1. Stalin’s Five Year Plan
Collectivisation

2. Stalin’s Great Turn – Why?
NEP not Communist enough for rank and file communists (who Stalin depended upon)
Peasantry becoming too powerful vis-à-vis Urban Proletariat
Conspicuous consumption by Nepmen
Unemployment rising in the Worker’s Paradise
Speculative Hoarding
1928 War Scare – Not enough strategic materials
Allows Stalin to isolate Rightist rivals
15th Party Congress - Stalin Declares
Collectivisation
First Five Year Plan
The 5YP depended upon the success of Collectivisation

3. We are 50-100 years behind the advanced countries
We are years behind the advanced countries. We must make up this gap in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us.
Stalin 1931
The Five Year Plans
Stalin believed that industry could only develop through state control. Under GOSPLAN, three Five Year Plans set targets between to increase production.
Russian industry changed enormously. New towns such as Magnitogorsk grew up and large projects such as the Dnieper hydroelectric dam were developed. The USSR became a major industrial country.
The human cost was high. Forced labour killed millions, working conditions were poor and hours of work were long.

4. Throughout history Russia has been beaten again and again because she was backward… to slow down industrialisation would mean falling behind and getting beaten. Russia was beaten by British and French capitalists and the Japanese too. Lenin has said: ‘Either die or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries’. We are 50 to 100 years behind them. Either we make good the difference or they crush us.”
Stalin speaking in 1931
How does this source help you to understand why the Five-Year Plans were introduced in 1928?

5. Propaganda of the Five Year Plans

6. Question
Why agriculture?

7. Cash Crisis For 5YP Money was required To invest in or purchase:
Factories/Plant
Machines
Workers/Wages
Raw Materials

8. Possible sources of money
Tax Soviet citizens
Not a rich society – hit by war, Civil war, exile, confiscations, war communism, hiding of assets from Communists
Borrow money from abroad
Reneged on Tsarist loans
Capitalists unlikely to lend to nationalising communists
Encourage greater grain production
How?

9. Grain converted into Hard Cash
Encourage greater grain production
Sell grain on open market
Collectives would allow:
Access to expensive new machinery to improve efficiency
Mechanisation would allow surplus workforce to migrate to towns
Update farming techniques by learning from experts
Economies of Scale
larger units of production brought efficiencies
Easier for State to collect
Socialist answer to USSR’s problem
Easier political control of hostile peasant classes

10. Collectivisation
In the late 1920s, Russia suffered a food crisis. To feed starving workers, Stalin ordered the seizure of grain from the farmers.
The peasants hid food or produced less.

11. Stalin in 1928
Reasons for Collectivisation Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades. This is because we have about 25 million individually owned farms. They are the most primitive and undeveloped form of economy. We must do our utmost to develop large farms and to convert them into grain factories for the country organised on a modem scientific basis.

12. Collectivisation
In 1929 Stalin announced the collectivisation of farms.
The most common was the Kolkhoz in which land was joined together and the former owners worked together and shared everything. Stalin persuaded peasants to join by attacking the Kulaks, peasants that had grown as a result of the NEP.

13. The Kolkhoz No wages Quotas Prices set by State State Support
Holidays, board and lodging in return for labour
The collective’s profit would be shared out equitably at the end of the year
Quotas Prices set by State
State would sell in cities as slight profit
State Support
Machine and Tractor Stations
Had to pay 20% of produce to access machinery
Private Plots
Once collective duties completed

14. Question
How is this close to the concept/idea of communism?

15. Collectives Anyone? Few Peasants willing to move into collectives
Conservative Peasants:
The NEP seemed to be working fine for them
Unfamiliar working practices
Suspicious of new machinery and techniques
Memories of War Communism and forced requisitioning
Little sympathy for plight of urban poor

16. The Pressure Builds 1928/9 Grain Procurement Crisis Stalin’s Pressures
Not enough grain to allow 5YP to proceed
Food shortages in Cities
Price rises – inflation
Stalin’s Pressures
Credibility attached to success of 5YP
Urban workers support base for Stalin
Power struggle not yet complete
Urals –Siberian experiment
Long term goal of Industrialisation of Agriculture
Ideological distrust of peasant class
Stalin’s Solution
Requisitioning
Forced Collectivisation

17. Forced Collectivisation
Rural Communist parties resisted collectivisation quotas
Too unpopular
Special Urban party activist task force created
25,000 attended special Two Week courses
Tactics
Root out Kulaks?
Confiscate goods
Would become basis of new commune
‘Persuade’ remaining peasants to volunteer to join a collective
Tools used
Propaganda
Controlled all sources of information
Force
OGPU, Police, Military
Terror
Denunciations, Executions of Kulaks, ‘Necessary Measures’
10 Million deported Siberia and Labour camps
Quotas

18. Collectivisation - Propaganda

19. Collectivisation - Propaganda

20. De-Kulakisation Class warfare declared on Kulaks
Communist classification of peasants:
Kulaks – better off Peasants –hired help
Middle Peasants – moderate incomes
Poor Peasants - landless
“We will hit the Kulaks so hard that the middle peasants will snap to attention before us”
Ukraine targeted for being less reliable than Russian areas
Ukrainian nationalism

21. Anti Kulak Poster

22. Kulak Dispersal

23. Stalin’s agricultural collectivisation
“Look at the Kulak farms: their barns and sheds are crammed with grain. They are waiting for prices to rise. So long as there are Kulaks there will be sabotage of our grain needs. The effect will be that our towns and industrial centres, as well as the Red Army, will be threatened with hunger. We cannot allow that. We must break the resistance of this class and deprive it of its existence.”
Stalin speaking to Siberian party officials after the grain crisis of 1927
How does this source help you to understand why collectivisation was introduced in 1928?

24. Peasant Resistance Riots Armed Resistance
Peasants destroyed own goods rather than hand them over to the State
Mass slaughter of livestock
Raids on Collectives to liberate goods and livestock
All women raids made troops reluctant to shoot to kill

25. Results of Collectivisation
23 Million tonnes of grain seized in 1931
Enough to feed urban areas
5 million tonnes of grain sold overseas
However
Desolated rural areas
Famine 1932 – 1934
Millions died of starvation in rural areas
7 Million according to Robert Conquest
Ukraine particularly hard hit

26. Results of Collectivisation
Fall in production
Not enough livestock to do work
Best farmers annihilated as Kulaks
Russia was producing the same amount of food as it had in 1928
Pre-collective era grain production not reached until 1937

27. Cultivate Vegetables! Grain 1928 = 73.3 million tons
Cattle
1929 = 70.5 million
1934 = 42.4 million
Pigs
1928 = 26 million
1934 = 22.6 million
Sheep and goats
1928 = million
1934 = 51.9 million

28. Results of Collectivisation
But
Stalin content to see the end of the ‘accursed problem’ of the peasant class
Demonstrates power of Communist Party
Confirms Stalin’s control of Communist Party
Gulag Labour increased massively
Migration of peasants to cities
By 1939, Collectivisation was clearly a disaster and the problem was even worse as its population had increased by 20 million - all of whom needed feeding.

29. At the same time, he carefully cultivated a fatherly image, to assure the people he was there to protect them.

30. Results of Collectivisation
“Dizzy with Success” temporary climb down by Stalin 1930
Claims over eager officials getting carried away

31. ‘Sacking Grain’, an oil painting by the Soviet artist Tatyana Yablonskaya
At roughly what date, and for what purpose would this picture have been painted?

32. Say Something Significant
Choose a sentence-starter and make the most complex statement you can about collectivisation.
Cause and effect:
“The main reason …..”
Pattern:
“Throughout Stalin’s rule in Russia, people kept ….”
Turning point:
“Everything changed when …..”
Simple judgement:
“The smartest choice was ……..”

33. Activity Use the sources and information to complete the table.
Ways in which collectivisation was economically successful for the government?
Ways in which collectivisation was politically successful for the government
Ways in which collectivisation was an economic failure
The human cost of collectivisation

34. Question
Collectivisation was a political success but an economic failure and a human disaster. Discuss.
How convincing is the argument that collectivisation was an ‘ideological triumph but an economic disaster’?
In what ways did the living conditions of the peasants change as a result of collectivisation?
Collectivisation was ‘all very bad and difficult – but necessary.’ Is this a fair assessment?

35. Say Something Significant
Choose a sentence-starter and make the most complex statement you can about collectivisation.
Cause and effect:
“The main reason …..”
Pattern:
“Throughout Stalin’s rule in Russia, people kept ….”
Turning point:
“Everything changed when …..”
Simple judgement:
“The smartest choice was ……..”

36. Industrialisation Collectivisation was only a means to an end
The food grown could be sold on the world market to allow investment in industry
Soviet Industry was designed to provide for the State (not the consumer)
Hence, very little produced that would be wanted by world market

37. What’s the significance here?

38. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, 1936

39. Long live the great Stalin 1938 The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945
When Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, Stalin used the same ruthlessness to defend his country.
The defence of the USSR was the bloodiest war in history and cost the lives of millions of people and the destruction of thousands of villages, towns and cities.
The final victory in 1945 was, like everything else, put down to the personal leadership of Stalin by the Soviet propaganda machine.
After the war, Stalin built up the USSR as a superpower, in opposition to the USA. This conflict was known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953.
Long live the
great Stalin 1938