STALIN ECONOMY 1924-41

Question 1

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

Disputes over the continuation of the NEP lay at the hear of the leadership struggle between 1924-9.
During this period, Stalin’s views started to change so that by 1927 he was ready to change the new policy:

Answer 1

1925
* 14th Party Congress called for the transformation of our country from an agrarian into an industrial one, capable by its own efforts of producing the necessary means.
1926
* NEP was maintained although concerns were raised as more investment was needed to drive industry forwards.
Dec 1927
* 15th Party Congress - announcement of the end of NEP and the beginning of the First Five Year Plan for rapid industrialisation, known as the Great Turn’.

Question 2

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

what was the great turn?

Answer 2

This was the move from the NEP to the Five-Year Plans and collectivisation of agriculture. This entailed a move to central planning, making the government responsible for economic coordination.
This is sometimes called a ‘command economy’.
It was believed that the new industrial growth would build self-sufficiency and lead to a truly socialist state.

Question 3

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

Stalin’s ‘Great Turn’ was driven by a number of economic factors.

Answer 3

• By 1927, the NEP was failing to produce the growth that many leading communists sought, and a war scare in the late 1920s made them particularly nervous.
• They wanted to increase the USSRs military strength and develop its self-sufficiency, so that it was less reliant on foreign imports.
• Furthermore, to move towards true socialism it was essential to develop industry and not have a state dependent on peasants and the grain harvest.

Question 4

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

It also suited Stalin’s personal style to have strong central control over the economy, known as

Answer 4

‘central planning’.

Question 5

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

Stalin chose to advance his economic programme for industry through a series of ‘Five Year Plans’, which set targets for the chosen industrial enterprises to attain. These targets were usually very ambitious; they were intended to

Answer 5

force managers and workers to devote their maximum effort to the programme.

Question 6

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

The launching and fulfilment of these plans were accompanied by much propaganda.
Since failure to achieve a target was deemed a criminal offence, all those involved in administering and carrying out the plans went to great lengths to

Answer 6

ensure that the reported statistics showed huge improvements - often way above the targets originally set.
Thus, corruption and faulty reporting was built into the system from the outset.

Question 7

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

THE FIRST FIVE YEAR PLAN, 1928-32
The aims of the First Five Year Plan were to:

Answer 7

• increase production by 300 per cent by setting targets for growth develop heavy industry (coal, iron, steel, oil, and machinery)
• boost electricity production by 600%.
• double the output from light industry such as chemicals production.

Question 8

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

successes of the first 5 year plan

Answer 8

• The publicity surrounding the launch of the plan provoked an enthusiastic response.
• Such was its success that Stalin claimed that the targets were met in four years rather than five.
• Electricity output trebled, coal and iron output doubled, and steel production increased by a third.
• New railways, engineering plants, hydro-electric power schemes and industrial complexes such Magnitogorsk sprang up.

Question 9

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

failures of the first 5 year plan

Answer 9

• In reality, none of the major targets was actually met due to ‘over- enthusiastic’ reporting by local officials, keen to show their loyalty and effort.
• despite Stalin’s claims, the targets for the chemical industry were not met and house buildings, food processing and other consumer industries were woefully neglected.
• There were too few skilled workers and too little effective central coordination for efficient development.
• As well as this, smaller industrial works and workshops lost out in the competition from the bigger factories.

Question 10

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

THE SECOND FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1933-7
Aimed to:

Answer 10

• Continue the development of heavy industry.
• Put new emphasis on the light industries such as chemical, electrical and consumer goods.
• Develop communications to provide links between cities and areas of industry.
• Boost engineering and toolmaking.

Question 11

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

The second 5 year plans had some success, particularly during the three good years – 1934-6:

3

Answer 11

• Moscow metro opened in 1935.
• Volga canal in 1937.
• Dneiprostrio dam producing hydro-electric power that had just been completed in 1932 was extended with 3 more generators to make it the largest dam in Europe.

