Modernizing Russia

The Situation• Stalin took over a country in which:

– Almost all industry was in a few cities– Workers were unskilled & uneducated– Many regions were as backward as they

were 100 years before

Industry & the Five-Year Plans• S ended L’s NEP

GOSPLAN set overall target for an industry

Each region was told its target

Region set target for each mine, factory, etc.

Manager of site set target for each foreman

Foremen set target for shifts, each worker

• Created 5-Year Plans to modernize (R)– Plans created by GOSPLAN (State

planning org set up by L in 1921)– Set ambitious production targets in vital

industries (coal, iron, oil, electricity)– Detailed, down to the individual worker

Stalin and the Railway

First Five-Year Plan (1928-1933)• Focused on major industries

– Targets not met, but still impressive– Created industrial foundation for further

5-Year plans– Whole cities built in remote areas where

resources were– Workers moved into new cities to work– New steel mills, dams, & hydro-electric

power fed industry/energy requirements– New industries in previously undeveloped

regions (Uzbekistan & Kazakhstan)

With shock labor we will ensure prompt delivery of the giants of the Five Year PlanWorkers in supply companies, pictured below, have to speed up production in order to finish the large factories above in time.

Second Five-Year Plan (1933-1937)• Built on achievements of 1st 5-Years

– Heavy industry still priority• Other industries developed

– Lead, tin, zinc mines in Siberia– Transport & communication– Railways & canals– Moscow underground railway (Impressive)

• In agriculture production of tractors & other farm machinery increased dramatically

• Third Five-Year Plan launched in 1938– Some factories were to switch consumer

goods (radios, refrigerators, cars, etc.)– WWII interrupted this plan – Communist (R) would never produce large

#s of consumer goods

We do like Stachanov!

Were the Five-Year Plans A Success?• Criticisms

– A lot of inefficiency– Duplication of effort & waste– Enormous human cost (you’ll see!)

• Positives– 2nd & 3rd 5-Y Plans learned from errors in 1st

5-Y Plan– By 1937 USSR was a modern industrialized

state– W/o this industry (G) defeats USSR in

WWII

Were the Five-Year Plans A Success?

1913 1928 1940Gas (billion m3)

0.02 0.3 3.4

Fertilizers (million tons)

0.07 .1 3.2

Plastic (million tons)

- - 10.9

Tractors (thousands)

- 1.3 31.6

Were the Five-Year Plans A Success?Production in 1927-28 Five-Year Plan 1933 Five-Year Plan 1937

Electricity (billion Kw hours)

Coal (million tons)

Oil (million tons)

Pig Iron (million tons)

Steel (million tons)

5.05Actual13.4

Actual36.2

Target17.0

Target38.0

35.4Actual64.3

Actual128.0

Target68.0

Target152.5

11.7Actual21.4

Actual28.5

Target19.0

Target46.8

3.3Actual6.2

Actual14.5

Target8.0

Target16.0

4.0Actual5.9

Actual17.7

Target8.3

Target17.0

Were the Five-Year Plans A Success?

05

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1929 1932 1935 1937 1938

USSRGermanyEnglandUnited States

Propaganda• Every increase in production used for

propaganda– S wanted USSR to be beacon of socialism

• There is evidence that he [Stalin] exaggerated Russia’s industrial deficiency in 1929. The Tsars had developed a considerable industrial capacity … in a sense the spadework had already been done and is not altogether surprising that Stalin should have achieved such rapid results.– Historian S J Lee, The European

Dictatorships: 1918-1945, published in 1987

Under Lenin's banner for the second Five Year Plan!

Stalin is holding PRAVDA (The Truth) - main communist newspaper. Hint: did you read one lately? ... 'cause the chief is reading it?

• From 1930 gov’t drafted women workers– 1000s of day-care facilities set up– By 1937 women 40% of industrial workers– Between 1932-37 80% of new workers were

women

• Most famous worker: Alexei Stakhanov– Mined 102 tons/coal in one shift (14x avg!)– Became ‘Hero of Socialist Labor’– Propaganda told workers to be ‘Stakhanovites’

How Was Industrialization Achieved?• All extreme programs have costs:

– The workers paid the price– Foreign experts & engineers marveled @ (R)

workers for their toughness– Workers bombarded w/ propaganda (posters,

slogans, radio broadcasts, etc)– All had strict targets to meet (fined if missed)

