The Russian Revolution led to extremely difficult times for Russian citizens because of the social, economic and cultural implications that the Communist regime led. Many have read about the scars that the Stalin and Lenin regime left. Stalin’s drastic economic turn led to the Russian people making massive economic, social sacrifices and cultural sacrifices that many of us now take for granted.
Before the Communist movement within Russia occurred the standard of living was very comfortable. However, when Stalin came into power much of the economy was “not up to his standard” and he wanted Russia to become the “Soviet America, modernizing the USSR as quickly as he could” (152, Corhin, Fiehn). Stalin wanted this for many reasons, however; six stood out: To increase military strength, to achieve self-sufficiency, to increase grain supplies, to move towards a socialist society, to establish his credential and to improve the standard of living (152-153, Corhin, Fiehn) . All of Stalin’s ideologies were seen necessities since he knew that a non-industrialized countries were weak, he did not want the USSR to seem weak. Through the industrialization of Russia, they would not have to depend of the west as heavily (152, Corhin, Fiehn). This is a very smart move since the USSR has very conflicting views to
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Culturally Russia changed drastically too with major changes in literature education and religion. Education received a major overhaul, Shulgin (the leader of the educational institute) believed that children were not socially useful by studying math and English (290). They would only be useful if they were “gathering firewood, working in a factory, teaching peasants to read or distributing anti-religious literature” (290). Fortunately this did not last long, but it again shows a major cultural shock that negatively affected the Russian