Question 12

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

further successes of the 2nd 5 year plan

2

Answer 12

• Electricity production and the chemical industries grew rapidly and new metals such as copper, zinc and tin were mined for the first time.
• Steel output trebled, coal production doubled and by 1930, the Soviet Union was virtually self-sufficient in metal goods and machine tools.

Question 13

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

• In 1936, the focus of the plan changed slightly as a greater emphasis was placed on rearmament, which rose from

Answer 13

4 per cent of GDP in 1933 to 17 per cent by 1937.

Question 14

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

2nd 5 year plan failures

Answer 14

• oil production failed to meet its targets and despite some expansion in footwear and food-processing, there was still no appreciable increase in consumer goods.
• Furthermore, an emphasis on quantity, rather than quality, which had also marred the First Five Year Plan, continued.

Question 15

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

The Third Five Year Plan, 1938-42
The aims of the Third Five Year Plan were to:

3 aims

Answer 15

• Focus on the development of heavy industry (given a renewed impetus because of fear of war)
• Promote rapid rearmament.
• Complete the transition to communism.

Question 16

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

successes of the 3rd 5 year plan

Answer 16

Again, heavy industry was the main beneficiary, with some strong growth in machinery and engineering, although the picture varied across the country

Question 17

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

3rd 5 year plan failures caused because resources were increasingly diverted to rearmament, on which spending doubled between 1938 and 1940 - This had an adverse effect on other areas:

2 points

Answer 17

• Steel production stagnated, oil failed to meet targets, causing a fuel crisis, and many industries found themselves short of raw materials.
• Consumer goods were also relegated, once again, to the lowest priority.

Question 18

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

• The biggest problems with the Third Five Year Plan were the

Answer 18

death of good managers, specialists and technicians following Stalin’s purges, an exceptionally hard winter in 1938, and the diversion of funds into rearmament and defence.

Question 19

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

the 3rd 5 year plan was disrupted and finished early because of

Answer 19

the German invasion of 1941.

Question 20

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

• Priorities in planning were established by the Party Output targets and labour norms were laid down.
• Instructions were passed down through bureaucratic layers to industrial managers.

managers?

Answer 20

• Managers were required to ‘balance the books’, paying for fuel, raw materials, and labour from their enterprise’s income.
• Failure to meet targets was a criminal offence.
• Managers who failed to meet targets could find themselves accused of ‘wrecking’.

Bonuses were paid to enterprises that exceeded targets Managers had to pay ‘extra’ to workers who exceeded norms rather than using bonuses for further investment

Question 21

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

Changes in agricultural organisation were seen as a prerequisite for rapid industrialisation:

why?

Answer 21

• Surplus grain was needed to enable purchase of industrial equipment and to feed growing workforce, yet the peasants were still not producing enough by 1927.
• Furthermore, ideological beliefs favoured a more socialist system in the countryside.
• Critics of the free market created by the NEP believed that the system was working to the advantage of the peasants over the industrial workers and that the peasants (with their ‘petty-bourgeois attitudes’ a term used in a derogatory way to suggest the peasants were middle class or ‘bourgeois’ in outlook, thinking only of themselves and how they could make personal profits) were holding back the move to true socialism.

Question 22

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

Stalin’s Great Turn’ involved a move towards collective farming – which was

it was hoped that they would..

Answer 22

a form of cooperative farming where all the agricultural workers were employed on large factory farms, delivering quotas of grain and other food products to the state.

Collectives, it was hoped, would provide for more effective farming, give more opportunity for mechanisation, make grain collection easier and socialise the peasants.

Question 23

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

Under Stalin, a kulak was defined as a peasant that owned

Answer 23

two horses and four cows or more. However, the term was often extended and interpreted in an arbitrary way by local officials.

Question 24

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

what happened in they years 1926-29

Answer 24

1926
* Despite a good harvest, the requisition of grain produces only 50 per cent of what is expected.
* It is suspected that grain is being hoarded. This leads to increased taxes on kulak speculators and NEP men.
1928
* Continuing problems lead to rationing in cities. The ‘Ural-Siberian method of grain requisitioning (supported by Stalin) involves the forcible seizure of grain and the closing down of markets. This brings unrest in rural areas.
1929
* The Ural-Siberian method is used throughout most of the Soviet Union bringing the NEP to an end. In December, Stalin launches forced collectivisation.