Cover of Time magazine Dec 16, 1935

Workers: The Good• By late 1930 many workers’ lives better

– Some had well-paid skilled jobs– Some earned bonuses for meeting targets– Unemployment almost nonexistent– By 1940 USSR had more doctors than (E)– Education free for all– Training programs in colleges & work places

• Nothing strikes the visitor to the Soviet Union more forcibly than the lack of fear. No fear of not having enough money at the birth of a child. No fear for doctor’s fees, school fees or university fees. No fear of underwork, no fear of overwork. No fear of wage reduction in a land where none are unemployed– Dr Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury

Cathedral, visiting USSR in 1939

Workers: The Bad• On other hand, life was harsh under S

– Factory discipline harsh, punishment severe– Lateness, absences punished by sacking– Sacking meant losing apartment/home– Internal passports/Checka prevented free

movement of workers within USSR• Half a billion cubic feet of excavation work …

25,000 tons of structural steel … without sufficient labor, without necessary quantities of the most rudimentary materials. Brigades of young enthusiasts arrived in the summer of 1930 and did the groundwork of the railroad and dam … Later groups of peasants came … Many were completely unfamiliar with industrial tools and processes …– J Scott, Behind the Urals, 1943

Workers: The Ugly• Prison labor used for Massive projects

– Dams & canals built by soviet citizens imprisoned for being political opponents, suspected political opponents, kulaks, Jews, workers who had accidents or made mistakes on the job (charged w/ sabotage)

– Estimated 100,000 died on Belomor Canal

Industrialization Comes at a Cost• Few comforts:

– Almost no consumer goods– Severe overcrowding in apartments– Families of ten typically had two rooms– Wages actually fell between 1928 & 1937– In 1932 a husband & wife working made

what just one worker made in 1928• S destroyed ways of life

– Islam prevalent in Central Asia– Between 1928 & 1932 Islam repressed– Muslim leaders imprisoned– Mosques closed– Pilgrimages to Mecca forbidden

Activity• ‘The Five-Year Plans brought glory to Stalin and misery to his

people.’ Is that a fair view of Stalin’s industrialization program?• In pairs discuss this question. Make sure you look at all the

evidence and information before you make up you mind.• Let’s vote (something you couldn’t do in the USSR)• True statement!• False statement!

Modernizing Agriculture: Collectivization• Fact File:

– Peasants were to put their lands together to form large joint farms (kolkhoz) but keep small plots for personal use

– Animals & tools to be pooled together– Motor Tractor Stations (MTS), provided

by gov’t, made tractors available– 90% of kolkhoz produce to be sold to state– 10% kolkhoz produce kept to feed peasants

Modernizing Agriculture: Collectivization• S needed to modernize

agriculture– By 1928 USSR 2 million tons

short of grain needed to feed workers

– S needed foreign cash and got it by selling grain abroad

• NEP system not geared for S’s needs– Most peasants either laborers w/o land or

rich kulaks– Farms too small to afford/make use of

tractors, fertilizers, economies of scale– Most peasants were content to grow

enough food for themselves, not enough to feed all citizens of USSR

• 1929: Stalin announces collectivization

Modernizing Agriculture: Collectivization• The govt’s hard sell:

– Offered free seeds & perks– Peasants always suspicious of gov’t (what

had (R) gov’t ever done to build trust?)– Peasants disliked farms being under control

of local Communist official– Peasants told to grow cash crops instead of

grain to feed themselves– S was telling peasants to abandon the one

way of life they and their ancestors had known for over 1000 years

• What is the way out [of the food problem]? The way out is to turn the small and scattered peasant farms, gradually but surely, into large farms based on common, co-operative, collective cultivation of the land. There is no other way out.– Stalin in a speech in 1927

Forced Collectivization• Kulaks resisted

– Simply refused to hand over their land & produce

– Soviet propaganda tried to turn Russians against Kulaks

– Requisition parties took all food>starvation– 1000s arrested & sent to labor camps where

they were worked to death– Kulaks retaliated by burning crops &

slaughtering all their animals (If we can’t have it, nobody can!)

• 1932-33: Food production fell– Millions starved in Ukraine (best farm land

in USSR!)– When (G) first reached Ukraine in 1941

they were welcomed as liberating heroes!– Despite famine S did not ease off. By 1934

there were no more kulaks. By 1941 almost all farm land was collectivized. S had achieved his aim of collectivization.

