Stalin's economic aims

What did he want?

Transform the economy from an agrarian one into an industrial one-emphasis on modernisation

What would state command?

State would command the economy from above (Stalin called this the ‘Second revolution’

What was Gosplan?

Central planning agency

What were the two essential methods?

Collectivisation and industrialism

What were the three main methods employed to carry out Collectivisation?

• Force

• Terror

• Propaganda

Why were kulaks identified as a ‘class enemy’?

The aim of identifying the kulaks as a class enemy was to frighten the middle and poor peasants into joining Kolkhozes

Why were villagers identified as a ‘class enemy’?

They might have been people who had helped them out in difficult times or lent them animals topough their lands

Who were the Twenty-five Thousanders and what was their role in Collectivisation?

Stalin enlisted an army of 25,000 urban party activists. The ‘Twenty-five thousanders’ had no real knowledge of how to organise or run a collective farm, but they did know how to wage class warfare. ‘Dekulakisation’ went ahead at full speed

What happened to the Kulaks?

Each region was given a number of kulaks to find and they found them whether they existed or not. The kulaks were divided into 3 categories:counter-revolutionaries who were to be shot or sent to forced Labour settlements: active opponents of collectivisation who were to be deported to other areas of the USSR, often Siberia, and those who were expelled from their farms and settled on poor land

How did Propaganda help with the process of dekulakisation?

The Communists also mounted a huge propaganda campaign to extol the advantages of collective farm sand to inflame class named. Many poorer peasants did denounce their neighbours as kulaks

Give three examples to illustrate how the peasants resisted Collectivisation.

• One riot lasted for five days

• Peasants had burned crops, tools, and houses, rather than hand them over to the state

• The women’s protests were carefully organised, with specific goals such as stopping grain requistioning or retrieving collectivised horses

What was Stalin’s response to the peasant resistance?

Stalin wrote an article for Pravdain March 1930 saying that his officials had moved too far too fast. He said that ‘they had become dizzy with success.’

In what year was collectivisation restarted?

1931, it was pushed even harder this time, one of the results being a horrific famine