Stalin’s policies of collectivization and the Five-Year Plans

When was collectivisation?

1928-1934

What was the aim of collectivisation?

• break peasant resistance,

• eliminate the kulaks as a class

• secure a stable grain supply for cities.

• Exports of grain were intended to fund industrialisation under the Five-Year Plans.

Describe implementation of collectivisation

• Collectivisation began with the First Five-Year Plan (1928–32)

• By 1930, ≈58% of peasant households had been collectivised

• by 1937, the figure rose to ≈93%, showing the scale of forced transformation.

Describe resistance to collectivisation

• Peasants resisted violently, slaughtering livestock and burning crops.

• The kulaks were labelled “class enemies”

  • between 1930–31, ≈1.8 million were deported, while hundreds of thousands were executed or imprisoned.

Describe the consequences of collectivisation

Famine:

• Harsh requisition quotas produced catastrophic shortages.

• The Holodomor in Ukraine (1932–33) killed ≈3–5 million

• otal famine deaths across the USSR reached ≈6–8 million

• one of the deadliest man-made famines in history.

General consequences:

• While grain exports rose modestly, livestock herds fell by ≈50% (1928–33)

  • causing long-term damage to agriculture.

• Peasant independence was crushed, but urban food supply stabilised, securing Stalin’s control over the countryside.

Evaluate collectivisation

Collectivisation achieved Stalin’s political goal of dominating the peasantry and feeding the cities, but at immense human and economic cost.

Millions died, agriculture was weakened for decades, and Soviet society traumatised — a stark example of Stalin’s willingness to prioritise industrialisation and control over human survival.

Describe the First Five Year Plan

First Five-Year Plan (1928–32):

• Focused on heavy industry — coal, steel, and electricity.

• Coal output rose from 35m tonnes (1927) to 64m (1932)

• electricity production tripled.

• Although targets were often inflated and unmet, industrial progress was significant.

Describe the Second Five Year Plan

Second Five-Year Plan (1933–37)

• Continued heavy industry but also emphasised consumer goods.

• Major projects included Magnitogorsk steelworks and the Dnieper Dam.

• By 1937, the USSR had become the world’s second-largest industrial power after the USA.

Describe the Third Five Year Plan

Third Five-Year Plan (1938–41):

• Increasingly dominated by rearmament as war loomed.

• By 1940, 33% of GDP was devoted to defence, with rapid growth in tank and aircraft production.

• Civilian industry was deprioritised.

Describe the social impacts of the Five Year plans

• Industrialisation drove rapid urbanisation

  • the urban population rose from 26m (1926) to 56m (1939).

• Labour discipline was harsh, with strict punishments for absenteeism.

• The Stakhanovite movement glorified record-breaking workers to boost productivity.

• Living standards remained low, with consumer goods scarce and housing overcrowded.

  • shoe output in 1933 was still below prewar levels (90% of peasants still wore bast sandals)

  • 1938 only ≈10% of households owned a radio

  • average living space in Moscow and Leningrad at just 5–7 m² per person, forcing many families into cramped communal apartments (kommunalki)

Evaluate the Five Year plans

The Five-Year Plans transformed the USSR into a major industrial power within a decade, laying the foundations for survival in WWII.

However, this came at the cost of low living standards, harsh labour conditions, and neglect of consumer welfare.

Industrial growth was real, but uneven, often achieved through coercion, propaganda, and sacrifice rather than efficiency.