2. Stalin modernised industry by means of the 5-Year Plans. He achieved fantastic successes, but at the most appalling human cost, and while industrial output soared, the production of consumer goods remained static.

3. There were two Five Year Plans: 1928–33 1932–1937 Reasons for the Five Year Plan 1.Many regions of the USSR were backward. Stalin said that to be backward was to be defeated & enslaved. ‘But if you are powerful, people must beware of you’ 2.Stalin believed that the USSR should ‘overtake & outstrip the capitalist countries’. He believed that if the USSR could become strong enough to survive, then it would take over the rest of the world. 3.He believed Germany would invade. In 1931, he prophesised: ‘We make good the difference in 10 years or they crush us’. 4.The 5-year plans were very useful propaganda – for Communism and for Stalin.

4. 1.Plans were drawn up by GOSPLAN (state planning organisation). 2.Targets set for every industry, region, mine, factory, foreman & worker. 3.Foreign experts & engineers called in 4.Workers bombarded with propaganda. 5.Workers fined if they did not meet their targets. 6.Alexei Stakhanov (cut 102 tons of coal in one shift) was held up as an example. Good workers became ‘Stakhanovites’ & won a medal. 7.The 5-year plan revealed a shortage of workers women were attracted by new crèches & day-care centres. 8.For big engineering projects such as canals slave labour was used. 9.A concentration on heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods & housing. 10.Stalin attacked the Muslim faith because he thought it was holding back industrialisation.

5. Source A192719331937 Electricity ('000 million kw) 51336 Coal (million tons)3564128 Oil (million tons)122147 Steel (million tons)4618 From official government figures. Note that historians have found that Stalin's statisticians overstated the increases by about a third - they dared not do anything else in case they were punished by Stalin! It was the official line that Stalin had achieved a remarkable improvement, and a statistician who found otherwise would have been sent to Siberia. The human cost however was devastating.

6. 1.Western historians believe that Stalin’s plans were doomed to failure because he had quotas that the USSR was not skilled enough to achieve. 2.He believed that the only way to motivate the people & ‘modernise’ the country was to push people as hard as he could. He made speeches to inspire people to work harder – used threats such as ‘follow my plan, meet my targets or we may be invaded & the USSR destroyed’. 3.He argued that the state would control industry for 5 Years, push people to make weapons for defence & herald the USSR as an industrial giant. 4.He gave everybody a job even if they were employed in areas that they were untrained in & many industries were overstaffed. Western countries were suffering huge unemployment at this time & Stalin was happy to allow Americans to look around his ‘happy & employed’ country. 5.Soviet citizens felt pride in the USSR even if their lives were hard. Stalin told people that even though their lives would be even harder under the capitalist system of the West. He was not bothered about how his targets were met so long as it looked as though the Soviet system of Communism was a success to both his people & his ‘enemies’ abroad.

7. SuccessesFailures  The USSR was turned into a modern state that was later able to resist Hitler’s army.  It created a genuine ‘Communist enthusiasm’ amongst the young Bolshevik pioneers.  There were improvements in:  New cities.  Dams and hydroelectric power.  Transport and communications.  Moscow underground.  Farm machinery.  Electricity.  Coal production.  Steel production.  Production of fertlisers.  New plastics made.  There was no unemployment in Russia.  There were more doctors and medicine.  There was better education.  The plans were poorly organised and often showed inefficiency, corruptions and a waste of materials.  There was an appalling human cost:  Severe discipline – sacked if you were late.  The secret police observed your every move.  If you criticised Stalin or Communism then you would become slave labour.  People who made mistakes at work were sent to Labour Camps in Siberia.  There were many accidents and mistakes in a rush to meet quotas, e.g. 100,000 people died when they built the new Belomor Canal.  There were few consumer or luxury goods.  Housing conditions were appalling as effort was put into production.  Wages fell even though employment was high.  Soviet citizens had no human rights – and Amnesty International did not exist!!!  Some historians claim the tsars had done the ‘spadework’, setting up the basis for industrialisation, and that Stalin’s effort had very little effect on a process that would have happened anyway.