Question 25

Stalin believed that some of the grain procurement problems had been caused by the kulaks or richer peasants, who understood how to make money by holding back supplies.
in December 1929, Stalin announced that he would ‘annihilate the kulaks as a class’.

this led to

Answer 25

• The Red Army and Cheka were used to identify, execute, or deport kulaks, which were said to represent 4% of peasant households.
• In reality, around 15% of peasant households were destroyed and 150,000 richer peasants were forced to migrate north and east to poorer land.
• Some tried to avoid being labelled as kulaks, by killing their livestock and destroying their crops, but this only added to rural problems.

Question 26

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

COLLECTIVISATION STAGE 1, 1929-30

Answer 26

In January 1930, Stalin announced that 25 per cent of grain-farming areas were to be collectivised that year.
Collectivisation went hand-in-hand with the destruction of the kulaks, whose treatment was designed to frighten poorer peasants into joining the ‘kolkhoz’ collectives

Question 27

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

what is a kolkhoz

Answer 27

a collective operated by a number of peasant families on state-owned land, where peasants lived rent-free but had to fulfil state-procurement quotas; any surplus was divided between the families according to the amount of work put in, and each family also had a small private plot

Question 28

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

The secret police, army, and Party work brigades, sent from the cities, were all used to force the peasants into accepting the new arrangements.
By March 1930,

Answer 28

58% of peasant households had been collectivised through a mixture of force and propaganda.

Question 29

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

The speed of collectivisation had created such hostility, that a brief return to voluntary collectivisation was permitted until after the harvest had been collected that year, but

Answer 29

numbers immediately began to fall back and by October 1930, only around 20 per cent of households were still collectivised.

Question 30

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

COLLECTIVISATION STAGE 2, 1930-41
A new drive to collectivisation began in 1931, proceeding at a slower pace and accompanied by

what was the purpose of them

Answer 30

the establishment of 2500 machine tractor stations (MTS) to provide seed and maintain and hire machinery to the kolkhozes.

These MTS also had a secondary purpose: to ensure that quotas were collected and to control the countryside by dealing with troublemakers.

Question 31

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

• In 1931, 50% of households were collectivised, and by 1941, this was

Answer 31

100%.

Question 32

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

On the surface, the drive to collectivisation looked successful but there were massive problems with its implementation:

5 points

Answer 32

• ‘Dekulakisation’ was not only inhumane, but it also removed c10 million of the most successful farmers.
• Grain and livestock were destroyed (25-30 per cent of cattle, pigs and sheep were slaughtered by peasants 1929-33). Livestock numbers did not exceed pre-collectivisation until 1953.
• Unrealistic procurement quotas led to peasants being forced to hand over almost all their grain in some areas. Grain output did not exceed pre-collectivisation levels until after 1935.
• The collectives were often poorly organised. The Party activists who helped establish them knew nothing of farming; there were also too few tractors, insufficient animals to pull ploughs (as they had been eaten by the peasants) and a lack of fertilisers.
• In October 1931, drought hit many agricultural areas. Combined with kulak deportations, this brought a severe drop in food production and by the spring of 1932, famine appeared in the Ukraine - and spread to parts of the northern Caucasus. The period 1932-33 saw one of the worst famines in Russian history (and in some areas it continued to 1934)

Question 33

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

• Despite the drop in grain production, the State continued its requisitions. Government policy therefore

Answer 33

contributed to the deaths from famine.

Question 34

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

By a law of August 1932, anyone who stole from a collective (and this could mean taking a few ears of corn)

Answer 34

could be jailed for ten years. (This was subsequently made a capital crime.)

Question 35

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

Further decrees gave ten-year sentences for any attempt to sell meat or grain before quotas were filled, and internal passports were brought in to stop the peasants leaving the collectives.
Not surprisingly, the peasants referred to collectivisation as

Answer 35

a second serfdom.

