Industry and agriculture in the Stalin era

What was the intention of the Five-Year Plans?

To break away from the NEP and catch the USSR up with the rest of Europe. As well as make the USSR self-sufficient

What did Stalin declare regarding Soviet Union industrialization? 

"""Socialism in one country"""

When was the decision to abandon the NEP passed?

15th Party Congress, 1927

Who was in charge of industrialisation under the Five-Year Plans?

Gosplan, The State Planning Authority

Who did the the Five-Year Plans see a drive against?

"- Nepmen (small business owners and shopkeepers forced to join co-operatives)
- ""Bourgeois experts"" "

When was the First Five-Year Plan?

1928-32

What did the First Five-Year Plan focus on?

"Rapid growth in heavy industry such as coal, steel and iron as recommended by ""superindustrialisers"""

Who were superindustrialisers?

Individuals in the communist party would believed that industry should be prioritised over agriculture

What methods were used under the First Five-Year Plan to prioritise heavy industry?

Consumer industries, such as textiles and producers of household goods were neglected

When was the Second Five-Year Plan?

1933-37

What was the focus of the Second Five-Year Plan?

Initially set higher targets for production of household goods, but as 1930s progressed focus was redirected to defense given the threat of conflict so heavy industry continued to recieve priority

When was the Third Five-Year Plan?

Launched in 1938

What was the focus of the Third-Five Year Plan?

Arms production in order to meet the threat of Germany

How can the First Five-Year Plan be characterised?

Industrial expansion was largely a product of being more efficient in existing factories. New plants built under this plan were not making significant impact on production till 1934

What new industrial centres were built under the First-Five Year Plan?

Magnitogorsk and Gorki

How many people lived in Magnitogorsk in 1929 as opposed to 1932?

25 people in 1929, 250,000 by 1932

What were newly built industrial centres like under the First-Five Year Plan?

Primitive facilities, with workers housed in tents and huts. Offering limited rewards and extremely difficult work

What percent of Moscow workforce were skilled by 1933?

Only 17%

How was the government able to set examples for unskilled individuals?

"""shock brigades"" made up of the best workers to set examples"

"What is an example of a ""shock brigade"" used by the government?"

Alexei Stakhanov, a coal miner who could mine 15x more the amount of coal than the average worker

How were labour camps utilized under the First Five-Year Plan?

Labour camp prisoners were diverted to mines, railway construction and other projects

How can targets under the First Five-Year Plan be characterised?

Unrealistic and most of the time unachieveable, according to experts from the time

How did the massive quotas under the First Five-Year Plan effect production? example?

Quality was sacrificed for quantity. Stalingrad tractor factory had quota of 500 tractors a month in June 1930, they only managed 8 and most broke down within 3 days

How did the Second Five-Year plan learn from the first?

Made more use of technical expertise

How did the Second and Third Five-Year Plans develop industry?

New industry was located in remoter areas of the USSR such as Kazkhstan as well as a deliberate policy of relocating East of the Ural Mountains to protect industry from and attack from the West

What was the overall economic impact of the First Five-Year Plan?

Despite technically failing to meet its unrealistic targets, ultimately industry showed rapid growth, esspecially in heavy industry production

What was the overall growth rate of industry from 1928-41?

17% growth rate

What specific sector of household goods saw significant increases under the Second Five-Year Plan?

Footwear production

How much did coal output increase between 1927-1937?

35.4 million tons - 128.0 (the goal was 152.5)

How did the purges in 1937 affect the economy?

The removal of experts and many managers led to a massive economic slowdown

What were the motivations for introducing collectivisation?

"The NEP in 1921, had left agriculture unchanged since the revolution in 1917. By 1928 agriculture was still largely run on an individual basis by peasent householders under the supervision of the ""mir""."

Why was making agriculture more efficient crucial for industrialisation?

Industrialisation would increase populations of towns and cities, thus meaning the need for food surplus. The USSR also needed food exports in order to obtain foreign exchange to pay for foreign technology

What was the economic case for collectivisation?

Agriculture was previously centred on small peasant crops which were inefficient compared with the rest of Europe. Most land was peasant owned and distributed in a piecemeal fashion. Collectvisation would group farmers and land together, increasing economic scale.

What was the political case for introducing collectivisation?

Collectivisation would help extend socialism to the countryside and ensure survival of the Revolution. This was because party control over the countryside had been weak since the Tambov Rising in 1921. In addition the principle of private ownership of land had persisted in the countryside followng the Land Decree in 1917, as aristocratic owned land was given to the peasents. These factors held back socialism.

When was voluntary collectvisation introduced?

15th party congress, 1927

"What is the ""Ural-Siberian method""?"

Forced requistioning of grain as a temporary measure. This was used increasingly as collectivisation accelerated

What group of people did Stalin target under collectvisation?

Kulaks

What is a kulak?

Richer peasents who owned their own lot of land (often very small)

How was collectivisation introduced to peasants?

