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Date Posted: 11:25:27 05/31/03 Sat
Author: Mr John D Clare
Subject: Quality of Life in Russia during the Civil War
In reply to: 's message, "Stalin" on 04:46:05 05/31/03 Sat

Hi! This is a very obscure and you can ignore it - it sounds like part of a sourcework question, and in the exam would have had a source to go with it.

The context of the actual quote was a speech made by Stalin in 1933 at the 'THE FIRST ALL-UNION CONGRESS OF COLLECTIVE-FARM SHOCK BRIGADERS' The shock brigades were groups of energetic and enthusiastic Communists who offered their services free of charge to the State and who 'encouraged' other Russians to adopt the new ways. At the conference, 1,513 shock brigaders heard Stalin give a speech telling them to go and make the collectives work. You can read the whole speech if you want at <a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://www.marx2mao.org/Stalin/CFSB33.html">http://www.marx2mao.org/Stalin/CFSB33.html</a>

The speech was as you would expect. Stalin rehearsed how good collectivisation was, and told the delegates to attack the kulaks who wanted it to fail. At one point, he admitted 'It is said that the collective-farm path is the right path, but a difficult one.' But, he told the delegates (who, you remember, were all enthusiastic collectivisers):

'Of course, there are difficulties on this path. A good life cannot be obtained with out effort... Compared with the difficulties which the workers experienced 10-15 years ago, your present difficulties, comrade collective farmers, seem mere child's play...

Do you know what these achievements cost the workers of Leningrad and Moscow, what privations they had to endure in order finally to attain these achievements? I could relate to you some facts from the life of the workers in 1918, when for whole weeks not a piece of bread, let alone meat or other food, was distributed to the workers. The best times were considered to be the days on which we were able to distribute to the workers in Leningrad and Moscow one-eighth of a pound of black bread each, and even that was half bran. And that lasted not merely a month or six months, but for two whole years. But the workers bore it and did not lose heart; for they knew that better times would come and that they would achieve decisive successes. Well -- you see that the workers were not mistaken. Just compare your difficulties and privations with the difficulties and privations which the workers have endured, and you will see that they are not even worth talking about seriously.'

What Stalin was doing was reminding the shock brigaders of the sacrifice that Communist revolutionaries had made in the past, to get them to take the fight into the countryside to collectivise the farms.


Actually, however, all this is fairly irrelevant to the question you have found! In the question you have found the examiners seem to be using this quote just as a hook to set a question on life during the civil war.

The answer to the first part of the question would be just an extraction from the source - the 'best times' were those when they could get any food AT ALL!! For the answer to the second half of the question, the examiners wanted you to write about the problems (the famine and shortages) facing Russians during the civil war (for which see
<a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://www.johndclare.net/Russ7.htm">http://www.johndclare.net/Russ7.htm</a>
and especially
<a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://www.marxists.org/history/archive/ransome/works/crisis/ch01.htm)">http://www.marxists.org/history/archive/ransome/works/crisis/ch01.htm)</a>

If you look in Archive 1, you will see that I have given you lots of advice about how to deal with a 'what was life like' question.

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