Stalin’s Soviet Union

Great
Purges
Russian Collectivization
Revolution Lenin
Begins Operation
Dies
Barbarossa

1917 1921 1924 1927 1929 1936 1939 1941

-Red Army
defeats White First Five Molotov
Army Year Plan Ribbentropp
-NEP begins Stalin (1928)
Emerges as Pact
the Leader
 Key terms
Kulak: a wealthy or prosperous peasant, generally characterized as one who owned a relatively large
farm and several head of cattle and horses and who was financially capable of employing hired labour
and leasing land.

Industrialisation: the process by which an economy is transformed from primarily agricultural to one
based on the manufacturing of goods.

Collectivisation: the peasantry were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective
farms (kolkhoz). The process was ultimately undertaken in conjunction with the campaign to
industrialize the Soviet Union rapidly.

What impact did

industrialisation have on
the people?
 The First Five-Year Plan (1928-32)
• Gosplan
– Planned the economy
– Answered all
economic questions
– how much to produce
– amount of capital to
produce
– amount of consumer
goods
– wages, prices
– Created a command &
planned economy
• Why?
– Stalin feared
Thermidorian
(capitalism)
– Wanted to catch up to This poster from 1929 attacks eight groups that
were frequently scapegoated (clockwise from top
the West left): landlords, kulaks, journalists, capitalists, White
– Feared establishment Russians, Mensheviks, priests, and drunkards
of conservative land-
owning peasantry
 Goals of the First Five Year Plan
• Main goal of 1st 5
– Build up heavy industry without
foreign loans
– Make USSR self sufficient
• History offered no paradigm of
going from agriculture to
industrial based economy
without borrowing capital
– GB industrialization aided by Dutch
investment
– GB first had agricultural revolution
(land enclosure, scientific
cultivation)
– This released rural population to
find employment in factories
• 1st Five attempted similar feat
without landowning class
• How? "Long live the international socialist
revolution!"
 The Five-Year Plans
• First 5 Year Plan was known as
‘second revolution’ and ‘Revolution
from above’
• Aim was to make nation militarily
and industrially self-sufficient
– Stalin (1929)-”We are becoming a
country of metal, a country of
automobiles, a country of
tractors…”
– Declared fulfilled in 1932
• Second 5 Year Plan (’32-37)
• Third 5 Year Plan (’38- WWII)
• Plan listed economic goals
– 250% increase in industrial "The Victory of the Five
output Year Plan is a Strike Against
– 150% increase in agricultural Capitalism"
output
 The Collectivization of Agriculture
• Collectivization (1928-1940)
– Part of 1st 5 Year Plan to convert small,
privately owned farms into large,
collectively owned farms
– peasantry would become proletariat
(owned no capital, employed no labor
individually)
• Goals:
– Increase food supply
– Free up labor for factory work
• Collective farms
– a few thousand acres each
– Kolkhoz
• owned by peasants themselves
(the collective)
• Paid tax in produce
• Mir organisation paradigm
– Sovkhoz
Soviet Collectivization Propaganda
• State owned (1930). The poster reads "Hey Friend,
• Mass produced one product Come with us into the Collective!"
 Effects of Collectivization
• Before 1928
– average peasant was too poor to
afford a tractor, fields too small
and dispersed
• After Collectivization
– Machine Tractors Stations
– organized throughout country
with expert agronomist, a fleet of
tractors, combines
• Each collective was assigned a
quota
• Almost whole nation was
collectivized by 1939
• Was Collectivization successful?
– Did free up labor (20 million) to
work in cities (industrialization)
– Did not increase food production
• Denied peasants freedom to make
their own economic decision, killed
incentive to improve land, passing
land to offspring
Collectivization in Soviet Union 1927-1940
 Human Costs of Collectivization
• Kulaks (large landowning peasants) Click for clip (8:34-15
resistance
– Viewed collectivization as the “Second
Serfdom”
– Stalin said “liquidate them as a
class”
• Kulaks slaughtered horses, cattle,
pigs, rather than give them up (50%)
• Loss of animals was worst
unforeseen calamity
• Stalin still refused to cut back on
cereal and food exports because they
were needed to pay for industrial
imports (under 1st 5 Year Plan)
• millions were killed/others
transported to labor camps in Siberia
• Many of the most capable farmers
perished
• Led to deadly famine in southeast Soviet Collectivization Village
Russia and Ukraine in ’32-’33 Propaganda(1929): The Poster Reads
• 6 Millions died "On our collective there is no room for
priests or kulaks"
 The Growth of Industry
• Greatest industrial growth in 10 year period in
history
• GB growth was gradual, Germany and US it
was rapid (USSR was light speed)
– 1928-38 USSR increased production of iron
and steel 4xs, coal 3.5xs, became largest
producer of farm tractors, RR locomotives
