>>77172
>>77173
The USSR was in desperate condition at the start however it did not resort to the measures used in the West, and still caught up and exceeded it.
"If we are backward and weak, we may be beaten and enslaved. But if we are powerful, people must beware of us. We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries of the West. We must make up this gap in 10 years. Either we do this or they crush us." - Josef Stalin, First Conference of Workers, 1931
And he did it. In time to be ready to defeat Hitler, whom he saw coming. He did it without forcing the country through the worst horrors of the Industrial Revolution in countries that had gone before. We have forgotten them, they did not. One hundred years into the British Industrial Revolution an Act of parliament was passed to reform working conditions for children, the Factory Act. Children, not adults.
These are its provisions:
- no child workers under nine years of age
- employers must have an age certificate for their child workers
- children of 9-13 years to work no more than nine hours a day
- children of 13-18 years to work no more than 12 hours a day
- children are not to work at night
- two hours schooling each day for children
- four factory inspectors appointed to enforce the law
It took many decades, much longer than the period of basic Soviet industrialization, before this became the norm in England, not an aspiration. Children were worked two days straight, and more. In the mines. In the mills. In the fields and factories. Try to imagine what adults had to do. The first attempt at passing child labour laws in the U.S. was struck down by the Supreme Court. Eventually one was passed in 1938, but basically unenforced, especially in agricultural work. Children in the Soviet Union, from the very beginning, spent their days in school. Family farms, as everywhere, were probably exceptions, but this was the law and it was enforced. There were bureaucratic hoops to jump through to get permission for an exception.
[1] A. Szymanski, On the Uses of Disinformation to Legitimize Revival of the Cold War: Health and the USSR, Science and Society, Winter, 1981.
[2] Corrigan, Philip, Ramsay, Harvie and Sayer, Derek, Bolshevism and the USSR, New Left Review. No. 125. January.February, 1981.
[3,8,9] George. Vic and Manning, Nick, Socialism, Social Welfare and the Soviet Union, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
[4] Gregory, Paul R. and Stuart. Robert C., Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
[5] Sivard, Rush Legar, World Military and Social Expenditures. Leeburg, Virginia: WMSE Publications, 1980.
[6] Mickiewicz, Ruth, Handbook of Soviet Social Science Dam New York: Free Press, 1973.
[7] Central Statistical Board of the USSR, The USSR in Figures for 1978, Moscow Statisika Publishers, 1978.
[10] St. George, George, Our Soviet Sister, New York: Robert B. Luce, 1973