Flowers were back in favor, along with the fox trot and tango, and parks for culture and recreation were opened. A carnival was held for the people of socialism's capital in 1935, at Moscow's new Central Park of Culture, and on Red Square in July of that year a parade of gymnasts was organized. It was strikingly similar to the mammoth spectacles in Nazi Germany, with the difference that instead of storm troopers marching to military strains, the marchers in Moscow were athletes and smiling children. The parade was led by children, 5,000 Pioneers carrying slogans fashioned of fresh flowers: "Greetings to Comrade Stalin, the Pioneers' best friend." 'Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy life" fluttered above a column of Pioneers from the Dzerzhinsky District.12 A devoted Maxim Gorky responded to the athletes' parade: "Long live Joseph Stalin," he wrote, "a man of enormous heart and mind, a man whom yesterday our young people thanked so touchingly for their 'joyful youth'!"13 Since 1935 Stalin had been children's best friend. Newspapers published a photograph of the most humane of men with his daughter Svetlana, then with other little girls giving him flowers. Especially popular (the poster circulated in the millions) was a photograph of Stalin with a dark-eyed, high-cheekboned little girl named Gelya Markizova, taken in January 27, 1936, in the Kremlin at a "reception for the workers of the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR." The poster continued to give pleasure to Soviet citizens for a long time, even though Gelya's father was shot as an "enemy of the people" and her mother was arrested and later committed suicide.
Since January 1, 1935, food ration cards had been rescinded, and the statistics on the fulfillment of the Second Five-Year Plan, which began in 1933, had stirred hopes for a better life. On August 30, 1935, an ordinary, nonparty Soviet miner, Aleksei Stakhanov, mined 102 tons of coal, instead of the usual 7, in a single shift. Stakhanov's "spontaneous initiative" was taken up by other miners and spread to other industries. In December the Central Committee approved the workers' initiative, and production quotas were increased by anywhere from 15 to 50 percent throughout industry. The Soviet press launched a furious campaign against "pseudo-specialists," who were trying to hold back the Stakhanovite movement with arguments about "scientifically based" production quotas. Cartoons showed giant workers sweeping the specialists aside.
In real life, the workers understood that the record-breaking achievements were falsified, that entire work teams had prepared the site for Stakhanov's feat of labor, that the whole purpose was to increase production quotas. They responded by beating up Stakhanovites and killing some. These actions were denounced as terrorism and punished accordingly. Bernard Shaw reported his conversation with a "shock worker" (through an interpreter, of course) and commented on the man's popularity among his fellow workers. In backward England, Shaw explained, a worker who produced so much would soon be discouraged by his fellow workers, with a brick to the head, but in the Soviet Union things were different.14
In 1935, the eighteenth year of the revolution, the overwhelming majority of the population lived in worse conditions than before the revolution. Strumilin calculated that in 1935 the average monthly consumption of basic agricultural products was 21.8 kilograms of bread, 15.9 kilograms of potatoes, and 4.07 kilograms of milk and dairy products. Strumilin was pleased with these figures and boasted that workers in the Soviet Union were consuming bread in quantities that would "undoubtedly be envied by many workers in fascist countries."15 Of course, the workers in the land of socialism had no way of comparing. How could they find out the actual bread consumption in fascist countries? But they could compare their situation to that of agricultural laborers in the Saratov region of tsarist Russia in 1892, because Lenin had calculated the average annual consumption of cereal products of such workers—419.3 kilograms. Lenin also mentioned that the agricultural laborer ate 13.3 kilograms of bacon yearly. Strumilin said nothing about bacon.16
A 1934 survey of 83,200 kolkhozes in the Russian Republic, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia showed that the collective farmers were paid in kind, on an average yearly basis, 1.30 centners of grain in 1932, 2.33 in 1933, and 2.59 in 1934.17 In old Russia the minimum adequate food intake was considered to be 2.5 centners per person per year. It should be kept in mind that Soviet peasants had to save part of their grain for their animals. After February 1935, when they were given permission to tend their own plots of land around their houses, their situation began to improve. The kolkhoz charter was also modified to allow each household to keep one cow, two calves, one sow with piglets, and ten sheep. At the same time, individual households began to deliver goods to the market.
The end of food rationing did not improve the situation for the workers, however. So-called commercial prices were abolished and new, standardized prices were introduced, but these were considerably higher than the prices workers had paid with ration cards. For example, the price for rationed bread in 1933 had been sixty kopeks per kilogram, the commercial price had been three rubles, but the new, standardized price was one ruble.18 The Russian emigre economist Bazilli estimated that in 1913 the average monthly wage enabled a worker to buy 333 kilograms of rye bread, but only 241 kilograms in 1936. The corresponding figures for butter were 21 and 18; for meat, 53 and 19; for sugar, 83 and 56.19 During the NEP a worker spent about 50 percent of his earnings on food; in 1935, 67.3 percent.20
In late 1936 a French miner, ЮёЬег Legay, went to the Soviet Union as part of a workers' delegation. Determined not to let himself be fooled, he decided to make careful notes, writing down all facts and figures and checking on them directly. These were the prices he recorded for various items: white bread, 1.2 rubles per kilogram; meat, 5—9 rubles; potatoes, 40 kopeks; lard, 18 rubles; men's shoes, 290 rubles; men's boots, 315 rubles; women's shoes, 280 rubles; a man's overcoat, 350 rubles; a child's suit, 288 rubles; a man's shirt, 39—60 rubles. The average worker's wage was 150-200 rubles a month, and pension payments were 25—50 rubles.21 There were twelve paid holidays. Workers had to contribute to a government loan fund the equivalent of from two to four weeks' wages a year. They paid very low rents, but the housing situation was abominable. From 1929 to 1932 the urban population had increased from 28 million to 40 million, whereas living space had increased only 22 million square meters, less than 2 square meters per person. As a rule, workers lived in communal apartments with no or very few amenities.
The Stakhanovites enjoyed substantial privileges. A special decree of the Ail-Union Central Trade Union Council gave Stakhanovites priority in the allocation of union-operated vacation homes and resort areas. In 1935 their earnings varied from 700 to 2,000 rubles a month, and in 1936 they rose to as high as 4,000 22 They were also awarded various decorations, which in effect made them part of the social elite. The Stakhanovites were said to be a new "nobility," a new set of "notables" or "celebrities" (znatnye lyudi). The Soviet vocabulary was soon enriched by other despised words from the prerevolutionary past. In September 1935 new military titles were introduced: lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, marshal. The purpose, Pravda said, was "to heighten further the role, importance, and authority of the command staffs of the Red Army. Even among artists a hierarchy was established, with the invention of the title "people's artist of the USSR." Trotsky wrote in his Bulletin of the Opposition: