How Did Stalin Evaluate The First Five Year Plan

Propaganda flourished in the public as posters, newspapers, and other print media all praised Stalin, communism, the military, and his ideals. Soviet schools were controlled by Stalin from nursery to college. [“Censorship under Stalin.”] Industrialization allowed women to gain more rights in the workforce (factories). Other groups were not as lucky. From 1941-1949, Stalin ordered mass deportations and sent 3.3 million Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Greeks, Bulgarians and Jews to Siberia and Central Asian Republics. [Languages Of The World, 10 Mar. 2015,] Collectivism and industrialization were his two biggest economic policies under his Five Year Plan implemented in 1928. The idea of collectivization was meant to allow peasants to grow crops on the farms using machinery tractors from the state. Peasants would be compensated and they would keep a small plot of land near their homes for personal use. Stalin wanted to see increases in the USSR’s crop growth quickly. By the end of 1931, the goal set for grain was met but there was a drop in the grain production. Many factors that caused this. Stalin’s activists did not have a wide range of farm knowledge or the skills. Also, the amount of animals were not enough to pull the plows because the hungry peasants ate them. A drought occurred throughout large parts of the USSR and Ukraine during 1931-32. Because all of this, collectivism ultimately failed.

His first five year plan was during 1928-1933 and this was the heavy industry plan which was making industries, transportation, and power supplies. The first of his methods was to use collectivization. Collectivization was the making of small farms into one big farm, and this would help increase the amount of products they make, and that would increase the amount of profit. Afterwards the people who were working on the farms would go into the city and be forced to work in the factories. The money then would be used to buy more more equipment which is industrial products which can help boost their profits yet again. Stalin was shown to be a heavy thinker, and to get his plans through, he made propaganda signs and speeches. He would focuses on telling his people the consequences if they didn’t work hard enough as a country, as they would be “falling behind... and those who fall behind are beaten”(Document 1). The propaganda speeches did work most of the time, but they felt hesitant as the goal for his five year plan was averaging to double the amount of, and “tripling in electricity (milliard kWh) from 5.05 to 17.0 in the end of 1933” (Document 2). Stalin

Stalin’s policy priorities were not building a ‘worker’s paradise’ or a classless society, but protecting Russia from war and invasion. In 1928, Stalin launched the first of two ambitious five-year plans to modernize and industrialize the Soviet economy. These programs brought rapid progress – but also significant death and suffering. Stalin’s decision to nationalize agricultural production dispossessed millions of peasants, forcing them from their land to labor on gigantic state-run collective farms. Grain was sold abroad to finance Soviet industrial projects, leading to food shortages and disastrous famines in the mid-1930s. Soviet Russia was dragged into the 20th century, transforming from a backward agrarian empire into a modern industrial superpower – but this came at extraordinary human cost.

point of view of Russia the Five Year Plans had been a failure in that

Once eliminating Trotsky, Stalin’s idea of, “socialism in our country,” inevitably meant that Russia needed strength. The productions in the USSR had almost reached pre-war levels by the mid-1920s, but the population of Russia had also increased by 20 million people. No matter, Stalin assured that maximum efforts and resources would be given to the expansion and strengthening of Russia herself rather than an effort to start a revolution elsewhere. This is explained in his famous 1931 speech, gaining power for himself. The people had nowhere else to turn to and needed a leader. Stalin was there and knew what to do to make the people interested in his ideas, thus acquired their trust and control. From these ideas, he created his first

In his speech, Stalin also mentions that kulaks, which were wealthy peasants, must be eliminated as a class. (Document 3) In this speech Stalin explained that agriculture must change in order to feed the growing population of industrial workers. The collective farms would receive the needed modern technology and scientific equipment, and it would all result in increased food production. Stalin made clear that the kulaks must be driven out in order for the plan to be successful. Once again, Stalin is using the power of speech to gain support for his collectivization plan. An excerpt from A History Civilization describes the horrific effects of Stalin’s collectivization. Stalin began deporting the capitalistic farmers (kulaks) to forced labor camps or Siberia, and peasants were being machine-gunned into submission. Peasants slaughtered huge amounts of horses, cattle, sheep and goats, burned crops and broke plows in desperate revolts. The amount of Russian livestock lost due to collectivization was immense. (Document 4)

Stalin thought that Russia was far behind the rest of the western world. He devised a 5 year plan to get Russia up to speed with the rest of the world. This is similar to how Napoleon built the windmill. Stalin also created a centralized agriculture

Although collectivization and the 5 year plans were a success, Stalinism faced its primary negative impact through these polices; the Bureaucracy. This is a system of government in which lesser members of political parties make most of the important decisions or control the happenings of the state. The peasants were the ones carrying out Stalin’s policies; however, they were working for nothing, which resulted in quotas not being met, forcing the Bolshevik in charge of that sector to lie. Plans were developed to try and contain the bureaucracy. Alexei Stakhanov allegedly cut 16 times the normal amount of coal in one shift. Stalin and the government used this to provide ideological incentive for the workers, thus inventing the ‘Stakhanovites’. Despite this however, the bureaucracy was to remain, serving as the foremost negative impact to Stalinism.

