By: Jude Lee
Date: February 22nd, 2012
Stalinist Russia: Section 4 notes

Stalin instituted the Five-Year Plans in 1931 with the intention of
modernizing the Soviet Union, which he claimed was “fifty to one
hundred years” behind Western nations

These policies brought about an enormous growth in economic
production and successfully modernized the nation, as the USSR was
able to repel Germany’s attack in 1941

Production of machinery over-fulfilled the plan, while the production of
metal had less success

Rapid growth in engineering and fuel production

Substantial growth in heavy industry
Five-Year Plan
First
Achievements and limitations

Improve efficiency and construction of new plants
leads to increased production

Dnieper dam project

Traditional industrial centres developed (e.g.
Moscow and Leningrad) alongside new centres

Textile production declined, caused by collapse
in livestock numbers as a result of collectivization
Second

Completion of industrial centres started under
first plan

Steel production increased by four times, while
coal increased by six (1928–41)

The economic successes of these plans were stymied by chaotic
implementation and poor planning

This resulted in resources being wasted and over–ambitious production
targets imposed

Even though there were significant increases in food processing and
footwear production, overall, there were shortages of vital consumer
goods
By: Jude Lee
Date: February 22nd, 2012

Harsh working conditions dominated the industrial scene,
demonstrated in the use of slave labour to complete the White Sea
Canal

This shows how Stalin’s government had no regards to the human cost
of a project, provided the goal was successfully accomplished

Only 17% of Moscow’s workforce were skilled (1933)

In agriculture, 15 million kulaks were eliminated and 4 million people
died during the 1933 famine as a direct result of collectivization
Commodity
1928 levels
Post–collectivization levels
Cattle
70 million
Less than 39 million (1933)
Grain
73.3 million tonnes
67.7 million tonnes (1934)

It took decades before the USSR recovered from the agricultural
disaster of collectivization

Industrialization resulted in an enormous increase of urbanization, with
a significant portion of the population moving from the countryside into
towns
City
Pre–industrialization
Post–industrialization
population
population
Moscow
2.2 million (1929)
3.6 million (1936)
St. Petersburg
1.6 million (1926)
3.5 million (1939)

The coal and steel region of Donbass saw their population double in
the 1930s

As for the living standard in the USSR, the neglect of consumer goods,
food shortages, rationing and poor quality of goods during the first
Five–Year Plan was a result of “the most precipitous decline in living
standards known in recorded history”

Conditions improved after 1933, but real wages were still less than in
1928
By: Jude Lee
Date: February 22nd, 2012

Rationing was abolished in 1935, when cheap food became available
and work clothes given for free

Transportation in cities improved

However, few had a “modern apartment” with running water, electricity
and central heating

Five–Year Plans removed the “bourgeois” capitalist elements, kulaks
and Nepman

According to Stalin, there were now three classes that existed in the
USSR: the working class, peasantry and “working intelligenstia”

Stalin’s economic policies (collectivization and the Five–Year Plans)
have been evaluated by different viewpoints
School
Liberal
Views and opinions

High critical of the cost of Stalin’s achievements

Some acknowledgement of the economic progress made
as a result of these policies

However, human costs were too great to justify the goals
that were met

Highlights the totalitarian brutality, the horrors of gulags
and harsh conditions of industrial workers
Determinist

Stalin’s policies were a product of their time and
circumstances
Revisionist

Attempts to paint a balanced picture of Stalin

Stalinism was necessary, no desirable

Recognizes human costs, but views Stalin as effective

Examines modernization at a more local level

Their research indicates high level of disillusionment with
the NEP compromises

As a result, forced industrialization of Five–Year plans
were actually supported by sections of the population