A* standard exemplar essay to the Paper 4, 30 marker: ‘Stalin’s Five-Year Plans failed.’ How far do you agree? [30] One of the practice essays I wrote before receiving the Top in the World award in CIE A Level History in the Nov 2022 series.
‘Stalin’s Five-Year Plans failed.’ How far do you agree? [30]
Stalin’s three Five-Year Plans from 1928 to 1941 aimed to make the Soviet economy more
politically homogenous, industrialised, and socialist than it had been under the NEP so that it
can compete militarily with the technologically advanced Western capitalist nations. They
can also be seen as a cunning strategy for the state to consolidate its control over the Soviet
population. Despite poor planning and labour problems, the Five-Year Plans cannot be
regarded as a failure as they nevertheless heavily industrialised the Soviet Union and
secured the state’s grip on its population. Most importantly, the plans did succeed in bringing
the USSR to a militarily advanced state and ultimately contributed to its victory over
Germany in WW2.
Economically, the greatest success of the Five-Year Plans was the massive industrialisation
and socialisation of the Soviet economy from its previous state under the NEP. This was
done due to the improvements in heavy industry production, completion of ‘gigantomania’
projects, and the constant supply of forced labour through the Gulag system. The plans saw
their greatest success in the production of the “commanding heights” of the economy such
as crude oil, which saw 12 million tonnes extracted by the start of the first Five-Year Plan in
1928 increase to 31 million tonnes by the start of the third Five-Year Plan in 1938. Indeed,
the rapid building of industrial plants necessary for heavy industry production during the first
Five-Year Plan proved a worthy investment, as their production levels continued to soar past
1932, even when the state began to shift focus to other industries such as transport in the
second Five-Year Plan and armaments in the third. ‘Gigantomania’ projects such as the
metallurgical complex at Magnitogorsk contributed greatly to this sustained success in the
field of heavy industry. The settlement, situated deep inside the Urals mountains, was
virtually built from nothing, having only 25 inhabitants before 1928 to 25k in 1938. Its steel
production, of which 5k tons of steel were reported to be produced a day, was a showpiece
of Soviet industrial might to the outside world as well as a key source of raw material.
Arguably, completing so many large-scale industrial projects in such a short time may not
have been possible without relying on slave labour, which was constantly replenished
through fresh arrests and deportations to Gulag work camps. For example, the
Belomorkanal which connected the Baltic and White Seas were constructed by around 300k
prisoners of the state, among which many were accused kulaks from the countryside.
Indeed, it can be argued that none of these signs of progress in heavy industry and
infrastructure could have been made in such a short time without rapid industrialisation
prompted by Stalin’s Five-Year Plans.
Despite seeing some growth during the first three Five-Year Plans, the Soviet economy
nevertheless saw disillusionment in the poor planning conducted by the Gosplan under the
VSNKh. This is because rooted in the flaws of Soviet state planning were the over-ambitious
and often unrealistic production targets set by the party. It was commonplace to see initial
targets being inflated more and more as the Gosplan and the VSNKh tried to ‘outbid’ targets
set by each other in an attempt to appear more optimistic and faithful in the industrial
capacity of the state. Not only this, quotas for the first Five-Year Plan became even more
absurd when an ‘optimum’ version of the targets was chosen over the already ambitious
‘basic’ version in April 1929, before the ‘optimum’ version was reassessed even higher to an
amended version. For heavy industries such as coal, targets increased from 35 million
tonnes in the ‘basic’ version to 75 in the ‘optimum’ and 95-105 in the final amended plans.
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