Local Party Officials would travel to villages to annouce collectives and lecture peasants on its advantages, until enough of them had signed up

How did collectivisation improve mechanisation?

Establishment of Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS), government-run centres that supplied farm machinery to collectives

"What happened to individuals labelled as ""kulak"" during the early stages of collectivisation?"

They were labelled as class enemies and deported to Siberia and Urals

How did kulaks and richer peasants respond to implementation of collectivisation?

Set fire to farms and slaughtered their animals. Sometimes party officials would even be murdered upon arriving in the village

How did Stalin respond to violence from kulaks and rich peasants?

"He sent ""dekulakisation squads"" to deal with the peasantry?"

"What were ""dekulakisation sqauds""?"

"Also known as the ""25 thousanders"" were Party members sent to forcily organise collectives. "

How were the OGPU utilised to deal with kulaks and violent peasants during collectivisation?

They would round up kulaks and other uncooperative peasants and deport them to remote regions of the USSR and labour camps

Between 1932 - 37 how many peasant households were collectivised?

1932 - 62%
1937 - 93%

How did the actions of kulaks under collectvisation effect livestock levels between by 1953?

The slaughtering of livestock halfed the number of cattle between 1928-33, which did not recover until 1953

How successful was collectivisation economcially?

Devastating. In grain production alone the decline was significant, falling from 73.3 mil tonnes in 1928 to 67.6 by 1934

How did collectivisation cause the widespread famine betwen?

The fall in food production resulted in the government siezing the majority of all grain under the system of state procurements for foreign exchange.

When did the widespread famine occur under collectivisation?

1932-33

How many famine-related deaths occured in 1933?

4 million

How did agriculture recover from the famine?

Relatively good harvest in 1933, and good weather aided the 1937 harvest, paired with a fall in demand for animal fodder meant more grain for consumption

How many kulaks do historians suspect died under stalins dekulakisation schemes?

5-10 million of the 15 million that existed

What area was affected the most by the famine under collectivisation?

Ukraine

What do historians suspect regarding the famine in Ukraine?

It was an intentional genocide by Stalin (known as Holdodomor) as Ukranian nationalism had worried the Soviet government since the 1920s.

In what areas did collectivisation succeed? how?

"Imposing party control over rural populatiopns. In 1930 the ""mir"" was replaced by the ""kolkhoz"" administration, which was headed by a chairman who was a party member, in addition to utilizing soviet youth to act as spies in watch towers to ensure peasants did not steal grain."

How did Stalins economic system prepare for war on a local level?

Defence Committees were set up to co-ordinate war production. Factories were quickly converted to the production of war materials

What is an example of how factories changed to prioritise wartime prouction?

In Moscow, childrens bicycle factory was converted to manufacture flame-throwers

How did soviet industrial production rise after 1941? following the initial collapse after the immediate invasion?

Betwen 1943-45, 73,000 tanks and 94,000 aircraft were produced

During the second world war, what sectors of economy were beyond the USSR's capability and resulted in them having to rely on foreign imports?

Tinned meat, including Spam which had to be imported from Britian under the Lend-Lease Scheme

By how much had heavy industry fallen between 1940-45 as a result of the Nazi invasion?

Steel production fell by 6 million tonnes
oil production fell by 2/3rds
wool production fell by 1/2

How did agriculture suffer as a result of the Nazi invasion?

Gran ouput fell from 95 million tonnes in 1940 to 30 million in 1942

How did the Nazi invasion affect individuals in the west of the USSR?

25 million were homeless
1,700 towns and 70,000 villages were destroyed 

When was the Fourth Five-Year Plan?

1946-50

What was the priority of the Fourth Five-Year Plan?

Bring out economic reconversion and reconstruction as quickly as possible

How did industrial production recover under the Fourth Five-Year Plan?

Quickly, largely thanks to the use of over 2 million slave labourers from the Gulag

What was the priority in industry of the Fourth-Five Year Plan?

Heavy industry (same as pre-war)

When was the Fifth Five-Year Plan?

1951-55

What was the objective of the Fifth Five-Year Plan?

achieve continued growth, albeit at a slower and more realistic rate than previous plans

What worldy events led to a shift in priority of arms expenditure under the Fifth Five Year Plan?

The Cold War

When did urban workers regain wages equal to 1928 levels?

1952

What is a key project that was undertaken during the Fifth Five Year Plan?

Volg-Don Canal

What was the Volga-Don Canal Project?

Constructed by slave labour (inmates told everyday spent working would decrease their sentence). It was an example of gigantism where the canal was decorated with many statues of Stalin, reflecting his cult of personality that had reached its peak following WW2

How did agriculture change during WW2?

"""Link"" system was promoted wherey smalll groups of peasants were given responsibility for areas within collectives"

How did agriculture recover following WW2?

Poorly, a drought in 1946 followed by a famine in 1947 in Ukraine caused grain production in 1952 to remain below 1940 levels

When was the decision to move to larger collectives made

1952