In order to determine the overall success of Stalin’s first 5 Year Plan, the strengths and weaknesses of the plan must be explored and evaluated. In this essay, I will be evaluating that Stalin’s first 5 Year Plan was a long term success but also a short term failure. In regards to the successes of the 5 Year Plan, I will cover subjects such as the economic expansion of Russia, comparisons between military action in both World War 1 (before the plan was put into action) and World War II (10 years after the plan had been completed.) As for the failures that may show how the 5 Year Plan was unsuccessful, I will be exploring the working conditions in Russia and the use of Gulags (labour camps) throughout this period amongst other topics.
One of the main strengths of the first 5 year plan was a great increase in industrial output across Russia. For example, iron production increased from 3.3 to 6.2 million tonnes, steel production also grew from 4.0 to 5.9 million tonnes, and coal production grew from 35.4 to 64.8 and oil increased from 11.7 to 21.4 million tonnes all in the same period. Across all of these industries, Soviet industrial production was on average 1.8 times higher in 1933 than in 1928, clearly showing an increase in industrial output in four years, which was Stalin’s original plan as he delivered a message to the workforce to ‘fulfil the 5 Year Plan in four!’ . In addition, the Soviet economy rose to 14% per annum , showing that the first 5 year plan was a success
Through his Five Year Plans and forced collectivization, Stalin was able to improve industry and agriculture. He did this while also using propaganda to brainwash his people into viewing him as a strong and great leader, despite some of the nasty things he did to them. The first Five Year Plan was announced in 1929. The goal of this plan was to increase Stalin’s resources by causing rapid industrialization.
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.
In Document 7, The Land of the Soviets published an excerpt in the U.S.S.R (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) which stated “the first and second five year Plans strengthened the Soviet Union’s economic position and turned it into a powerful industrial state. In 1937 the industrial output of the USSR was 5.8 times larger than in 1913. This shows the massive improvements in production caused by the first and second five year plan.
The 3 5-year plans focused on heavy industry, as well as an emphasis on electricity, coal, oil and steel. The latter sections of industry greatly increased including coal (million tons) rising to 128 in 1937. Although during this time period, famine and forced labour occured, the 5-year plans were a success. Through the implementation of Collectivization and the 5-year plans, it can be seen how Stalinism impacted upon the economy, and thus the Soviet State.
Before the nation of Russia became the international powerhouse that we knew as the USSR, it was first the small backwater country, whose economy ran on the use of serfs, Czar 's ruled every aspect, and the chance of growth was limited; however, once the year 1917 came along, the entire aspect of what was to be the Russia nation changed into a very strange and new one, called the United of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Soviet Union was, at one point, second only to the United States of America and had the power to destroy the entire planet with the single acknowledgement of their leader, because of their nuclear capabilities and their political power. The Russian country became the great Communist powerhouse after a great revolution in
Between the years of 1932 and 1933, an estimated 4 to 5 million Ukrainians perished in a famine unprecedented during peacetime. Called the Holodomor, Ukrainian for ‘death by hunger’, the famine fits into a number of other famines that occurred simultaneously in the Soviet Union including but not limited to Kazakhstan, the north caucuses, and the Urals. The famines were a consequence of Stalin’s first 5 year plan, which called for mass collectivization and nationalization of industry with the intention of ushering forth rapid industrialization. Industrialization was prioritized in order to bring the Soviet Union in line with Marx’s dialectal history, according to which worldwide Communist Revolution can only be spearheaded by
Almost everyone knows what a monster Adolf Hitler was, but most people do not know that one of the great ally leader of World War II, Joseph Stalin, had committed even greater atrocities than Hitler. Joseph Stalin was a ruthless and yet diligent dictator of the Soviet Union, whose rise to power influenced a multitude of major events in his country’s history. Due to Stalin’s impactful reign, he made the Soviet Union become a global superpower, underwent difficult hardships such as the Great Famine in the Soviet Union, and after his death, caused the Soviet Union to go through a process known as de-Stalinization.
The Third Five Year Plan lasted for only three years, as it was interrupted by Germany’s declaration of war on the Soviet Union during World War II. As war seemed imminent, this plan focused on the production of weapons and other wartime materials (Trueman). The Soviet Union mainly contributed resources to the development of weapons, and constructed additional military factories as needed. Stalin continued to use additional Five Year Plans in the years following WWII, in an attempt keep his promise in 1945 to make the Soviet Union the leading industrial power by 1960. By 1952, industrial production was nearly double the 1941 level. Stalin’s Five Year Plans helped transform the Soviet Union from an untrained society of peasants to an advanced industrial economy. So through out this plan of hopefully saving Russia that Stalin has created products that could not be used and unintelligent citizens who were only trained to only do only one skill.
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.
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
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.
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
In recent years, the debate over whether bilingual education or immersion programs (such as English for Speakers of Other Languages) better serve the needs of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students in the United States has been heating up. The increasing need for such services insights passionate supporters and opposition to rise up against one another in the fight over which is better. Advocates of bilingual education stress the value in helping students retain and even enhance proficiency in their native language, while at the same time gaining proficiency in the English language. Critics of bilingual education, however, contend that such programs only “keep students in
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
point of view of Russia the Five Year Plans had been a failure in that