Executive summary

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the rule of Stalin in the USSR between the years of 1924 to 1941. The impacts in the economy of Russia instituted during the reign of Stalin falls in the sectors of agriculture and industry. When Stalin took in the USSR in 1924, he made plans to revolutionize the economy of the country with a vision to make it like the industrialized countries. Also in his plan, he put down anyone who was against his government, because he believed this is what will enable his plans to prosper. The paper has analyzed five sources to review the literature concerning the source.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title page………………………………………………………………………………………..1

Executive summary…………………………………………………………………………….2

Table of contents…………….………………………………………………………………….3

Plan of investigation………….….……………………………………………………………..4

Summary of evidence…………………………………………………………………………..4

Evaluation of sources…………………………………………………………………………..8

Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………8

Sources……………………………………………………………………………………..…10

The economic Impact of Stalin’s Leadership in the USSR, 1924 –1941

Section A: Plan of Investigation

Joseph Stalin launched his “revolution from above” by setting two predictable goals for Soviet domestic policy: rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. His aims were to wipe away all traces of the capitalism that had entered under the New Economic Policy and to transform the Soviet Union as quickly as possible into an industrialized and completely socialist state. Stalin aimed to expand industrial production to make up the huge gap between the USSR and the advanced countries, by setting a list of economic goals by an organization called Gosplan, which is an acronym for Gosudarstvenniy Komitet po Planirovaniyu (state committee for planning). Itwas created for economic planning in the Soviet Union, and one of its main and most important duties was the creation of the five- year plans. This investigation will assess the economic impacts of Stalin Leadership in the USSR between “1927-1941”.

Section B: Summary of Evidence

Stalin’s rapid industrialization in 1928

• “We are fifty or hundred years behind the advanced countries. We MUST make up this gap in 10 years either we do it or they will crush us.” It was a major advancement in the Soviet Union considering that Russia had always been behind the European countries of that time by a long shot.
• All industry and services were nationalized, central planners gave managers predetermined output quotas, and trade unions were converted into mechanisms for increasing worker productivity.
• An emphasis on heavy industry (a 250 % increase in overall industrial development, and 330 % expansion in heavy industry alone.).

 

Collectivization of agriculture

• Transformationof the Soviet agriculture from mostly individual farms, into a system of large state collective farms.
• “Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades. This is because we have about 25 million individually owned farms. They are the most primitive and undeveloped form of economy we must do our utmost to develop large farms and to convert them into grain factories for the country organized on a modem scientific basis.” Stalin believed that collectivization would improve agricultural productivity and would produce grain reserves sufficiently large to feed the growing urban labor force.
• Collectivization was expected to free many peasants for industrial work in the cities and enable the communists to extend its political dominance over the remaining peasantry.

Dekulukization / Liquidation of the “Kulaks”

• There we a lot of poor peasants and not as poor, the “not as poor”, or wealthier peasants were termed as “Kulaks”, and became the target of “dekulakization” to eliminate independent farm-holdings, and create collective farm units.
• The Communists attempted to gain the support of the poorer class of peasants, by turning them against the kulak class of farmers, by portraying them as a danger to society.
• One million kulak households were deported, and never heard from again.

The Ukrainian Famine in 1932 / Holodomor

• Stalin regarded the self-sufficient farms of the Ukraine peasants, as a threat to his ideals. He did not want the Ukrainian peasants to prosper freely from the wealth accumulated from independent farm holdings.
• Stalin sought to eliminate any threat from Ukrainian nationalists, whom they feared had the potential to form a rebellion and to seek independence from the Soviet Union.
• The Soviet police confiscated the Ukrainian farmers of their homes, livestock, wheat crops, and valuable possessions.
• Ukrainians were not allowed to leave their towns/ villages because of the international passport system that prevented them to do so.
• Food supplies were sent by the US, but the Soviet authorities denied them.
• The words Hunger or Famine were not allowed to be said, and people stating these words were considered spreading “anti-Soviet” propaganda.
• Between 1930 and 1937, over 600000 families were collectivized; around 225000 families abandoned their land, which led to large-scale immigration into the surrounding Russian republicans like Kazakhstan.

