The Great Turn and First Five-Year Plan: Soviet Economic Policies 1928–1932

At which event was the First Five-Year Plan announced, marking the official end of the New Economic Policy (NEP)?

The Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927.

What was the primary economic focus of the First Five-Year Plan?

Heavy industry, which accounted for 80 percent of total investment.

How did the targets for the First Five-Year Plan change shortly after it began?

Planners revised figures upward into an 'optimum' version, often double the original targets.

What was the function of Gosplan in the command economy?

To work out the specific inputs and outputs required for each industry to meet overall targets.

What was the significance of the Shakhty coal mine trial in 1928?

It was used to intimidate managers and specialists by accusing them of sabotage.

Which industrial center in the Urals became the 'most celebrated' symbol of the new socialist age?

Magnitogorsk.

Why did historian Moshe Lewin describe the early 1930s as a 'quicksand society'?

Due to the massive turnover of labor; workers constantly changed jobs.

What crisis in 1928-29 led Stalin to abandon the voluntary principle and move to forced mass collectivisation?

A grain procurement crisis where the state struggled to get grain from peasants.

What was the 'Urals-Siberian method' developed in early 1928?

A system of forcible grain requisitioning by encouraging poor peasants to denounce kulaks.

Contrast a Kolkhoz with a Sovkhoz.

A Kolkhoz was run as a cooperative by peasants; a Sovkhoz was a state-owned 'factory farm.'

Who were the 'Twenty-five Thousanders'?

Urban party activists sent into the countryside to root out kulaks.

What did Stalin announce in December 1929 regarding the richer peasants?

The liquidation of the kulaks as a class.

What was the most destructive form of peasant resistance to collectivisation?

The slaughtering of livestock.

Why did Stalin publish the article 'Dizzy with Success' in March 1930?

To temporarily halt forced collectivisation and blame local officials for chaos.

What were MTS and what was their secondary purpose?

They maintained and hired out modern machinery; their secondary role was political control.

Where was the man-made famine of 1932-34 most severe, and how many died?

The Ukraine; approximately 7 million people died.

What was the 'Law of the Seventh-Eighths'?

A law that prescribed a ten-year sentence (or death) for stealing socialised property.