1. L9: Economic Life Under Stalin
Agenda
Objective:
To understand…
Stalin’s economic program: The Five Year Plan & Collectivization
How these plans:
Are representative of Soviet totalitarianism
Invoke a “war” mentality in the USSR
Serve as political programs
Function to exert panoptic control over the Soviet people.
Schedule:
Lecture, Video Clips, and Discussion
Homework
Work on prewriting check-in. Rolling Deadline.

2. Guiding Questions
Where do you see characteristics of totalitarianism in Stalin’s regime?
How was the Soviet Union a “nation at war” under the economic policies of Stalin?
In what ways were the Five Year Plan and Collectivization actually political programs?
In what ways were the Five Year Plan and Collectivization designed to exert panoptic control over the Soviet people?
Think about why people went along with the economic programs.

3. Stalin’s Vision for the Soviet Union
To Stalin, the primary goal of the Soviet Union was to industrialize in order to first catch up with the west, and then to surpass it. Moreover, he wanted to do so at break-neck speed.
“…Now that we have overthrown capitalism and power is in our hands, in the hands of the people, we have a fatherland, and we must uphold its independence. Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? If you do not want this, you must put an end to the backwardness in the shortest possible time and develop a genuine Bolshevik tempo in building up its socialist economy.”
From: Stalin, Joseph. J. Stalin: Works July , vol London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955.
This was a matter of absolute urgency, for the pace of Soviet industrialization determined whether the U.S.S.R. would excel internationally or crumble before its enemies.
“To slacken the tempo would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten…We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it or we shall go under.”

4. Stalin’s Economic Program
Two Components:
Industrial Revolution
The Five Year Plan
The First Five Year Plan ( )
The Second Five Year Plan ( )
The Third Five Year Plan ( )
Agricultural Revolution
Collectivization of Farms

5. The Five Year Plan Stalin’s plan for industrializing the Soviet Union
The top priority of the Soviet government
Repealed private ownership permitted under the NEP
Instituted a command economy into the Soviet Union
Command economy
All industry owned by the state
All industrial development planned by the state
The state decides what is produced, how much is produced, and where it should be produced.
Emphasis was on heavy
industries such as coal, oil,
iron, steel, and electricity
Emphasis was on exports, not
consumption
Few consumer goods

6. The Five Year Plan
Step One: Consolidate all industry in the hands of the state
No private ownership, no personal surplus, no personal profits.
By the early 1930s even small shopkeepers and local artisans had been forced into state-supervised cooperatives.
Step Two: Build giant plants, mines, and factories
Massive industrial complex were constructed throughout the USSR , epitome of which was Magnitogorsk (Magnetic Mountain)
Step Three: Develop production targets for the USSR
Each plan set a production target which industries had to meet.
Within that industry target, each factory had a production target to meet.
These targets were largely unrealistic, hence the need for more and more 5 year plans.

7. “Anatolii Skurikhin: Magnitka Under Construction” (1932) Source: Grigori Chudakov, Olga Suslova, and Lilya Ukhtomskaya, eds.: Pioneers of Soviet photography. New York: Thames and Hudson

8. Dmitrii Debabov: Construction of Magnitogorsk (1930)Source: Leah Bendavid-Val, editor: Propaganda & Dreams: Photographing the 1930s in the USSR and the US. Zurich and New York: Stemmle Publishers GmbH

9. The Five Year Plan The Five Year Plan demanded worker productivity.
Three campaigns were designed to ensure high-rates of productivity
Socialist Competitions
Shock workers
Stakhanovite Movement
(1935)

10. Socialist Competitions
Competitions between factories for who could most exceed their production targets
Workers who signed up for these competitions and who then went on to help their factories secure victory were known as shock workers

11. Shock Workers Workers and employees who exceeded their quotas.
Received public honor in newspapers and at meetings, received privileged treatment in dining facilities and in the allocation of scarce goods, accommodation, and vacation vouchers.

