9. The First Five-Year Plan, Women in the Workforce¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 9: The First Five-Year Plan, Women in the Workforce¶
The First Five-Year Plan marked a decisive rupture with the egalitarian promise of the October Revolution, subordinating the liberation of women to the imperatives of breakneck industrialisation. The party bureaucracy declared the ‘Woman Question’ solved, replacing earlier demands for the socialisation of domestic labour with the injunction that women liberate themselves by overfulfilling work quotas while maintaining household duties. This ideological reversal accompanied the crushing of the United Opposition amid fabricated war scares, the expulsion of all oppositionists at the Fifteenth Party Congress, and Trotsky’s deportation. The grain crisis of 1927–28 vindicated warnings about kulak power, prompting Stalin to reverse course and demand immediate collectivisation, the liquidation of the kulaks, and the prioritisation of heavy industry. The Right Opposition under Bukharin was defeated; Bukharin was later executed.
The state’s commitment to rapid industrialisation aligned with its ideological goal of socialising life, as public dining halls, laundries, and bath houses were essential for housing and feeding millions of new workers. The Plan ended NEP-era unemployment, and women welcomed waged work as a path to financial independence, expecting household tasks to be transferred to the public sphere. The Central Committee called for socialised dining by the Plan’s end, aiming to feed half the urban population and 90 per cent of industrial workers in communal halls, with hot school breakfasts for all children and daycare for workers’ children. The Sixteenth Congress (1930) approved universal primary education and raised the school leaving age to 17. However, the Plan’s annual growth target of 30–35 per cent was over-ambitious, leading to imbalances and bottlenecks paid for by lowering real wages, safety standards, and living conditions. The priority method allocated resources to heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods and social services. The Plan was top-down, excluding lower-ranking officials and workers, and introduced ‘one-man-management’ in 1929, enabling managers to exaggerate targets and subvert directives. By the Plan’s end, over 360,000 dining halls served 25 million people, and childcare places per 1,000 working women more than tripled, though facilities were often insufficient and defective. Labour turnover was high, and managers often recorded women as ‘men’ to avoid costs associated with maternity protections.
Worker brigades’ reports found most job restrictions on women were based on prejudice, not evidence. Traditional industries barred women on health grounds, while newer industries employed women in similar roles. A December decree listed jobs primarily for women, followed by an exclusive list; ‘primarily’ and ‘exclusively’ soon became synonymous, shaping lasting gender divisions. The Ministry of Labour pressured colleges to recruit women and enforced equal pay to reduce job-changing. Consequently, Russia today has 36 per cent female engineers versus 12 per cent in the UK and USA. The planned economy’s speed demonstrated its strength, but bureaucratic chaos, lack of democracy, and appalling working conditions caused unnecessary costs and lives lost. Before the First FYP ended, voices argued that weak public services could be compensated by strengthening the family, laying the basis for later pro-family legislation. Domestic labour-saving appliances had zero priority; two-thirds of families in large towns got water from communal taps, had no hot water, and washed clothes by hand, adding two-plus hours of housework daily for women.