CG Board Class 10 Social Science Chapter 8 Solutions: Between the Two World Wars – The Russian Revolution and the Great Depression (दो विश्व युद्धों के बीच – रूसी क्रांति और महामंदी) (2026-27)

The First World War resulted in the total collapse and dismantling of autocratic empires across Europe and Asia. The Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman (Turkish) empires were overthrown. Democratic revolutions led to the establishment of the Weimar Republic in Germany and a secular democratic republic in Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. However, in Russia, the democratic interim government failed, giving way to a communist state. In Germany, democratic institutions were later subverted by Hitler due to economic chaos from the Versailles Treaty and the Great Depression.

Universal franchise gives all adult citizens – regardless of gender, wealth, religion, or social status – the right to vote and choose their representatives. It embodies the core democratic principle of political equality, ensures government accountability to the entire populace, and prevents power from remaining concentrated in the hands of wealthy landowners or elites.

In India, the rule of kings, emperors, and princely states came to an end following Indian Independence in 1947 through the political integration led by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and formally with the adoption of the Indian Constitution on January 26, 1950, which established a sovereign democratic republic.

Similarities:** Both slaves and serfs lacked personal freedom, could not change occupations or leave their location without permission, and were subjected to physical exploitation by masters or landlords.

• Differences: Slaves were treated as chattel property owned entirely by individuals. Serfs were tied to the land itself; if a landlord sold his land, the serfs were transferred along with the estate to the new owner, but they maintained basic family units and farmed designated plots.

The 1861 land reform legally freed serfs from bondage, but it primarily benefited the noble landowners. Landowners retained ownership of the most fertile lands and charged exorbitant prices for the infertile plots given to peasants. The government paid the landlords via loans that peasants had to repay in heavy installments, straddling peasant families with multi-generational debt.

Similarities:** Both countries began rapid industrialization relatively late (after 1850 in Germany, 1880s in Russia) under strong state leadership and focused heavily on heavy industries (steel, railways, armaments).

• Differences: In Germany, a strong domestic capitalist middle class invested alongside the state. In Russia, industrialization was driven by the autocratic Czarist regime using foreign capital, preventing the rise of an independent middle class.

A weak middle class severely impairs democratic stability. Since the middle class typically advocates for constitutional governance, rule of law, individual freedoms, and multi-party democracy, its absence allows autocratic rulers, feudal lords, or military dictators to suppress public rights without balanced political opposition.

Workers’ organizations are significantly more effective in big factories. Huge factories in Russia employed thousands of workers under one roof, enabling rapid communication, collective solidarity, strong unionization, and massive coordinated strikes that could disrupt key industries. Small, scattered workshops fragment worker strength.

Because Russian industrial workers were mostly first-generation migrants from rural peasant households, they maintained direct family ties with villages. They were deeply aware of rural debt and land hunger, allowing workers and peasants to forge a unified revolutionary front demanding both factory rights and agricultural land redistribution.

(Local Example: Migrant factory workers in Chhattisgarh towns sending money to rural homes and returning during harvest season).

The women in Figure 8.4 look happy because they were bravely taking to the streets on International Women’s Day to demand ‘Bread and Peace’, sensing that their collective protest was dismantling the oppressive Czarist regime and ending wartime starvation.

No, the 1905 Duma was not genuinely democratic. Elections were conducted through a complex indirect process manipulated to ensure a majority for wealthy landowners. Furthermore, Czar Nicholas II retained veto power to reject any Duma proposal and could dissolve or convene it at his sole discretion.

The workers in Figures 8.5 and 8.6 appear deeply engrossed, attentive, and actively involved in political discussions. Their heightened political consciousness and militancy created an intense revolutionary climate that dismantled autocratic institutions and forced political leaders to submit to direct public democracy.

Very few women are visible in Figures 8.5 and 8.6. A larger representation of women would have placed issues like food security, child welfare, equal wages, and female voting rights at the very forefront of the Soviet revolution much earlier.

Assembly (Duma/Parliament):** A formal body elected through geographic constituencies for fixed terms, often dominated by professional politicians or elite classes.

• Soviet: A council of directly elected workers’, soldiers’, or peasants’ delegates operating at the workplace or unit level. Soviet delegates could be recalled immediately by voters if they failed to voice popular demands.

The three main demands were Peace, Land, and Food.

1. Peace: Fully realized in March 1918 when Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and withdrew from World War I.
2. Land: Realized through Lenin’s Decree on Land, which nationalized landlord estates and redistributed them among peasant committees.
3. Food: Partially realized; urban rationing was established, but civil war and foreign intervention (1918-1922) disrupted grain supplies.

