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)

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.