Forced Collectivization• ‘How are things with you?’ I asked one old man. He looked around anxiously to

see that no soldiers were about. ‘We have nothing, absolutely nothing. They have taken everything away.’ It was true. The famine is an organized one. Some of the food that has been taken away from them is being exported to foreign countries. It is literally true that whole villages have been exiled. I saw myself a group of some twenty peasants being marched off under escort. This is so common a sight it no longer arouses even curiosity.– Reporter writing for the British newspaper Manchester Guardian, 1933

• Why do you think the reports of the famine came only from Western journalists?• Stalin, ignoring the great cost in human life and misery, claimed that

collectivization was a success; for, after the great famines caused at the time … no more famines came to haunt the Russian people. The collective farms, despite their inefficiencies, did grow more food that the tiny, privately owned holdings had done. For example, 30 to 40 million tons of grain were produced every year. Collectivization also meant the introduction of machines into the countryside. Now 2 million previously backward peasants learned how to drive a tractor. New methods of farming were taught by agricultural experts. The countryside was transformed.– Historian E Roberts, Stalin, Man of Steel, published in 1989

• According to Roberts, what advantages did collectivization bring?• Do you agree that these advantages outweighed the human cost?• Why did Stalin need to change farming in the USSR?• Why did the peasants resist?

Focus Task: Stalin’s economic policies: success or failure?

Industrialization Collectivization

Reasons the policy was adopted

Measures taken to enforce the policySuccesses of the policy

Failures of the policy

The human cost of the policy

Working w/ a partner, fill out the table w/ details from your notes.

Quotes of Stalin’s 5 Year Plan• Throughout history Russia has been beaten again and again because she was

backward … All have beaten her because of her military, industrial and agricultural backwardness. She was beaten because people have been able to get away with it. If you are backward and weak, then you are in the wrong and may be beaten and enslaved. But if you are powerful, people must beware of you. It is sometimes asked whether it is not possible to slow down industrialization a bit. No, comrades, it is not possible … To slacken would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten … That is why Lenin said during the October Revolution: ‘Either perish, or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries.’ We are 50 to 100 years behind the advance countries. Either we make good the difference in ten years or they crush us.– Stalin, speaking in 1931

• What are the results of the Five-Year Plan in four years? We did not have an iron and steel industry. Now we have one. We did not have a machine tool industry. Now we have one. We did not have a modern chemicals industry. Now we have one. We did not have a big industry for producing agricultural machinery. Now we have one.– Stalin speaking about the first Five-Year Plan in 1932

Quotes of Stalin’s 5 Year Plan• We got so dirty and we were such young things, small, slender, fragile. But we

had our orders to build the metro and we wanted to do it more than anything else. We wore our workers’ overalls with such style. My feet were size four and the boots were elevens. But there was such enthusiasm.– Tatyana Fyodorova, interviewed as an old lady in 1990, remembers building the

Moscow underground• As usual, at five o’clock that first morning call was sounded by the blows of a

hammer on a length of rail … the sound penetrated the window panes on which the frost lay two inches thick … [Sukhov] remembered that this morning his fate hung in the balance: they wanted to shift the 104th from the building shops to a new site, the ‘Socialist Way of Life’ settlement. It lay in open country covered with snowdrifts, and before anything else could be done there they would have to dig pits and put up posts and attach barbed wire to them. Wire themselves in, so they couldn’t run away …– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published in 1962.

Solzhenitsyn was probably the most famous dissident in Stalin’s USSR. He spent many years in labor camps. He was exiled in 1974. He lived for the next 20 years in the USA but in 1994 returned to Russia after the fall of Communism.

• We were led down to the communal kitchen in the basement … ‘My’ section consisted of a packing case and two reeking kerosene stoves. On these I was expected to cook, boil up washing and heat water for an occasional bath taken in a basin in the room above … The room was good for Moscow we were assured. At least we would not have to share with another family.– Betty Rowland, Caviar for Breakfast. The novelist describes her experiences of

Russia in the 1930s.

• In order to turn peasant society into an industrialized country, countless material and human sacrifices were necessary. The people had to accept this, but it would not be achieved by enthusiasm alone … If a few million people had to perish in the process, history would forgive Comrade Stalin … The great aim demanded great energy that could be drawn from a backward people only by great harshness.– Anatoli Rybakov, Children of the Arbat, 1988. A Russian writer presents Stalin’s

viewpoint on the modernization of Russia

Quotes of Stalin’s 5 Year Plan