Question 36

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

Although peasants were supposed to receive a share of the profits of their collective farm, these profits were non-existent, and peasants saw little incentive to work hard.
Their only interest was their private plots, in which

Answer 36

they could grow goods to sell in the marketplace and since the food was desperately needed, the government allowed this to continue.
It is estimated that 52% of vegetables, 70% of meat and 71% of the milk in the Soviet Union was produced in this way.

Question 37

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

Overall, the State seemed to achieve its purposes in promoting collectivisation.
The industrial workforce was fed, and exports of grain increased, while many peasants escaped the countryside to swell the workforce in the towns.

what were the failures

Answer 37

such achievements were at the expense of the peasants themselves who, at best, endured an upheaval that destroyed a way of life and ant worst were forced to starve and die in the interests of economic socialisation

Question 38

15 . SUMMARY

Between 1917 and 1941, the organisation of the Soviet economy went through a number of stages:

Answer 38

• State capitalism 1917-18
• War Communism 1918-21
• NEP 1921-28
• Central planning with the Five-Year Plans and enforced collectivisation 1928-41.

By 1941, the USSR had a command economy, tightly run by the State.
To achieve this, the personal interests of many groups of people had been sacrificed.

Question 39

18 . The , economic condition of the Soviet Union by 1941

By 1941, Stalin’s Five-Year Plans had transformed Russia into a highly industrialised and urbanised nation, while all Russian farms had been collectivised and the free market ended.
Although Soviet claims and statistics were often exaggerated, an impressive transformation had taken place since 1917 - and even more so since 1928:

2 points

Answer 39

• In 1926, 17 per cent of the population lived in towns, but by 1939, 33 per cent did so.
• By 1940, the USSR had overtaken Britain in iron and steel production and was not far behind Germany.

Question 40

18 . The , economic condition of the Soviet Union by 1941

By developing heavy industry, transport and power resources, Stalin helped lay the foundation for the ultimate Soviet victory in the Second World War:

3 points

Answer 40

• Coal and oil production were vastly stepped up in the Third Five Year Plan.
• Nine aircraft factories were constructed in 1939.
• 1938-1941, spending on rearmament rose from 27.5 billion roubles to 70.9 billion roubles.

Question 41

18 . The , economic condition of the Soviet Union by 1941

However, there were crucial weaknesses:

4 points

Answer 41

• Economic development was uneven and although there was a massive growth in heavy industry, consumer production had been so neglected that consumer goods were scarcer in 1941 than they had been under the NEP.
• The quality of goods was also poor, even though labour productivity had increased.
• The bureaucrats were so set on meeting their exaggerated targets that nothing else mattered to them.
• The central planning system was inefficient and organisation at local level was at times chaotic and not helped by Stalin’s purges of specialists and managers.

Question 42

18 . The , economic condition of the Soviet Union by 1941

Furthermore, in 1941 the nation was still producing less grain than under the NEP.

this was because

3

Answer 42

• A major crop failure in 1936, which produced a yield even smaller than that of 1941, weakened the nations reserves.
• There was insufficient attention paid to modern farming techniques and limited use of agricultural machinery.
• Even when available, modern agricultural equipment was sometimes neglected because there were insufficient rained individuals to service and repair it.

Question 43

18 . The , economic condition of the Soviet Union by 1941

Economically, despite the move towards rearmament in the Third Five Year Plan, there were deficiencies in the quantity and quality of equipment:

Answer 43

• Most Soviet aircraft, tanks and guns were of old design and the reconstruction of the navy had been slow, with Stalin insisting on the development of traditional battleships and cruisers rather than aircraft carriers.

Question 44

18 . The , economic condition of the Soviet Union by 1941

Stalin’s industrial drive had certainly made the Soviet Union stronger than it would have been ten years earlier - by 1941 the Soviet Union was producing

Answer 44

230 tanks, 700 military aircraft, and more than 100,000 rifles per month.

Question 45

18 . The , economic condition of the Soviet Union by 1941

However, because of the increased expenditure on the military, there had been insufficient investment in the

Answer 45

collective and state farm system, which was still not producing enough to feed the population.