01/27/03

     "We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries.  We must make this distance up in 10 years.  Either we do it, or we shall go under."

      The above quote represents Stalin's drastic ideas on the economically backward Soviet Union.  He saw the Soviet Union as a backward and enemy surrounded land.  Stalin believed that his country would never be able to survive an attack unless they developed their industry.

       In 1928, Stalin made an economic program that that he called the five years plan.  It was divided into the two goals of rapid industry growth and increased agricultural production through the collectivization of agriculture.  (history book, page 674)  In 1933 and 1938, Stalin again made five-year plans to make the Soviet economy better and stronger.

       Stalin's main idea was to build a foundation of basic industries.  To do this, he took all his country's resources and put them into building steel mills, electric power stations, chemical plants, cement plants, and oil refineries.  All these industries were essential for a strong modern nation.

       Between the years of 1928 and 1940, the five-year plans resulted in major gains.  The steel production more then quadrupled, and oil tripled.  The Soviet Union was put on the map as the second largest iron and steel manufacturers in Europe.  Although this may seem like all good news, there was a down side to the newfound industrial gains.  All the workers that were employed came from the farms and were packed into the quickly built industrial centers.  Because Stalin wanted to industrialize at some super fast speed, he built huge industrial centers that were packed full of industries.  Also, taxes were raised very high so Russia could pay off all these new buildings and industries.  Probably the biggest shock is that because Russia was concentrating so hard on industry, things like clothes and food took a back seat to oil and steel.

       As we've learned, propaganda is when you use posters and stuff like that to promote your idea and possibly damage others.  Because conditions were getting pretty bad, Russia launched a big propaganda campaign to try to convince people to work as hard as they could and that all these new industries were a good thing.  Without the people, there would be no one to run all these factories.  Also, each factory and each worker had demands they had to meet.  They were given a certain amount of things to produce, and would be punished if they didn't meet their goals.

       The next thing Stalin did was a technique called collectivized agriculture.  He took all the peasants and made them give up all their land.  Then he grouped together all the land and made huge farms where all the peasants worked.  On these collective farms the more work you did meant the more money you made.  Because these were government run, and portion of the harvest was paid to the government. 

       Overall, there was 4 goals to the whole collectivization business.  They are listed below.

1)meant to increase food production
2)goverment run food production
3)intended to free people from farming so they could work in industry
4)way to bring socialism to countryside

        The majority of people didn't like the collectivization thing, which started in 1928. The most anger towards the whole thing was from kulaks, who are the rich peasants who didn't want to lose their farms.  When kulaks started protesting, Stalin cracked down hard and either killed them or sent them to labor camps.  Because of all this, there was a famine and starvation was everywhere. The Ukraine was an area hit the hardest, which was also the nations bread basket. Stalin later said that 10 million Russians had died as a result of the drive for collectivization. Soon, most of the peasants went to work on the large farms. But the rise in food was slow, and Stalin eventually let the peasants own their own little plots of land in order to feed their families.

         As you can see, Stalin did a lot in a short amount of time.  But was it really worth the results? 

(Written by: David   Information found in our history text book and personal knowledge.)