HISTORY: Stalin 15-markers

Write an account of Stalin’s rise to power.

Write an account of Stalin’s rise to power.

1922: Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party

DEC 1922-JAN 1923: Lenin writes his testament; 21 JAN death

MAY 1924: Central Committee decides to keep Lenin’s Testament a secret

• Portrayed Z + K also badly, didn’t vote Lenin in 1917 rev

1924: Team up with Z + K on left; want end of NEP, force fast industrialisation and food production

• Stalin uses position as Gen Sec to ensure supporters pack congress

• Trotsky removed from Commissar of War, lost control of Red Army

1926: Join with Bukharin on right, carry on NEP, allow peasants to get richer

• Z + K removed from posts

• Stalin announced policy of ‘Socialism in One Country’

1927: Trotsky, Z + K expelled completely from party. Stalin turns against Bukharin and the right, campaign against the NEP, removing them from their posts as well.

1929: Stalin celebrates 50th birthday as leader of USSR.

Write an account of the roll out of the Five-Year Plans.

1st OCT 1928: Stalin launches first 5YP. Lasts 1928-1932.

• GOSPLAN (State planning committee, established by Lenin in 1921) set overall targets for each industry, region, factory, manager and worker

• Highly ambitious targets, usually unachievable

Main aims of 1st 5YP:

• develop heavy industries e.g. coal, steel

• collectivise agriculture to support the new population of workers and produce funds for industrialisation

Results of 1st 5YP:

• targets unrealistic, not met

• revealed a shortage of skilled workers which led to government focusing on getting more women to work

• coal and iron output doubled

• steelworks such as Magnitogorsk (finished 1930) constructed

1933-37: 2nd 5YP

Aims:

• further develop heavy industry

• focus on some lighter industries e.g. rails, communication

Results:

• 1933 Belomor canal completed (100,000 deaths in process)

• oil surpassed target: 19 to 21.4 million tonnes

• 4 in 5 new workers were women

• 1935 Stakhanovite movement born

1938-41: 3rd 5YP

Aims:

• mechanise and improve agriculture

• begin producing consumer goods

Results:

• steel surpassed target: 17 to 17.7 million tonnes

• WW2 prohibited many plans from being effected such as the production of consumer goods

• there was a lack of good managers and specialists following the purges.

Write an account of collectivisation.

1. BEGINNING

1928:

• Stalin ends the NEP in order to end kulak grain strike (they were refusing to supply grain in necessary quantities because they could not buy goods in exchange.)

• reintroduced grain requisitioning from peasants via Chekha

• government procured 10.8 million tons grain from peasants in this year

Late 1929: Collectivisation was formally introduced and carried out forcibly across Russia.

2. RESISTANCE

• peasants slaughtered livestock, destroyed produce and tools rather than surrender them to the state. Number of livestock severely decreased and in the Central Black Earth region, 53% of pigs were slaughtered within the first 3 months of 1930.

• peasants forced to give up their property or risk being killed, deported or sent to labour camps.

1930:

• total of collectivised farms went from around 15% to nearly 60%

• March: Stalin publishes article calling for temporary halt of collectivisation

• far less pressure to collectivise so many peasants started leaving collective farms, % of peasants in collective farms dropped around 50%

• process resumed

1931:

• Stalin focuses on ‘dekulakisation’ which essentially branded any resisting peasant a kulak, and thus a threat to the socialist state.

• 1931, secret police deported over 1.5 million peasants to gulags, others executed by firing squads

3. SUCCESS

1932:

• party control over countryside established and private ownership was destroyed.

• government increased their quota for grain despite there being a poor harvest, taking all food from peasants who could not meet their quota

• ‘Holodomor’ - man-made famine. government confiscated crops from farmers and sold them abroad resulting in the starvation of millions of people (up to 13 million, particularly in Ukraine)

1934:

• despite famine, Stalin did not ease the policy

• no kulaks left by 1934

• numbers of animals did not reach pre-collectivisation levels until 1940

• 1941 almost all agricultural land collectivised

Write an account of the purges.

1934: Kirov murdered

1936: Z and K show trial

1938: Bukharin show trial

1940: Trotsky expelled

Write an account of the show trials.