Soviet Union Under Stalin Chapter 13 Section 4

Stalin’s 5 year Plans 1928 – proposed first “five-year plan” Build heavy industry Improve transportation Increase farm output Became a command economy Set high production goals Given bonuses if goal reached Punished if not

Results Production of goods grew, but not quality Standard of living remained low Wages low, forbidden to strike Few consumer goods Inefficient distribution of goods 441

Agriculture Wanted all farmers on state-owned farms or part of collectives Collectives Peasants owned/operated land as group Government provided tractors, fertilizers, seed, and education of better techniques State set prices, controlled supplies Farmers could keep personal belongings from their old farms, but had to turn over their tools and animals to the collective

Agriculture Farmers resisted Stalin furious Killed their farm animals (a quarter of the nations livestock lost) Destroyed their tools Burned their crops Stalin furious

Agriculture Stalin blamed Kulaks Began de-kulakization Death, labor camps, or Siberia Thousands killed

Agriculture Peasants still resisted Terror Famine (Holodomor) 1932 – Farmers, particularly in Ukraine, unable to meet high quotas Government took all, leaving farmers to starve 5-8 million die in Ukraine alone (some resort to cannibalism)

Terror Tactics Secret Police rounded up critics and sent them to the Gulag Great Purge (1934) Secret Police rounded up anyone deemed a possible threat to his power Targeted Old Bolsheviks Held “show trials” 442

Great Purge Eventually almost all of the Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917, or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, were executed. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 October Revolution who lived until the Great Purge, Stalin himself was the only one who remained in the Soviet Union, alive. Four of the other five were executed. The fifth, Leon Trotsky, went into exile in Mexico after being expelled from the Party but was assassinated by Soviet agent Ramón Mercader in 1940. Of the seven members elected to the Politburo between the October Revolution and Lenin's death in 1924, four were executed, one (Tomsky) committed suicide and two (Molotov and Kalinin) lived. Of 1,966 delegates to the 17th Communist Party Congress in 1934 (the last congress before the trials), 1,108 were arrested and nearly all died.

Nikolai Yezhov, head of the secret police during the height of the Great Purge, was eventually purged himself—even from historical photos

Cult of Personality

Russification Russians appointed to high-ranking positions in non-Russian SSRs Required Russian to be used in schools and business

Religion Communism attempted to replace religion Atheism becomes official state policy Russian Orthodox Church targeted for having supported the Tsar 15 Roman Catholic priests tried for teaching religion to the young, a counterrevolutionary activity Jewish synagogues seized, Hebrew outlawed

New Elite Communist Party members at head of society Followed by industrial managers, military leaders, scientists, some artists and writers 445

Foreign Policy Conflicting policies 1919 – Lenin formed Comintern to encourage world-wide revolution However, joined League of Nations 447