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Effects of stalins policies
Stalins economic policies : success or failure
Stalins economic policies : success or failure
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A: Plan of Investigation
This investigation examines the extent to which the changes Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan had lead to the development of a greater industrial society. After the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Stalin had hoped to continue the Soviet Union’s development by expanding its economy. To assess the degree to which the people and economy of Russia had improved as an affect of the First Five-Year Plan, the results of the plan will be given, including the effects of the plan on the different industries in Russia. The details of why Stalin had chosen to introduce the First Five-Year Plan will also be observed.
The two sources Industry, State, and Society in Stalin’s Russia, 1926-1934 by David Shearer and Life and Bitter Waters:
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This is a primary source, written shortly after the time the First Five-Year Plan had ended and while the fourth plan was taking place. The purpose of this primarysource is to convey the great changes made to the Soviet Union, its task, path to fulfillment, and the results of the changes on agricultural production, industrial production, the conditions of workers, and the exchanging of goods with its towns and between other countries. One limitation associated with this source is the time it was written. The First Five-Year Plans occurred in 1928-1932; shortly after in 1945, this book was written by Stalin. With a longer time period, a larger-ranged hindsight bias could be given about the long-term results of the plan. However, this type of source also has certain values. In this book, Stalin explains the experiences of some people who were affected by the First Five-Year Plan and gives some insight to how they would feel when certain components were imposed, such as collectivization of the peasants’ …show more content…
Using this as an advantage, Stalin began his purges in the late 1930s, after the First Five-Year Plan, which had led thousands of people to oppose the plan. He permitted no criticism of the plan and aimed to rid all anti-Soviet citizens against his ideas (Gatrell). These purges, altogether called the Great Terror occurred between 1937 and 1938 and resulted with over 57,000 arrested across the Soviet Union and 48 of these executed (Service 355). Despite these purges, Russian workers claimed to be fortunate to be employed. Increased employment and further industrial development in the USSR immensely benefitted the economy (Sulimov). The increase in employment led to a decrease in the number of jobless citizens in the nation. This resulted in an increase in total productivity, and therefore an increase in the economy. The number of students in schools had also risen from a little over one million to four million. The original society with a low literacy rate had transformed into a relatively industrial society, being one of the world’s industrial powers (Andreev-Khomiakov
Tucker, Robert C. "Stalinism as Revolution from Above". Stalinism. Edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1999.
Trotsky, L., 2014. The Overthrow of Tzarism and the Triumph of the Soviets. In: L. Trotsky, The Russian Revolution, 1st ed. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
In order to establish whether Lenin did, indeed lay the foundation for Stalinism, two questions need to be answered; what were Lenin’s plans for the future of Russia and what exactly gave rise to Stalinism? Official Soviet historians of the time at which Stalin was in power would have argued that each one answers the other. Similarly, Western historians saw Lenin as an important figure in the establishment of Stalin’s socialist state. This can be partly attributed to the prevailing current of pro-Stalin anti-Hitler sentiments amongst westerners until the outbreak of the cold war.
The first five-year plan, approved in 1929, proposed that state and collective farms provide 15 percent of agriculture output. The predominance of private farming seemed assured, as many farmers resisted collectivization. By late 1929, Stalin moved abruptly to break peasant resistance and secure the resources required for industrialization. He saw that voluntary collectivism had failed, and many “Soviet economists doubted that the first plan could even be implimented.”1 Stalin may have viewed collectivization as a means to win support from younger party leaders, rather than from the peasants and Lenin’s men. “Privately he advocated, industrializing the country with the help of internal accumulation” 2 Once the peasantry had been split, Stalin believed that the rural proletarians would embrace collectivization . Before this idea had a chance to work, a grain shortage induced the Politburo to support Stalin’s sudden decision for immediate, massive collectivization.
"Stalin, Joseph." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. William A. Darity, Jr. 2nd ed. Vol. 8. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 86-87. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Life in USSR under Stalin." Life in USSR under Stalin. History Learning Site, 2000. Web. 24
In the late 1920’s, living in Lenin’s shadow, Stalin decided that the New Economic Policy would introduce the Five-Year Plan.
Under a backdrop of systematic fear and terror, the Stalinist juggernaut flourished. Stalin’s purges, otherwise known as the “Great Terror”, grew from his obsession and desire for sole dictatorship, marking a period of extreme persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. “The purges did not merely remove potential enemies. They also raised up a new ruling elite which Stalin had reason to think he would find more dependable.” (Historian David Christian, 1994). While Stalin purged virtually all his potential enemies, he not only profited from removing his long-term opponents, but in doing so, also caused fear in future ones. This created a party that had virtually no opposition, a new ruling elite that would be unstoppable, and in turn negatively impacted a range of sections such as the Communist Party, the people of Russia and the progress in the Soviet community, as well as the military in late 1930 Soviet society.
Documents two, three, five, and eleven exemplify the positive aspects of Stalin’s policies. Document two, from the text book History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (1948), tells of all the achievements of Socialism in Russia. Some of the achievements were the rejoicing to the Party, workers and collective farmers, the Soviet intelligentsia, and the honest citizens of the Soviet Union. This document celebrates the demolition of the enemies of the Party, the consolidation of the ranks, and the classless Socialist society (Doc. 2). In document three Alec Nove’s An Economic History of the USSR (1969) shows the positive impact of the five-year plans through a chart. The chart lists the increases in coal, oil, pig-iron, steel, electricity, and wollen cloth. Coal went from 35.4 (millions of tons) in 1927 to 128 in 1937. Oil increa...
The Soviet economy was highly centralized with a “command economy” (p.1). fsmitha.com), which had been broken down due to its complexity and centrally controlled with corruption involved in it. A strong government needs a strong economy to maintain its power and influence, but in this case the economic planning of the Soviet Union was just not working, which had an influence in other communist nations in Eastern Europe as they declined to collapse. The economic stagnation led to the frustration of the workers because of low payments, bad working conditions, inefficiency, corruption and any lack of incentive to do good work. There were lots of frustrations among the workers in the working field who began to express their feelings and emotions towards the Soviet government.
21 May 2015. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/index.htm The "Critical Reception" Nineteen Eighty-Four: Past, Present, and Future. Patrick Reilly. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989. 11-23.
7) Vernadsky, George. A History of Russia: Fourth Edition, Completely Revised. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.
The 'Secondary Davies, R.W.. Soviet Economic Development from Lenin to Khrushchev. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1998. Boettke,Peter J., et al. The political economy of Soviet socialism: the formative years, 1918-1928.
Lenin's Economic Policies in 1924 When the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917 they inherited many of the problems faced by the old Tsarist regime as well as those of the Provisional Government after the Tsars abdication. Lenin, as leader of the Bolsheviks took many measures to try and solve these problems, each with varying degrees of success. This essay will, therefore, go on to look at and discuss the various measures that Lenin and the Bolshevik party took, and, whether these measures created more problems for Russia in the end or in fact made significant progress towards the communist society that Lenin had prophesised for Russia. In the early days of Bolshevik rule, there were many problems facing Lenin.