 

The Second Plan (1933-1937)

• Stalin expanded the goals of his previous plan and placed an emphasis on heavy industry.
• This plan aimed to advance the Soviet Union’s communication systems, especially railways.
• It failed to reach the level of success of the first plan as it did not reach goal production levels in the coal and oil industries.
• This table shows the progress made before the five-year plan, after the five-year plan and at the end of the second five-year plan, and the target for both plans.

mt= millions of tons

	1927	1932	1937
Coal	35 million tons	64 mt (75 mt target)	128 mt (152 mt target)
Oil	12 million tons	21mt (22 mt target)	29 mt (47 mt target)
Iron ore	5 million tons	12 mt ( 19 mt target)	Unknown
Pig iron	3 million tons 4 million tons	6 mt (10 mt target)	15 mt (16 mt target)
Steal	4 million tons	6 mt (10 mt target)	18 mt (17 mt target)

 The Third Five-Year Plan

• It lasted for only 3 years; it was interrupted by Germany’s declaration of war on the Soviet Union during World War II.
• This plan focused on the production of weapons and other wartime materials.

Section C: Evaluation of sources

New Conditions — New Tasks in EconomicConstruction: Speech Delivered at a Conference of Business Executives, June 23, 1931, published by Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, extracted from Marxists Internet Archive (2008).

Section D: Analysis

The excesses of Stalinist policy were reflected in all fields. Most importantly, in agriculture, Stalin, who previously supported the rich peasants (the Kulaks) turned on them cruelly as their increasing wealth and power threatened the stability of the communist regime. Stalin introduced a ’five year plan’ in agriculture. Trotsky and the Left Opposition were suggesting the collectivization of agricultural production earlier, which they said had to be started and taken seriously in a voluntary manner, under Stalin, collectivization was introduced in a violent and forced way, resulting in huge economic chaos and famine.

As a result of the great famine in Soviet Ukraine, over 7,000,000 Ukrainians lost their lives. Ukrainians were dying at the rate of 25,000 per day, 1,000 per hour, or 17 every minute. The number of deaths due to the famine was almost equal to one quarter of the population of Ukraine. This remarkable change in population over the sequence of one year had many severe outcomes on Ukraine. Having lost nearly on quarter of its population, which included one third of their children, Ukraine was in a state of complexity. 80 percent of Ukrainian intellectuals were liquidated because they refused to collaborate in the extermination of their countrymen. Out of about 240 Ukrainian authors and 200 disappeared. So because of the large losses that Ukraine had taken during the famine, Ukraine was unable to fight off the “Justification” imposed by Stalin.

Despite all of this, The Five Year Plans did create a massive urban working class, most of the country was electrified, and in the cities, most people lived in new apartments. And, most importantly, they provided the economic, political and social conditions that allowed the country to absorb the Nazi attack beginning in 1941 and push them all the way back Berlin.
Vast factories in places like Stalingrad, Leningrad and other cities across the Soviet Union were built. They also built hydro-electric dams, canals, railways and other infrastructural projects. The aim of them was to modernize Soviet industry, to try to bridge the gap between the Western Democracies. Therefore, it is obvious that the first five-year plan was a big success, it helped to increase the prestige of the USSR abroad.

Section F: Sources – APA citation

Stalin, J. (n.d.). New Tasks in Economic Construction. <i>J. V. Stalin New Conditions — New Tasks in Economic Construction</i>. Retrieved November 5, 2013, from.edu/~ehttp://www.econ.umn vdok003/stalinspeech.pdf.

“Stalin.” Stalin. N.p.,( n.d). Web. 5 Nov. 2013. Retrieved from <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Stalin.htm>.

“Holocaust by hunger: The truth behind Stalin’s Great Famine.” Mail Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038774/Holocaust-hunger-The-truth-Stalins-Great-Famine.html>.

Volkogonov, Dmitrii? Antonovich. Stalin: triumph and tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. Print.

“Prominent Russians: Joseph Stalin.” Joseph Stalin – Russiapedia Leaders Prominent Russians. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/leaders/joseph-stalin/>.

“Was Stalin necessary for Russia’s economic development?.” Vox.N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. <http://www.voxeu.org/article/stalin-and-soviet-industrialisation>.