He began with state control of Industry and Agriculture. This led to Stalin adopting his 'Five Year Plans for Industry' and 'Collectivisation of Agriculture'. An organisation called GOSPLAN was created to plan everything out. The first five-year plan was created to improve heavy industries production such as coal, oil, iron, steel and electricity. The second continued to emphasise on heavy industry but also made a commitment to communication systems such as railways.

Stalin’s plan was to make Russia an industrial giant, so Stalin created the five-year plan to work on the farms and factories of Russia. Stalin’s five-year plans were a series of nation wide centralized economic plans in the Soviet Union (Wikipedia). What that meant was that peasants who didn’t have jobs were required to work on a specific goal that Stalin had to increase what was considered as an economy booster. The first Five Year Plan introduced in 1928, concentrated on the development of iron and steel, machine-tools, electric power and transport. Joseph Stalin set the workers high

The Bolsheviks believed they had to industrialise to achieve national strength and maintain independence. This was a shared view of non-Bolshevik predecessors such as Count Sergei Witte a former Russian minister. The Soviet Union needed a modern industry, especially a heavy industry, as there was the idea that they had to defend the revolution. They believed the Russian revolution was in constant danger from capitalist countries, which were militarily and technically far stronger than them. Then there was the belief that the building of socialism or communism involved industrialisation, and that a proletarian dictatorship was insecure so long as it ruled in an overwhelmingly peasant environment . Industrialisation was introduced to eradicate the backwardness that had plagued the country for so long so they could rise and defeat capitalism. In his speech in 1931 Stalin stated ‘we are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under’ and that ‘it is the jungle law of capitalism. You are backward, you are weak - therefore you are wrong; hence you can be beaten and enslaved. You are mighty - therefore you are right; hence we must be wary of you. This is why we must no longer lag behind’ . These show the need for the Soviet Union to advance and become stronger than capitalist countries. Industrialisation also allowed the Soviet

Adding to the deplorable oppression borne by the proletariat during the Five Year Plans, Stalin introduced a collectivisation campaign which not only sparked a persecution of kulaks, but also induced a widespread famine. The Stalin government’s compulsory agricultural policy was largely a failure with regard to its goals. Beginning in 1929, all farms were to be collectivised, with the aim of improving agricultural output and hence, industrialisation. The USSR’s initial system of farming was inefficient, but the introduction of fertilisation and tractors modernised agricultural techniques, increasing the nation’s capacity for production, supporting Historian Jamieson’s statement. However, the policy was catastrophic due to the mass movement of peasant resistance that saw farmers defiantly burning crops and slaughtering livestock, regarding the campaign as a violation of their freedom. By 1933, agricultural production fell dramatically; grain by 17 million tonnes and cows and pigs by a total of 23 million, to below what it was in 1913 (Downey, 1989, p. 19). This

After World War I the economy in the USSR was failing, they were producing very little and were hit hard economically. Stalin developed many economic policies for three main reasons. The first was that he wanted to turn the USSR into a modern world power; he wanted it to be self-sufficient and to have a strong military. Secondly, he wanted to show the eminence of communism over capitalism by proving that a modernized USSR can overtake the capitalist countries. Lastly, he wanted to improve the livelihood of all the Soviet citizens. In order to do this, his main goal in order to do that, he made sure the agriculture section of the economy was productive. The first policy that Stalin created was collectivization. By 1928, the grain produced was insufficient to feed the people. Stalin addressed this issue and took action by joining small farms and making a collective group called Kolkhoz. This policy was unsuccessful. The one good side was that farmers received a wage from

Due to the extreme focus on heavy industry, there were shortages of consumer goods, and subsequently, inflation grew. To satisfy the state’s increasing need for food supplies, the First Five Year Plan introduced the concept of collectivization. Collectivization entailed compounding peasants’ land and animals, and state farms to provide food to the growing industrial sector. The collectivization movement was not received well by the peasants, and as a result, Stalin altered his plan of action. In 1933, he introduced the Second Five-Year Plan. With this plan, he set more realistic goals, and increased the focus on producing consumer goods and increasing industrial output in general. By 1940, after a Third Five-Year Plan was implemented, the Soviet economy was completely industrialized.

Once in control, Stalin's first major achievements were the Five Year Plans for industry. Russia had not yet had their industrial revolution and were far behind the other powers of the world. The first Five Year Plan worked as far as industrial output was concerned, but it was at much cost to the people of Russia. Once the Five Year Plans started to roll, Stalin decided to make some agricultural changes to support the industrialization. In April, 1928, Stalin presented the draft of a new land law. Although the draft failed to become a law, it showed a couple of Stalin's objectives. One was the rapid and forcible collectivization of the peasants in order to industrialize the country quickly. The other was the liquidation of the kulaks as a class. Kulaks were seen as industrious or prosperous peasants who were not enthusiastic about the policies of the communist party.