This document is a two page note sheet on the ways in which Stalin attempted to industrialise the USSR through the 5 year plans. It also explores the reaction of the USSR population and the ways in which they were effected in comparison to the NEP.
Stalin: the transformation of the USSR (industrialisation)
How did Stalin modernise the USSR and what was the impact?
If the USSR wasn’t industrialised, it would have remained easy to be taken advantage of because
they couldn’t fight back. If they hadn’t started changing, the gap between them and the
industrialised country would has grown and it would get harder and harder to catch up. Stalin
believed that the other countries would crush them if they didn’t grow and change, and he wanted
to show that communism could thrive even in a developed country. He needed to improve the
food production to meet the requirements, and he wanted to prove that he was great leader.
How does one industrialise a country?
- transport
- Communication systems
- Factories
- Increase production rates
- Boost the economy
- Mining or fuels
- Power stations and power plants
- Crop production
5 year plan oversight:
Gosplan - set overall targets for industry
Each region told it’s target
Region sets target for each mine or factory
Manager of each mine set target for each foreman
Foreman set targets for workers
How did Stalin carry it out and what were his targets - how were the three different?
1928-32 1933-37 1938-41 (war)
Focus - major industries Focus - greater production, Focus- production of
- electricity, coal, oil, communication and tractors and farm
steel. transport, agriculture. machinery. Factories to
Successes - increased Successes: - rich minerals switch to consumer goods
production, whole cities used from Siberia, transport Successes - not as
built, oil exceeded and communication successful as the others,
targets, massive booked, new rails and disrupted by the war.
increases seen across the canals. Underground
industries . railway in Moscow
Through all of the work, propaganda was still thriving and kept on while people worked, e.g
speeches and music. e.g the published story of Alexei Stakhanov…
How was agriculture developed? - collectivisation.
Famines occurred due to natural disaster, war, disease in crops, draught and the fact that food
wasn’t shared fairly. Stalin didn’t want this - so to lower famine rates, he needed to raise grain
production. In order to do this, he needed to devise a way in which they could produce more
grain. He used collectivism, he made bigger farms with more land (more organised and effective),
more people working in one place, and different methods used.
Before Stalin, the NEP was produced (1922) so some peasants had been given individual plots of
land. It was created to produce production by encouraging work. It did not support communism
and didn’t increase production enough.
Then Stalin used collectivisation: Farm lands belonged to the village, and all the people living in
the village worked on those farms together. A quota was set on how much needed to be
produced, and if they exceeded it then they could keep the extra.
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