and incompetent in his old age
• When he dies, his 2 successors both die within a year b/c they're both so old
• B/c of the declining quality of leadership, consumer goods become mediocre
• People became aware of Western Lifestyles. Newspapers were censored by govt and Soviet citizens weren't able to travel outside of the country
• Environmental pollution was an increasing problem
• In the 1970's, the Soviets finally realize how behind they are in life and technology and how bad their lives are compared to the Western World.