2.2.1 Five Year Plans & Industrial Change

Five Year Plans

After the apparent failure of the NEP and its reliance on capitalist principles, Stalin’s economic plan switched to Five Year Plans. This involved targets that aimed to generate very fast industrial growth.

Agricultural and economic targets

• In farming, collectivisation was supposed to improve agricultural output. But it actually led to starvation for millions of Russians. It was introduced because in theory:

  • Economically, selling excess grain abroad could be used for industrialisation. Russia could then modernise their farming methods.

  • Collectivisation would produce more grain to feed the industrial workers.

Political and ideological targets

• Politically, Stalin wanted more control over the countryside.

• Ideologically, Stalin did not like the idea of capitalism which he believed was supported by the NEP.

  • Industrial workers felt that peasants were benefiting from the revolution in a way that they were not.

• Stalin believed in Marxist principles.

Marxist principles

• Karl Marx said that in a developed human society, countries would be industrialised and factories made efficient and productive.

• There would be a move towards urbanisation, and fewer people would be needed to work the land.

• Private property would be abolished and wealth would be redistributed to the poor.

  • Collectivisation was part of this process.

Problems with the NEP

• Under the NEP, more successful farmers could buy land from poorer ones, and employ other people. This was essentially a form of capitalism. This made it unpopular with Politburo members like Stalin.

• Ideologically, Stalin needed to get rid of the kulaks (wealthy peasants) who had benefited from the NEP.

• Moreover, his rival Bukharin supported the NEP, which gave Stalin even greater motivation to end the policy.

Historical assessment

• Lars T. Lih (1991): 'Lenin would have been seriously offended by recent claims that he had moved beyond Marx's definition of socialism. [His] testament contains no critique of war communism. The very concept is missing: Lenin continually refers to the five years since the revolution as a unit, with an occasional mention of the fact that intervention and hunger slowed down the pace of socialist construction. The source of all evils is the prerevolutionary past and the petit-bourgeois environment.'

Living and Working Conditions in Towns and the Countryside

Living and working conditions varied hugely across the Soviet Union. It depended upon where you lived and who you were.

The towns

• Housing in towns was low quality and living standards were low. Many people lived in barracks or communal accommodation.

• Between 1928 and 1933, fruit and meat consumption went down 66% in Leningrad. Queuing for food was a daily experience in the Soviet Union during the 1930s.

The workplace and international movement

• There was no concern for health and safety in the workplace, and industrial accidents resulted in many deaths.

• One day off work without good reason could lead to a worker losing their job. Early ideas about equality of wages were abandoned.

• Internal passports were introduced in 1932 to stop the free movement of people around the country.

• Arrest and imprisonment could result from failing to prove a ‘right’ to be in a particular city.

The countryside

• In the countryside, there was only basic housing, with outside toilets and no running water. There were rations in the countryside too, allowing Stalin to confiscate excess food to take to the cities.

• Productivity was so poor in the countryside that in 1939 the government allowed peasants to sell produce from garden plots for a profit to incentivise them to produce more.

• Peasants were not allowed to leave their farms, and also had internal passports.

Party officials

• Party officials, by contrast, lived in relative luxury. This included access to special shops for consumer goods. This was how loyalty was rewarded.

  • This created a new ruling class within a ‘classless society’.

• Although the quality of life for some workers improved, these elites had become more important than the workers.