02 Industrial and Agricultural change 1917-53

Question 1

The Russian Civil War

Answer 1

-1918-1921
-Reds only controlled Western Russia, rest controlled by Whites
-Famine and 6 million deaths

Question 2

Lenin’s Land Decree

Answer 2

-October 1917
-Abolished private ownership of land which was given to ‘the people’

Question 3

Lenin’s Decree of worker’s control

Answer 3

-November 1917
-Placed control of the factories into the hands of industrial workers (workers don’t know how to run the factories)

Question 4

War Communism

Answer 4

-1918-1921, replaced State Capitalism 1918
-Nationalisation of all industry
-Forced grain requisitioning
-Strict labour discipline including 11 hour work days
-Private trade made illegal
-Money abolished

Question 5

War Communism a pragmatic policy?

Answer 5

-It was ‘necessitated by the exceptionally difficult conditions of national defence’
-A product of the economic collapse caused by WW1

Question 6

War Communism an ideological policy?

Answer 6

-Only survived for a year after the civil war
-Simply called Communism at the time (called War Communism after it’s failure)
-Aligned with communist beliefs – money, private trade abolished – class warfare the kulaks to stir up inter-class hatred, un-even food distribution to punish the middle class who were referred to as ‘former people’
-Stalin’s communist policies in the 1930’s based upon War Communism

Question 7

War Communism failures

Answer 7

-By 1921, industrial production had fallen to 1/5 of the 1913 production
-Industrial workforce declined from 3 to 1 million
-Disease and starvation were common and there was a wave of serious unrest across the countryside

Question 8

Tambov Uprising

Answer 8

-1920-1921
-Massive peasant revolt due to the Bolsheviks taking all the grain
-15,000 peasants executed
-Union between the peasants and the workers has broken down

Question 9

Kronstadt Mutiny

Answer 9

-1921
-Kronstadt sailors from naval base that had rebelled against the Tsar in 1917
-Used to be the most loyal Bolshevik supporters
-Caused the reform away from War Communism

Question 10

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Answer 10

-1921-1928

Question 11

New Economic Policy Industry

Answer 11

-Industrial production increased from 1920-1926, over the pre-war 1913 level
-Railways carried more traffic in 1926-1927 than in 1913 (pre-war)

Question 12

New Economic Policy Agriculture

Answer 12

-Grain harvest increased
-Farming methods had not modernised by 1928 and 20% of peasants still farmed with a wooden plough and 50% of the harvest was still collected by hand

Question 13

New Economic Policy Life for workers

Answer 13

-Monthly wages of urban workers increased from 1920-1926
-With state-run factories being expected to increase productivity due to the budget defecit, workers were laid off with urban unemployment increasing from 1922-1929

Question 14

New Economic Policy Ideology

Answer 14

-All wages paid in money in 1924 (money going against communist ideology)
-Capitalist grain market for peasants
-The hated Kulaks and Nepmen profited off the NEP with the use of capitalism, going against communist ideals
-Nepmen controlled 2/3 of all retail trade by 1924

Question 15

Scissors Crisis

Answer 15

-1923
-price of manufactured goods rose sharply relative to the price of agricultural goods
-This meant the peasants delayed their purchases of consumer goods until prices fell and therefore delayed selling their grain
-This jeopardised food supplies in urban areas

Question 16

Government response to Scissors Crisis

Answer 16

-The government responded to a reduction in the volume of grain marketing’s by decreeing a reduction in industrial prices at the beginning of 1924, therefore giving peasants a concession in what was supposedly a workers’ state

Question 17

Grain Crisis

Answer 17

-1927
-State cut prices paid to peasants for grain by 25% which resulted in the Soviet government only being able to buy 50% of what it had bought in despite the harvest having been excellent
-Instead of raising prices, Russia’s leaders decided to intervene directly in the grain trade by encouraging local politicians to charge peasants with crimes

Question 18

Magnitogorsk population, turnover, housing

Answer 18

-grew from 25 in 1929 to 250,000 in 1933

-High turnover of labour with the average worker staying for 82 days

-Housing crisis brewing

Question 19

Five Year Plans organization

Answer 19

-Organized by Gosplan – Agency which sets targets for every industry, factory, worker

Question 20

Reasons for Rapid Industrialisation

Answer 20

Fear of Invasion
-Police raid Soviet embassy in London in 1927
-Soviet diplomat assassinated in Poland in 1927
-In the Chinese civil war, the Chinese Nationalist attacked the Chinese Communists in 1927
-Soviets fearing invasions and are not ready for war so want to prepare

