Restructuring Russian Society

Let the fragile green breast of Siberia be dressed in the cement armor of cities, armed with the stone muzzles of factory chimneys, and girded with the iron belts of railroads. Let the taiga be burned and felled; let the steppes be trampled. Only in cement and iron can the fraternal union of all peoples, the iron brotherhood of man, be forged (cited by Pearce, 1994, 36).

Russia at the time of the Revolution was a huge but economically backward country, and the new Communist regime sought ways to expand the economy and to do so as quickly as possible. Land use for this regime meant exploiting resources as fully and quickly as possible, including human resources. Urban land use meant the development of industry in the cities. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the new Russia has had to address a variety of problems left behind by the former regime, problems that have become acute from neglect, failed policies, excessive secrecy, and poor planning.

Russian society is being restructured, along with the dissolution of the union of the various Russian republics. The seeds of this new revolution can be found in the society of the Soviet Union over its history, a society that was tightly controlled by a growing and complex bureaucracy which intruded into every facet of life. The new revolution has attacked

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creation of collective farms (Shoemaker, 1998, 37-38). Collectivized agriculture would become an important part of every Communist country and regime, and it would be shaped to serve the needs of the economy developing in the urban centers. Right after the Revolution, the Communists took over the estates formerly owned by the Imperial family, organizing them into state farms called sovkhozy. These units were the owned and operated by the state and were operated like "factories in the field," with peasants being given daily wages. The intent was to turn the peasants into proletariat and to make hired agricultural laborers part of the working class. The sovkhozy would continue to represent the communist ideal for the organization of the countryside until the era of Gorbachev. However, such a collective is expensive to run because of the need to pay year-round wages. Because of this, a second type of farm organization was developed, the kolkhoz, in theory a cooperative organization formed on a voluntary basis by a group of peasants. In this farm, land, livestock, and farm machinery are pooled an then become the property of the kolkhoz. The unit is then farmed collectively by the peasants in the group, who also share all inc
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Revolution Communists, Russia What's, War II, Five Plans, Russia United, United Pearce, St Petersburg, Petersburg Batalden, Five-Year Plan, soviet union, shoemaker 1998, moscow st petersburg, moscow st, urban land, st petersburg, foreign investment, market economy, soviet society, organized crime, leitzel 1995, shoemaker 1998 38, leitzel 1995 27, speculators organized crime, collective farm markets,
Approximate Word count = 2840
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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