8. 1.In 1928 Stalin began attacking kulaks (rich farmers) for not supplying enough food for the industrial workers – which would be essential if his Five Year Plans were to work. 2.He advocated the setting up of collective farms. 3.The proposal involved small farmers joining forces to form large-scale units. In this way, it was argued, they would be in a position to afford the latest machinery and increase their crop yields. 4.Stalin believed this policy would lead to increased production. However, the peasants liked farming their own land and were reluctant to form themselves into state collectives – it seemed too similar to when the Tsars controlled them.

9. 1.Joseph Stalin was furious that the peasants were putting their own welfare before that of the Soviet Union. 2.Local communist officials were given instructions to confiscate kulak’s property. This land would then be used to form new collective farms. 3.The kulaks themselves were not allowed to undermine the success of the scheme. 4.Thousands were executed and an estimated five million were deported to Siberia or Central Asia – purged off their own land. 5.Of these, approximately twenty-five per cent perished by the time they reached their destination and many died during their incarceration there.

10. 1.Soviet agriculture was backward - Old-fashioned/ inefficient/ no machinery/ too small/ subsistence (only grew enough for themselves). 2.Food was needed for workers in the towns - Essential if the Five-Year Plans were to succeed. 3.NEP was not working - By 1928, the USSR was 20 million tons of grain short to feed the towns. 4.Town-workers were needed - If the USSR was to become modern/ industrial, peasants needed to migrate to work in the towns. 5.Cash Crops were needed - If the USSR was to industrialise, peasants needed to grow cash crops (eg grain) which could be exported to raise money to buy foreign machinery and expertise. 6.Kulaks opposed Communism - The Kulaks opposed Communism – they liked their private wealth. They hid food from the government collectors. Also they were influential, and led peasant opinion. Stalin wanted to destroy them.

11. 1.Stalin's 1929 order simply required farmers to pool their land and their equipment, and to work in future under the orders of the collective farm committee (which was under the control of the Communist Party). 2.No other details - such as how the workers would be paid - were given, and in 1930 Stalin even sent a contradictory order that 'small vegetable gardens, dwelling houses, some dairy cattle, small livestock poultry etc. are not socialised' (at which point, many farmers withdrew from the collectives). 3.Later rules, however, enforced collectivisation, prescribed punishments for 'enemies of the collective farms' (such as the kulaks), stipulated that 90% of the produce had to go to the state (with 10% left to feed the collective). It didn’t matter if the 10% left was not enough to feed the collective.

12. SuccessesFailures  Quarter of a million collectivized farms (kolkhoz) – 99% of farms.  Farming became more modern - New methods/ tractors/ fertilisers/ large- scale/ new attitudes (trying to produce as much as possible).  Grain production - By 1937, 97 million tonnes were produced PLUS cash crops for export.  Town workers - 17 million peasants left the countryside to work in the towns, 1928–37.  End of nobles - Remember how the old landlords used to treat their peasants – they were now gone.  Communists control completely - Officials ran farming. Peasants obeyed the Party, through enthusiasm or fear. Stalin had all power.  Production fell in the Soviet Union.  Russia had 70 million heads of cattle in 1928 and 51 million in 1937.  Russia had 150 million sheep and goats in 1928 and 66 million in 1937.  There was a famine in the Soviet Union between 1932-33 – millions of collective farmers died because the government still collected their 90% of food.  Kulaks, as a class, were eliminated.

13. In the 1990s, when Communism collapsed, many collective farms were broken up and the land shared out between the members. However, in many places, the people preferred to keep their collective farms voluntarily - they liked the security and shred responsibility they offered. Many historians believe that collectivisation was as much about establishing Stalin's power as it was about increasing production. What do you think?