AS FP3 : Economic developments ; The Launch of the First-Five Year Plans and the decision to collectivise

Question 1

Conceptual Awareness

What were the aims of the first five-year plan?
[7]

Answer 1

• Centralised planning to be maximised
• Development of Heavy Indusry
• Production increased by 300%
• Improve the transport system
• Transform the economy by electrification
• Feed the expanding workforce through big increases in agricultrual production
• Light industry was given low priority but still expected to double its output.

Question 2

Conceptual awareness

What was the launch of the first plan accompanied by?

Answer 2

A wave of propaganda.

Question 3

Conceptual Awareness

What is the definition of a Socialist Economy?

Answer 3

One where there is no private ownership and in which all members of society have a share in the State’s resources.

Question 3

Conceptual Awareness

What did the urban workers and peasants hope for concerning the FYP?

Answer 3

• Urban workers hoped for better employment prospects and higher living standards
• Many poor and ‘middle’ peasants were led to believe they would benefit from further land reform and the introduction of more modern methods.

Question 3

Conceptual Awareness

What were the main reasons behind collectivisation?

Answer 3

• Grain procurement crisis
• Need for increased food supplies for expanding work force
• An ideological conviction that collectivisation was the true communist path and the Kulaks were in the way of it.
• Destroying the ‘Mir’ would allow the party to exert its authority over the peasants.
• Larger units of land could be farmed more efficiently through mechanisation ; creating surplus labout for the urban workforce.

Question 4

Conceptual Awareness

What percent of the population was proletariat in 1928?

Answer 4

Only 20%

Question 5

Conceptual Awareness

What was the Ural-Siberian Method?

Answer 5

The Ural-Siberian method was the closing of free markets across the region using the criminal law (Article 107) to stop speculation - hoarding grain- and pressuring local officials to seize by force.

Question 6

Conceptual Awareness

When did Stalin announce the ‘liquidation of the Kulaks as a class’?

Answer 6

December 1929.