Limitations of NEP
-Growth under NEP stagnated

Question 21

First Five-Year plan

Answer 21

-1929–1932
-Ended a year early due to being mostly finished

Question 22

First Five-Year plan Successes

Answer 22

-Increase Coal, Iron, and Steel production
-Created a heavy industry base for the USSR
-Soviet workers in industry, construction, and transport grew from 4.5 million to 12.5 million
-Factory output increased by 120%

Question 23

First Five-Year plan Weaknesses

Answer 23

-Consumer goods industries were sacrificed to the needs of heavy industry
-Bottlenecks due to shortages of materials and the inadequacy of the transport system/railways
-Shortages, wastage, underproduction, and overproduction
-Few managers or officials were prepared to admit anything was wrong
-loss of valuable personnel so quickly caused so many problems that by 1931 the offensive against them was quietly dropped

Question 24

Second Five-Year Plan

Answer 24

1933-1937

Question 25

Second Five-Year Plan Successes

Answer 25

-Emphasized consolidation
-Correcting mistakes of the First Five-Year Plan
-Large investment into the railway system
-Many schemes that were started in the first plan now came online - such as the USSR becoming almost self-sufficient in the production of machine tools
-Soviet Union enjoyed the ‘three good years’ of 1934-1936 with rising wages

Question 26

Second Five-Year Plan Weaknesses

Answer 26

-As the plan progressed, resources meant for consumer goods were once again diverted into other areas
-Still shortages, wastage, underproduction, and overproduction, but on a lesser scale

Question 27

Third Five-Year Plan

Answer 27

-1938-1941
-Ended early due to outbreak of war

Question 28

Third Five-Year Plan Successes

Answer 28

-Factories built in the East, behind the Urals, away from the warpath of the soon to attack Germans
-By 1941, USSR had succeeded in creating the industrial base for a powerful arms industry
-Around 12% annual increase in industrial growth
-Average annual production of airplanes and tanks rose by 4x, artillery and rifles rose by 2.5x

Question 29

Third Five-Year Plan Weaknesses

Answer 29

-USSR saw an economic slowdown
-Some industries such as iron and steel virtually stopped growing
-fuel crisis in 1938 when the oil industry failed to meet its modest targets
-The Great Purges, which were in full swing in 1936 and 1937, deprived the economy of valuable personnel and paralysed the ability of administrators and party officials to take the initiative and solve problems

Question 30

Grand projects under the 5-Year Plans

Answer 30

-Dneiper dam, was the world’s largest hydro-electric dam on its opening, built 1927-32

-White Sea Canal, waterway connecting the White Sea to the Baltic Sea which was constructed in just 20 months from 1931-33, but using forced labour to do so

Question 31

Oil Production

Answer 31

more than doubled From the start of the 1st 5YP to the end of the 3rd 5YP

Question 32

Collectivisation

Answer 32

-Launched in 1929, most farms collectivised by 1940
-End of private landownership and creation of large, state controlled farms
-Around 2 million peasants identified as kulaks were sent to remote prison camps.

Question 33

Great Famine

Answer 33

-1930-1933
-Around 5 million people died
-Man-made famine due to collectivisation and due to Soviet officials seizing all the farmers grain
-Called Holodomor in Ukraine due to believed ethnic purging

Question 34

Collectivised farm production

Answer 34

-Grain harvest decreased by 15 million tons between 1930-1933
-Cattle decreased by 14 million between 1930-33, it would take 20 years for cattle numbers to recover

-However, State procurement of grain increased, but only by a tiny half a million tons between 1930-1933

Question 35

Collectivised farm grain quotas

Answer 35

-up to 40% of the crops

Question 36

Collectivisation - Peasants leaving the countryside

Answer 36

-In 1931, 2 ½ million peasants permanently migrated to the towns
-During the First 5 Year Plan, for every 3 peasants that joined collective farms, 1 peasant left the village to become a wage earner
-Vast majority of migrants made up by the young and able-bodied resulting in weakness in the collectivised agriculture and demoralised peasantry

Question 37

Collectivisation - Feeling similar to under Tsarist rule

Answer 37

-Still a lack of machinery, same old wooden ploughs still used
-Internal passports introduced in December 1932 as the government attempted to keep peasants from leaving the countryside, which reinforced the peasant’s feeling that collectivisation was just was a second serfdom

Question 38

Tank and plane production

Answer 38

-From 1941-1945, USSR was able to produce more tanks and planes than Germany every single year

Question 39

Effect of German invasion

Answer 39

-German forces were in control of 45 percent of the Soviet population.
-Iron and steel production had dropped by 60 percent.
-The country’s best agricultural land, which produced around 40 percent of its grain, was in German hands.

Question 40

Soviet economic recovery

Answer 40

-Coal, steel, oil production recovered in 10 years
-Grain production recovered in 20 years