Notes for World History
HOW SUCCESSFUL WAS STALIN IN SOLVING RUSSIA’S ECONOMIC PROBLEMS?
Russia’s economic problems:
- Although Russian industry was recovering from the First World War, production from heavy industry was very low. However, foreigners were unwilling to invest in a communist state.
- More food would have to be produced, both to feed the growing industrial population and to provide surplus for export( the only way that the USSR could earn foreign capital and profits for investment in industry).
- The primitive agricultural system, which was allowed to continue under NEP, was incapable of providing such resources.
Stalin’s initiatives to deal with economic problems:
Five year plans:
- Industrial expansion was tackled by a series of Five Year Plans focusing mainly on heavy industries.
- The plans were a remarkable success. By 1940, the USSR had overtaken Britain in iron and steel production.
- Hundreds of factories were built, many of them in new towns east of Ural Mountains where they would be safer from invasion.
- The money needed for the five year plans was provided almost entirely by Russian themselves, with no foreign investment.
- Foreign technicians were brought in and great emphasis was placed expanding education in colleges and universities.
- In the factories, the old capitalist methods of piecework and pay differentials between skilled and unskilled workers were used to encourage production. Medals were given to workers who achieved record output.
The Plans had their drawbacks as well:
- Ordinary workers were ruthlessly disciplined; there were severe punishments for bad workmanship.
- Primitive housing conditions and a severe shortage of consumer goods made life grim for most workers.
- Many of the products were of poor quality.
- The high target forced workers to speed up and this caused shoddy workmanship and damage to machinery.
Collectivization of agriculture:
- The problems of agriculture were dealt with by the process known as `collectivization’. The idea was that small farms and holdings belonging to the peasants should be merged to form large collective farms jointly owned by the peasants. There were two main reasons for Stalin’s decision to collectivize:
- The existing system of small farms was inefficient.
- He wanted to eliminate the class of prosperous peasants (kulaks), which NEP had encouraged, because, he claimed, they were standing in the way of progress.
- The policy was launched in 1929, and had to be carried through by sheer brute force, so determined was the resistance in the countryside.
- There was no problem in collectivizing landless labourers, but all peasants who owned any property at all, whether they were kulaks or not, were hostile to the plan.
- The collectivization policy proved to be a failure. The total grain production did not increase at all. The reasons for this failure were:
- The best producers-kulaks-were excluded from the collective farms.
- Most of the party activists who came from to cities to organise collectivization did not know much about agriculture.
- Many peasants were demoralised after the seizure of their land and property; some of them left the farms to look for jobs in the cities. Thus, there were far fewer peasants to work on the land.
- Peasants were still allowed to keep a small private plot of their own; they tended to work harder on their own plots and do the minimum they could get away with on the collective farm ( kolkhoz).
- However, in one sense, Stalin could claim that collectivization was a success: it allowed greater mechanization, which did achieve a substantial increase in production in 1937. The amount of grain taken by the state increased impressively and so did grain exports in 1930 and 1931. Although the amounts fell sharply after that, they were far higher than before collectivization.
THE PURGES AND THE GREAT TERROR, 1934-8
- Although Stalin’s personal dictatorship was complete, he did not feel secure; he became increasingly suspicious. The first priority for Stalin was to deal with the opposition.
- During 1933, party members began to call for the break-up of collective farms, the return of powers to the trade unions and the removal of Stalin.
- But Stalin and his allies in the Politburo voted for the purge of dissident party members. Millions of Russian including party member, officials, innocent people were imprisoned, killed, forced in labour camps. Even Trosky was murdered in exile.
- Stalin was driven by his immense lust for power. His motive was to frighten the great mass of the population into obedience by deliberately arresting and killing a given proportion of the society, whether they were guilty of any crime or not
- The Purges were successful in eliminating possible alternative leaders and in terrorizing the masses into obedience. But the consequences of the Purges were serious
- Huge suffering and loss of human lives.
- The power of the Bolshevik elite had been broken and eliminated.
- Many of the best brains in the govt and in industry had disappeared. This hindered progress.
- The purge of the army disrupted the USSR’s defence policies and contributed to the disasters of 1941-42 during the Second World war.