• Plants of Magnitogorsk in the Urals and
Stalinsk in Siberia produced as much iron and
steel as the whole Russia empire did in 1914
• Only the US and Germany had greater gross
industrial output in 1939
– Plans called for development of industry
east of Urals (Asia)
– Copper mines near Lake Balkhash, lead
mines in Altai Mountains were developed
• Grain producing regions developed in Siberia Early Soviet poster: The Smoke
and Kazakh of chimneys is the breath of
• Tashkent (formerly remote village in Uzbek) Soviet Russia
grew to city of .5 million and a hub of cotton,
copper mining, electrical industries
 Changes Brought by Modernization
• Incredibly inner Asia was turning industrial
• USSR was carrying on more trade with its
Asian neighbors (although less foreign
trade than in 1914)
• Industrialization in the Urals and Asia
saved Russia in ’41 (Barbarossa)
• BUT
– it’s easy to exaggerate USSR’s
industrialization
• Started from almost nothing
• Low standards of production (shoddy work)
• Low efficiency and output compared to
West
• Produced less coal, electricity, cotton,
woolens, leather shoes, and steel per capita
than almost all Western nations
• Paper is good indicator (index) of
industrialization, “civilizing activities” Let's make stronger
• 1937 US = 103 pounds per person industrial power of Soviet
• Germany and GB= 92 Union ! 1932
• Japan= 17
• Russia = 11
 Social Costs and Effects of the Plans
• Soviet citizens had to forgo
consumer goods
– Lack of quality food,
housing,
– Kulaks and others who
resisted were killed
• 1/3rd of national income was
reinvested in industry every
year
– Hard work for low wages
•• Late
Morale sustained
1930s byto ease
life began
•
propaganda
food rationing abolished (1935)
• More products (dishes, pens) began to appear
• Living standards = 1927 levels
• Threat of war and need for preparation kyboshed the utopian dream
• Socialism did eliminate some of capitalisms evils
– No acknowledged unemployment
– No cycle of boom and depression
– No exploitation of children, women
– No extremely wealthy class
• But no economic equality (actually great difference in income)
• Govern officials, managers, engineers, artists, and intellectuals of the Party
were rewarded
 Competition
• Alexey Stakhanov
– Coal miner who was
propagandized as a “Hero of
Socialist Labor”
• mined a record 102 tons of coal in
under 6 hours
– 14 times his quota
• Greatly increased his wages (piece
rate)
• Led to increased competition as other
workers began to set production
records
• Stakhanovites (labor heroes) were
held up by government (IE. A
production line speed up)
• Factory managers who failed to reach
their quota (profit) could lose job,
status, or life
• Poor management was viewed as
sabotage or a betrayal of Soviet
society Soviet Medal
• Press denounced those who didn’t for Labor Valor
meet the plan
 The Price of Solidarity
• Feeling of building a socialist
motherland was prevalent
• Became national pastime to watch the
mounting statistics, fulfilling of quotas
– Instead of sports, readers read about the
economy
• This solidarity came with
totalitarianism
• Gov supervised everything
• No room for skeptics, independence of
thought
• No one could leave country without
permission (given rarely)
• No free labor union, no free press,
association, only slight toleration of
religion
• Jews harassed
• Untold millions perished, were
imprisoned, forced labor camps in
Stalin’s juggernaut
Shaming: Winners of the "infamous
banner for a tortoise's pace."
 Socialist Realism
• Officially approved art of the Communist
Party
• Loaded with propaganda
• A reaction against “decadent bourgeois art
of impressionism and cubism
• purpose was to elevate the common worker
• Factory and agricultural worker
– presenting his life, work, and recreation as
admirable
– ultimate aim was to create New Soviet Man
– “Man will make it his purpose to master his
own feelings, to raise his instincts to the
heights of consciousness, to make them
transparent, to extend the wires of his will Soviet poet Vladimir
into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise Mayakovsky:
Who needs a "1"?The voice o
himself to a new plain plane, to create a a "1" is thinner than a
higher social biologic type, or, if you please, squeak.Who will hear it? Only
the wife...A "1" is nonsense. A
a superman.” "1" is zero.
 Constitution of 1936
• New constitution
proclaimed in 1936
(because socialism was so
successful)
• Gave rights
– employment, rest,
leisure, economic
security, social security
• Condemned racism, gave
equal and universal
suffrage
• At first applauded in the
west
• Communist Party remained
sole governing group
• Diverging opinions within
the Party led to conspiracy
(since one could not
question Stalin himself)
 Reinforcing the Dictatorship
• Stalin rid himself of the
Old Bolsheviks who
knew Lenin and
destroyed potential
rivals
• Young revolutionaries
were products of the
new order
• Didn’t question Stalin’s
dictatorship