<P> In the period of rapid industrialization and mass collectivization preceding World War II, Soviet employment figures experienced exponential growth . 3.9 million jobs per annum were expected by 1923, but the number actually climbed to an astounding 6.4 million . By 1937, the number rose yet again, to about 7.9 million . Finally, in 1940 it reached 8.3 million . Between 1926 and 1930, the urban population increased by 30 million . Unemployment had been a problem in late Imperial Russia and even under the NEP, but it ceased being a major factor after the implementation of Stalin's massive industrialization program . The sharp mobilization of resources used in order to industrialize the heretofore agrarian society created a massive need for labor; unemployment virtually dropped to zero . Wage setting by Soviet planners also contributed to the sharp decrease in unemployment, which dropped in real terms by 50% from 1928 to 1940 . With wages artificially depressed, the state could afford to employ far more workers than would be financially viable in a market economy . Several ambitious extraction projects were begun that endeavored to supply raw materials for both military hardware and consumer goods . </P> <P> The Moscow and Gorky automobile plants produced automobiles for the public--despite few Soviet citizens affording to buy a car--and the expansion of steel production and other industrial materials made the manufacture of a greater number of cars possible . Car and truck production, for example, reached 200,000 in 1931 . </P> <P> The Soviet leadership believed that industrial workers needed to be educated in order to be competitive and so embarked on a program contemporaneous with industrialization to greatly increase the number of schools and the general quality of education . In 1927, 7.9 million students attended 118,558 schools . By 1933, the number rose to 9.7 million students in 166,275 schools . In addition, 900 specialist departments and 566 institutions were built and fully operational by 1933 . Literacy rates increased substantially as a result, especially in the Central Asian republics . </P> <P> The Soviet people also benefited from a type of social liberalization . Women were to be given the same education as men and, at least legally speaking, obtained the same rights as men in the workplace . Although in practice these goals were not reached, the efforts to achieve them and the statement of theoretical equality led to a general improvement in the socio - economic status of women . Stalinist development also contributed to advances in health care, which marked a massive improvement over the Imperial era . Stalin's policies granted the Soviet people access to free health care and education . Widespread immunization programs created the first generation free from the fear of typhus and cholera . The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record - low numbers and infant mortality rates were substantially reduced, resulting in the life expectancy for both men and women to increase by over 20 years by the mid-to - late 1950s . Many of the more extreme social and political ideas that were fashionable in the 1920s such as anarchism, internationalism, and the belief that the nuclear family was a bourgeois concept, were abandoned . Schools began to teach a more nationalistic course with emphasis on Russian history and leaders, though Marxist underpinnings necessarily remained . Stalin also began to create a Lenin cult . During the 1930s, Soviet society assumed the basic form it would maintain until its collapse in 1991 . </P>

In the soviet union greater equality and reduced poverty came at the cost of