Stalin's Revolution: Five-Year Plans and Collectivization

1. Chapter 29: The Stalin Revolution Baralt, Nicole Period 1 Mr.Marshall AP World History http://isurvived.org/Pictures_iSurvived-2/2Stalin.GIF

2. Five-Year Plans • Joseph Stalin was born into the family of a poor shoemaker. He played a small role I the Revolutions of 1917. By 1927 he ousted Leon Trotsky and became the absolute dictator and transformed the Soviet society (Bulliet 767). • He had the ambition to turn the Union of Socialist Republics also known as the USSR into an industrial nation. Instead of aiming to produce consumer goods it was aimed to increase the power of the Communist party domestically and the power of the Soviet Union over other countries (Bulliet 767). • His goal was to quintiple the output of electricity and double that of heavy industry ( Iron,steel,coal, and machinery) in five years (Bulliet 767). • The Five Year Plans was a system of centralized control copied from the German experience of World War 1. (Bulliet 767). • Starting on October 1928 the Communist Party and government created whole industries and cities from scratch. They trained millions of peasants to work in new mines, and offices (Bulliet 767). • In place of capitalism, which market forces of supply and demand determined production goals, wages, profts, labor, and resources, Stalin instituted government planning to make those decisions from large scale national to the small-scale local micro-level (Spodek 647). • From an environmental prospective, the outcome of the Five Year Plans resembled the transformation that had occurred in the U.S and Canada decades earlier (Bulliet 767). • All industry and services were nationalized, managers were given predetermined output quotas by central planners, and trade unions were converted into mechanisms for increasing worker productivity. Many new industrial centers were developed, particularly in the Ural Mountains, and thousands of new plants were built throughout the country. But because Stalin insisted on unrealistic production targets, serious problems soon arose. Widespread shortages of consumer goods arose (http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/collect.html) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Poster08.jpg

3. Collectivization of Agriculture • Since the Soviet Union was still a predominantly agrarian country, the only way to pay for these massive investments, provide the labor, and feed the millions of new industrial workers was to squeeze the peasantry. Stalin therefore conceived the most radical social experiment, the collectivization of agriculture (Bulliet 768). • The Collectivization meant consolidating small private farms into vast collectives making the farmers work together in commonly owned fields. Each collective was expected to supply the government with a fixed amount of food and distribute that was left among its members (Bulliet 768). • More than half of all Soviet farmers were compelled to give up their individual fields and to live and work instead on newly formed collective farms of 1000 acres or more (Spodek 648). • Hundreds of thousands of better off peasants, also known as kulaks, who refused collectivization were murdered and millions were transported to labor camps in Siberia (Spodek 648). • When collectivization was announced, the government mounted a massive propaganda campaign and sent part members into the countryside to enlist the farmers support (Bulliet 768). • Although the First Five-Year Plan called for the collectivization of only twenty percent of peasant households, by 1940 approximately ninety-seven percent of all peasant households had been collectivized and private ownership of property almost entirely eliminated. Forced collectivization helped achieve Stalin's goal of rapid industrialization, but the human costs were incalculable (http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/collect.html). http://www.anti-communism.net/collectivization.jpg

4. Terror and Opportunities • The 1930’s brought both terror and new opportunities to the Soviet people. To prevent any possible resistance or rebellion, the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police force, created a climate of suspicion and fear (Bulliet 769). • The NKVD broke prisoners down by intense interrogation. This included the threat to arrest and execute members of the prisoner's family if they did not confess. The interrogation went on for several days and nights and eventually they became so exhausted and disoriented that they signed confessions agreeing that they had been attempting to overthrow the government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSnkvd.htm). • Stalin had hundreds of engineers and technicians arrested on trumped up charges of counterrevolutionary ideas and sabotage. He turned on is most trusted associates (Bulliet 769). • With so many people gone and new industries being built, there were new opportunities for those who remained especially the poor and the young. Women entered careers and jobs previously closed to them. Over the next decades , women entered professions so rapidly that they became the majority in medicine and teaching but also had to take care of the household (Spodek 649). • Stalin’s brutal methods helped the Soviet Union industrialize faster than any country had ever done. By the 1930’s the USSR was the world’s third largest industrial power, after the united states and Germany • (Bulliet 769). • People who moved to the cities, worked enthusiastically, and asked no questions • could hope to rise into the upper ranks of the Communist Party, the military, • the government, or the professions where there were more privileges • and rewards (Bulliet 769). http://www.vikmo.ru/images/kuba23/nkvd-b.jpg

5. Bibliography • Bulliet, Richard W., Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, and David Northrup. The Earth And Its Peoples A Global History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. • Collectivization and Industrialization. <http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/collect.html>. • Communist Secret Police. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSnkvd.htm>. • Spodek, Howard. The World's History Combined (2nd Edition). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000.