The Soviet system introduced drastic changes in the life of the population as well. One of the more important was the broad range of social welfare and public services--free universal medical care, guaranteed employment, old-age pensions, cheap public transportation--which softened the impact of the new social stratification on citizens. Education expanded dramatically, producing a generally well-educated population. On the other hand, state-sponsored terror and lawlessness, reaching its height in the Great Terror of the 1930s but continuing at varying levels of intensity throughout the entire Soviet era, had an enormous and traumatic impact on society. Even at its mildest, in the 1960s to 1980s, it fostered a distrust in interpersonal relations and artificial public behavior that affected all social relationships. Organized religion, which formerly played a central role in both public and private life, was mercilessly attacked and largely disappeared from the East Slavic scene until the 1990s. Adding to the complex social picture was a new problem, the immense environmental damage done by decades of industrial policies indifferent to ecological concerns, and an old one, heavy drinking and alcoholism, which became ever more of a major social problem.

Overall the standard of living declined after 1928 and then began to improve again in the late 1950s, with increases in available food, clothing, consumer goods, and appliances. Even the traditionally wretched housing situation improved, although in the 1980s a fifth of the population still resided in communal lodgings (dormitories or apartments with multifamily shared kitchen and bath). Because of the regime's control over allocation of the scarce consumer goods, the quality of life tended to be much better in the cities than in the countryside and to differ significantly among cities (Moscow had more of everything than other cities, Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg, and republic capitals more than other cities). There is no doubt but that the standard of living improved in Russia, especially from the late 1950s to the 1980s; but whether that offset the terrible losses and traumas inflicted by the regime, or even if living standards were higher than would have occurred under a different kind of regime (they went up, after all, everywhere in Europe during the period from 1918 to the 1980s), remains debatable. The standard of living, in any case, still lagged well behind Western countries (the measurement used by both government and people) and even behind Eastern European bloc countries. Moreover, by the late 1970s there was a growing popular belief that conditions were getting no better, as well as an increasing sense of relative poverty.

Elements both of continuity and of change affected the condition of women in the Soviet era. In 1917, before the Bolshevik Revolution, women received the vote and also entered public life in unprecedented numbers. The Bolsheviks, however, came to power with a vision of a transformed society in which women would become fully equal by becoming fully employed wage earners. Indeed, despite sometimes utopian debates about transformed social and familial relationships, and some social legislation, perhaps the most important impact on women's condition was the massive industrialization and urbanization. The need for workers drew millions of women into factories and other employment, and the need for technical and professional skills opened up educational opportunities. Women entered the professions and managerial ranks in unprecedented numbers. At the same time, however, traditional Russian patriarchal values continued to apply. Women generally held lower-paying jobs, continued to carry the burden of household work and family care alongside full-time employment, had few modern conveniences with which to ease that burden, and suffered especially from the housing and other shortages. Men held most supervisory and higher-ranking positions, even in professions (such as medicine and teaching) and factories that were numerically predominantly female. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that the Soviet regime emphasized the ''proletarian'' and public aspects of life, areas traditionally considered ''masculine,'' whereas the traditional ''female'' spheres of life--family, private life, housing, food and consumer goods--were downgraded and underfunded. . . .

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