Britain:** Mobilized capital primarily through commercial trade profits and colonial exploitation/plunder across Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

• Alternative Sources: Internal capital accumulation through domestic savings, state taxation, nationalized enterprise profits, or foreign investment loans (as done by Russia).

Large-scale farming facilitates the deployment of heavy machinery (tractors, harvesters) and modern irrigation.

• Problems of Small Farming: Small, fragmented plots make tractor movement uneconomical, individual small farmers lack capital to buy modern equipment, and irrigation channels cannot be efficiently constructed across tiny plots.

Big farmers (Kulaks) opposed collectivisation because merging private land holdings into state-managed collective farms destroyed their private property rights, stripped them of hired farm labor, and ended their market profits.

Yes, collectivisation can be achieved peacefully through voluntary agricultural cooperatives, state subsidies, educational demonstrations showing higher crop yields, and financial incentives rather than forced state repression.

To protect the poor, key systems include

1. Setting up an efficient Public Distribution System (PDS) for subsidized food grains.
2. Guaranteeing minimum wage employment schemes (like MGNREGA).
3. Establishing free government primary schools and healthcare clinics.
4. Providing social security pensions for the elderly, disabled, and destitute.

Yes, a multi-party system is essential for genuine democracy. Multiple parties offer voters real policy choices, allow constructive opposition to check government tyranny, and represent diverse socio-economic groups. Single-party systems turn into rigid dictatorships.

Without freedom of expression, democracy ceases to exist. Government corruption goes unchecked, grievances remain unaddressed, civil liberties are crushed, and state policies become oppressive without fear of public dissent.

No, arresting or executing peaceful critics is completely unethical and illegal in a democracy. Constructive criticism is the lifeblood of democratic governance. Executing dissenters was a dark feature of Stalinist repression in Soviet Russia.

The purchasing power of common people is determined by their real income levels, prevailing market prices of essential commodities, employment stability, and state welfare support. Higher wages and stable prices increase purchasing power.

Economic Impact:** Higher wages boost workers’ purchasing power, raising consumer demand for market goods and stimulating overall economic growth.

• Factory Owners’ Logic: Factory owners reduce wages to minimize production costs and maximize individual short-term capital profits.

During a recession, mass urban unemployment reduces the demand for food and agricultural raw materials. Agricultural prices drop drastically (by over 30%), forcing farmers to sell crops below production costs, rendering them insolvent and driving them into debt and landlessness.

As the world’s largest exporter, creditor, and investor, America stopped international loans, curtailed imports, and demanded loan repayments. This triggered bank insolvencies across Europe, a 60% collapse in global trade, and worldwide unemployment.

Germany was hit hardest because its post-WWI economic recovery relied entirely on short-term American bank loans to pay heavy Versailles war reparations. When America abruptly withdrew its capital, German industries collapsed, leaving 44% of German workers unemployed.

Yes; a nation can adopt a balanced economic model: building strong domestic industrial and agricultural self-reliance (as Soviet Russia did through state planning) while regulating external trade through tariffs and state welfare buffers to protect local markets.

Yes, women are clearly visible marching alongside male workers in the protest procession shown in Figure 8.13, demanding employment or state unemployment relief.

According to economist John Keynes, state investment in public works (roads, dams, infrastructure) directly creates job opportunities. Employed workers receive wages, giving them purchasing power to buy goods, which revives industrial production and market demand.

Yes, major welfare initiatives in India and Chhattisgarh include

1. PDS (Ration Scheme): Highly subsidized rice/grains for family food security.
2. MGNREGA: Guaranteed 100 days of rural wage employment.
3. Social Pensions: Monthly state financial aid for senior citizens, widows, and persons with disabilities.

No, this view is incorrect. Welfare programs provide a essential basic safety net (health, education, food security) that empowers impoverished citizens, enabling them to gain skills and participate productively in the national economy rather than drowning in poverty.

No, waging war is an ethically disastrous and destructive method to solve economic recession. While armament production briefly creates factory jobs, it destroys human capital, ruins national infrastructure, and leads to eventual economic collapse.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk** established democracy and secularism in Turkey.

Czar Alexander II issued a proclamation ending serfdom in Russia in the year 1861.

The Czarist Russian Government led and controlled the industrialisation of Russia by inviting foreign investors.

The Duma established after 1905 represented the interests of the wealthy landowner and elite classes.