12. Stakhanovite Movement
On August 31, 1935 Aleksei Stakhanov, a 33 year old miner, mined 102 tons of coals during a 6 hour shift. This amount represented 14 times his quota.
The Soviet government capitalized on this achievement and launched the Stakhanovite movement.
Stakhanovite: title given to workers or peasants who set production records that superceded that of shock worker.
Stakhanovites were given increased earnings, cars, and praise at national meetings.
They were also featured in newspapers and advertisements.
They were idealized in all areas (manners, culture, aptitude, and skills)--held up as ideal citizens--not just ideal workers.
Designed to demonstrate the prosperity that communism was said to bring to Russia.
Video Clip:

13. When all else fails, humiliation, labor camp, and/or death…
Every factory had large display boards erected that showed the output of workers. Those that failed to reach the required targets were publicity criticized and humiliated.
Records were kept of workers' lateness, absenteeism and bad workmanship. If the worker's record was poor, he was accused of trying to sabotage the Five Year Plan and if found guilty could be shot or sent to work as forced labor.

14. Effects of the Five Year Plan: Industrial Outputs
The Five year plans were successful at modernizing/industrializing Russia
By 1935, the USSR had a 13% share of the world’s manufacturing, surpassing Great Britain, France, and Germany.
In the 1930s, while the rest of Europe and the United States suffered a Great Depression, the Soviet Union had an unemployment rate of 0%.

15. Effects of the Five Year Plan: Workers
Pay was poor
Few consumer goods to purchase with what little money they had
Working conditions were dangerous
Hours were long
Rationing of food

16. Video Clips!

17. Agricultural Revolution: Collectivization
Stalin believed that if the 5 Year Plan was going to succeed, the factory workers in the urban areas needed to be well-fed.
Stalin believed that Russia needed to undergo an Agricultural Revolution in order to achieve three goals:
Increase crop yields and thus better feed the industrial workers
Mechanize agricultural production
Eliminate the kulaks
Richer farmers who had
made money under the
privatization allowed by
the NEP
Represented a
counterweight to Soviet
power in the villages and
had to be eliminated.

18. Collectivization The program Stalin introduced to achieve these
goals was collectivization.
Collectivization:
All small farms would be
gathered together to form
one large massive farm,
called collectives.
These collectives would use science and machinery to
increase the amount of crops they produced.
By 1930, 50% of all farms in the USSR had been collectivized
By 1938, 90% of all farms in the USSR had been collectivized.

19. Arkadii Shishkin: We are for the Kolkhoz
Arkadii Shishkin: We are for the Kolkhoz! (1929)Source: Grigori Chudakov, Olga Suslova, and Lilya Ukhtomskaya, eds.: Pioneers of Soviet photography. New York: Thames and Hudson

20. Reaction to the Collectives
Kulaks were strongly opposed to collectivization.
Many kulaks resisted collectivization by killing their animals and destroying their grain so that they could not be taken by Stalin’s secret police.
This began an era of almost unparalleled slaughter of farm animals and the systematic destruction of grain.
1928
1934
Grain
73.3 million tons
67.6 million tons
Cattle
70.5 million
42.4 million
Pigs
26 million
22.6 million
Sheep and Goats
146.7 million
51.9 million

21. Reaction to the Collectives
Stalin called for the “liquidation [of the kulaks] as a class.”
Stalin tried to turn the poorer peasants against the kulaks.
"Look at the kulaks farms : their barns and sheds are crammed with grain. And yet they are holding onto this grain because they are demanding three times the price offered by the government.”
Joseph Stalin, speech, 1928
Much was made in propagandistic newsreels of “kulak resistance” and successful searches and confiscations carried out by the police and party officials.
Those identified as kulaks were subjected to confiscation, deportation, incarceration in labor camps, or execution.
Thousands were executed and an estimated 5 million were sent into exile.
Video Clips (1 &2):

22. Effects of Collectivization: Famine
Stalin also viewed collectivization as an opportunity to rid Russia of “undesirable” peasant populations such as those living in the Ukraine
Between 1932 and 1933, Stalin ordered the secret police to take all food from Ukrainian peasants and to leave them nothing.
The result was a Great Famine (Ukrainian Genocide) in which nearly 5 million Ukrainians died
Meanwhile the government was exporting millions of tons of grain to earn money for industrialization.
In total it is estimated that 9 million people died as a result of various famines brought on by collectivization

23. Further Discussion
Where do you see characteristics of totalitarianism in Stalin’s regime?
How was the Soviet Union a “nation at war” under the economic policies of Stalin?
In what ways were the Five Year Plan and Collectivization actually political programs?
In what ways were the Five Year Plan and Collectivization designed to exert panoptic control over the Soviet people?
Think about why people went along with the economic programs.