Plan of investigation
This investigation seeks to evaluate the extend of the success of Stalin’s collectivization in Russia during 1928 and 1940.Collectivization was one of the most important economic policies introduced in Russia because it can be described and evaluated from different angles, economic growth on the one hand,and the social cost of the policy,on the other. The main body of this investigation outlines Stalin’s aims, when and how the policy was implemented and whether it was a successful policy or not. To achieve my aim, I am going to consult a series of sources and later analyse them by doing an overall evaluation. I will use primary and secondary sources. Two of the five sources used in this research, “Dr Kiselev’s
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Evaluation of sources
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine was published in 1986 and was writen by Robert Conquest, a British historian and veteran of World War Two. Conquest became well-know as writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication of his book “The Great Terror” in 1968. His stated purpose for this book was “ to register in the public consciousness of the West a knowledge of and feeling for major events, envolving millions of people and millions of deaths, which took place within living memory” . The value of this book is related to the date of publication. His viewpoint has the advantage of time and hindsight and should be more balanced. The limitations are that it may not be totally objective. It has been written in 1968 and is a compilation of other material, which means that a selection process has taken place, which may have omitted other details. It is not written by any single person, or there is no way of determing this. What’s more, his opinion on collectivization ca be influence by who he was. In 1937, Robert Conquest joined the Communist Party in Oxford. At the end of the Second World War, he witnessed the gradual rise of Soviet Communism in Bulgaria, becoming completely disillusioned with communist ideas in the process. After leaving the country in 1948, Conquest then joined the
With Robert Conquest’s first edition of The Great Terror published in 1968, critics acclaimed that his work was a spotlight on the atrocities wrought by the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Since then, with new sources and statistics coming forward, there have been two reassessments published by Conquest. Regardless of edition, the author attempts to provide the reader a gripping account of Stalin’s mass purges where millions were murdered and millions more were sent to Soviet prisons in brutal, inhumane conditions. Furthermore, to give the reader a well-rounded view of this period Conquest writes about more than just the gulags. He shares his research on the “Moscow Trials,” the vicious methods for obtaining false confessions, life in the labor camps, and much more.
Over the period from 1855 to 1964, Russia saw various reforms and policies under the Tsars and the Communist leaders that had great impacts on its economy and society both positive and negative. Lenin definitely implanted polices that changed society and the economy for example with war communism. However whether his policies had the greatest impact is debatable and in this essay I will be assessing the view whether Lenin had the greatest impact on Russia’s economy and society than any other ruler between the period from 1855-1964.
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.
The concept of Stalinism, being the ideologies and policies adopted by Stalin, including centralization, totalitarianism and communism, impacted, to an extent, on the soviet state until 1941. After competing with prominent Bolshevik party members Stalin emerged as the sole leader of the party in 1929. From this moment, Stalinism pervaded every level of society. Despite the hindrance caused by the bureaucracy, the impact of Stalinism was achieved through the implementation of collectivization and the 5-year plans, Stalin’s Political domination and Cultural influence, including the ‘Cult of the Personality’. This therefore depicts the influence of Stalinism over the Soviet State in the period up to 1941.
The first of several primary sources is "Industrialization of the Country and the Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U." by Joseph Stalin. Coming from the figurehead of stalinism, the piece is very much a declaration of Stalinist beliefs in regards towards urbanization. It’s original purpose seems to be uniting the soviet people in a push to create more technological advancements, as Stalin states that the U.S.S.R. is falling behind other countries such as Russia in that regards. It could also serve as a propaganda piece, as the views seem rather nationalistic. One thing this piece does not do however, is create a direct link between the Soviet Union’s plans and Cambodia’s seeing as it was written decades before the Khmer Rouge came into power. Yet,
Victims of a new wave of political beliefs, namely collectivization were enforced by Stalin and his followers in the name of Communism.
Stalin’s cult of personality, derived through propaganda, censorship and education, was an essential element of Stalinism which had a significant impact on the society and culture of the Soviet State between until 1941. Stalin’s 50th birthday on 21 December 1929 initiated the moment in Stalin’s dictatorship in which the leader became an object of worship. Millions of party member came to compare Stalin to Lenin, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Eventually the cult of Stalin saw him as a political, military, scientific and philosophical genius. While the people feared Stalin, they were still drawn to his patriotism and love for the Motherland.
Overall, Stalin did not create a totalitarian state, the very definition of which suggests the state’s complete control and authority over every aspect of society; the economy, politics, religion and culture; as, despite all of the action Stalin took to gain this, he was constantly facing opposition.
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
Nearly eighty years ago, Ukraine, “the breadbasket of Europe” suffered an awful famine caused by the Soviet Union. The starvation affected nearly every part of Ukraine, but it was most murderous in the south and east regions of the republic. On January 5, 1930, the Communist Party started Collectivization, the most inefficient agricultural system in existence, which is when trouble began to brew. This process forced all peasants to live on different food surrogates. Because they endured communal farming in their past, the Russian peasantry did not revolt against Moscow. The Ukrainian peasants, on the other hand, were used to an independent and individualized farming tradition, so the Russian communism was completely foreign to them, and they opposed Moscow bitterly. The slaughtering of their livestock before joining was one way the Ukrainian farmers showed disapproval to collectivization. The government later passed a death penalty for this kind of action. Although the Holocaust in Ukraine had been just as cruel as the rest of it anywhere else during World War II, many history books overlook the terrible genocide
Shrouded in the mystery of definition laying before us are the events of the famine that presided over the Ukrainian peoples in the period of 1932 to 1933. In light of this, an ongoing debate still exists as to what extent the Soviet regime was involved and as to whether this calamity can be categorised as an act of genocide. Traditional views expressed by Malice and Conquest, pioneered and advocated the concept of this event as being a man made famine falling under the terminology of genocide, since the Soviet policy of the period being one of forcefully implementing collectivisation as well Stalin's relentless assault on Ukrainian nationalism. On the other hand, historians such as Davies and Wheatcroft challenge these previous views, adopting
Joseph Stalin’s three decade long dictatorship rule that ended in 1953, left a lasting, yet damaging imprint on the Soviet Union in political, economic and social terms. “Under his inspiration Russia has modernised her society and educated her masses…Stalin found Russia working with a wooden plough and left her equipped with nuclear power” (Jamieson, 1971). Although his policies of collectivisation and industrialisation placed the nation as a leading superpower on the global stage and significantly ahead of its economic position during the Romanov rule, this was not without huge sacrifices. Devastating living and working standards for the proletariat, widespread famine, the Purges, and labour camps had crippling impacts on Russia’s social
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
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
The preparations used to investigate the questions in this thesis mainly use secondary sources though some quotes are from primary sources. Many of the writers whose works used which are both from books and articles are both critiques and proponents of the Soviet leadership thus they may be biased in their assertions of the planning policies imposed during the Soviet empire and its satellite states. The sources are both from the 20th and 21st century because one needs to take into accounts an extreme growth in ideologies. Many of the sources were a product of their time whether they were critiquing the political structure or