The three main demands were Peace (withdrawal from World War I), Food/Bread (end to starvation), and Land (redistribution of landlord estates to cultivators).

Lenin’s Decree on Land nationalized all landlord estates without compensation and authorized village peasant committees to redistribute the land among cultivator families.

The evolution of Russian peasants progressed through three distinct phases

1. 1861 to 1917: Legally freed from serfdom in 1861, but peasants were burdened with exorbitant debt to pay landlords for barren plots, leaving them in poverty.
2. 1917 Land Redistribution: Following the October Revolution, Lenin’s Decree on Land abolished landlordism, giving land directly to peasant families.
3. 1928 to 1940 (Stalinist Collectivization): Private farming was ended as small holdings were forcibly merged into huge state collective farms (Kolkhoz) using modern machinery. Despite severe initial famines and repression of Kulaks, agricultural productivity rose substantially after 1937.

The Duma failed as a democratic institution due to structural Czarist controls

1. Manipulated Elections: The election system was designed to ensure a permanent majority for non-democratic wealthy landlords.
2. Lack of Sovereign Power: Czar Nicholas II possessed autocratic veto authority to dismiss Duma proposals and convene or dissolve the assembly at will.
3. Provisional Government’s Failures (1917): The post-February 1917 interim Duma government refused to implement land reforms, continued the unpopular war, and delayed constitutional elections, destroying public faith in parliamentary democracy.

Immediately after seizing power in October 1917, Lenin’s government executed the following steps

1. Decree on Peace: Called for an immediate armistice and withdrawal from World War I.
2. Decree on Land: Abolished private landlord property and redistributed agricultural lands among peasants.
3. Workers’ Control of Factories: Handed factory management to elected Workers’ Soviets and nationalized banks/industries.
4. National Self-Determination: Granted full independence to annexed non-Russian nations (Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine).

Because foreign capitalist nations refused to extend loans to communist Russia, capital was mobilized entirely from internal domestic resources

1. Nationalization: All private property, factories, mines, and banks were taken over by the state.
2. Domestic Savings & Worker Wage Sacrifices: The state reduced factory worker wages and mobilized citizen savings into heavy state investment.
3. Agricultural Taxation: Heavy grain taxes were levied on peasants to finance state-led heavy industries (iron, steel, electricity) under the Five-Year Plans.

1. 1905 to Feb 1917: Czarist autocracy created a controlled Duma without real popular democratic rights.
2. Feb to Oct 1917: February Revolution established worker-soldier Soviets alongside a bourgeois Provisional Government, introducing temporary civil rights.
3. Post-Oct 1917: October Revolution established Soviet democracy representing workers and peasants.
4. Stalinist Era (1928-1940): While economic rights (education, housing, employment, gender equality) were completely guaranteed, political democracy narrowed into a repressive single-party dictatorship where dissent was forbidden.

Reasons for Price Decline:** Overproduction of goods in capitalist factories coincided with extremely low purchasing power among common workers and farmers. Surplus unsold goods accumulated in warehouses, forcing prices to plunge by 32%.

• Impact on Industries: Declining prices ruined industrial profitability. Factory owners drastically cut back production, resulting in widespread business bankruptcies and massive labor layoffs (27% unemployment in USA, 44% in Germany).

Both groups suffered catastrophically, but in different forms

• Peasants: Agricultural prices collapsed by over 30%. Farmers could not cover crop production costs or service bank loans, losing their farmland to bank foreclosures and being reduced to destitution.
• Workers: Experienced mass industrial wage cuts, factory lockouts, and severe unemployment (over 25-40%), forcing families to queue in breadlines and rely on charity soup kitchens.

The 1929 American crisis enveloped the entire world because

1. USA was the global economy’s largest exporter, manufacturer, and second-largest importer.
2. America was the primary financial lender and investor rebuilding post-WWI Europe.
3. When American banks failed, credit to Germany and Europe was halted, international trade plummeted by 60%, and global raw material purchases collapsed.

To survive the Great Depression and prevent socialist revolutions, Britain and the USA abandoned Laissez-faire capitalism and established the Welfare State

1. Public Investment (Keynesian Policy): States invested heavily in public works construction to generate employment and boost consumer purchasing power.
2. Roosevelt’s New Deal (USA): Introduced social security schemes including old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and financial support for needy children/handicapped.
3. Guaranteed Basic Needs: State assumed direct responsibility for providing citizens with food, housing, healthcare, and education funded via progressive taxation.