Soviet Union Under Stalin

Stalin's Five-Year Plan

• Stalin proposed the first of several "five-year plans" in 1928. 

• It was aimed at building heavy industry, improving transportation, and increasing farm output. 

• Government now controlled all economic activity.

• This led the Soviet Union into a command economy.

Command Economy

• The Soviet Union developed a command economy under Stalin.

 • In a command economy, government

officials made all basic economic decisions. • The government owned all businesses and

distributed all resources.   

Collectivization in Agriculture

• Stalin also brought agriculture under governmental control.

• He wanted all peasants to farm on either state owned farms or on collectives.

Collectivization in Agriculture

• The government wanted farmers to produce more grain to feed workers in the city.

• This also helped to sell grain abroad to earn more money.

Collectives • Collectives are  large farms owned and operated

by peasants as a group.

• Stalin thought that small farms run by peasants were inefficient and a threat to state power. 

• Stalin wanted all peasants to farm on either state-owned farms or collectives. 

• Government provided tractors, fertilizers, and better seeds. Peasants learned modern farming methods and they were allowed to keep their houses and personal belongings.

Collectives • Animals and implements were turned to a

collective. 

• The state set all of the prices and controlled access to farm supplies. 

• Peasants were upset because they didn't want to sell their crops at low prices. 

• They burned their crops, killed their animals and destroyed their tools.

                          Kulaks

• Stalin believed that kulaks, or wealthy farmers, were behind the resistance by burning their crops, killing their animals and destroying their tools. 

• In 1929, Stalin liquidated the kulaks as a class. He did this by confiscating their land, sending them to labor camps where thousands were killed or died from being overworked. 

•  This made the peasants angry, so they grew just enough crops for themselves.

                          Kulaks

• In response, the government seized all the grain to meet industrial goals leaving the peasants to starve.

• Between that policy and the poor harvest of 1932, there was a bad famine named "Terror Famine". In the Ukraine, five to eight million people died.

Gulags

• Stalin used terror as a weapon against his own people by violating their rights, opening private letters, planting listening devices, having no free press, and no safe way of protesting. 

Gulags

• Critics of Stalin were rounded up and sent to the Gulag, a system of brutal labor camps, was created in Siberia (north-central Soviet Union) where many died.

                  The Great Purge • Stalin and his secret police went after Bolsheviks

who were involved in the original 1917 Revolution.

• The terror then targeted army heroes, industrial managers, writers, and ordinary citizens.

• They were charged with crimes ranging from counterrevolutionary plots to failure to meet production quotas.

                  The Great Purge • 1937-1938, was mostly directed against Ukranians

. The secret police rounded up millions of people and either sent them to  Siberian prisons or the executed them. The entire Central Committee and Politburo of the Ukraine were killed. Stanlin wanted to get rid of any potential enemies from within the Communist Party. 

• "Trials" and executions were carried out by the NKVD (secret police) who had pratically unlimited power over innocent people's life and death.

Comintern

• Policy that encouraged world-wide communist revolution. The Comitern's supported revolutionary groups outside the Soviet Union and used propaganda against capitalism.

• It made Western powers highly suspicious of the Soviet Union.

                   Socialist Realism

• Stalin required artists and writers to create their works in a style that showed Soviet life in a positive way and promoted hope in the communist future.

• Socialist Realism was thought of as following in footsteps of the great Russian authors Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Russification

• Stalin’s policy was to make the culture of all Soviet Republics, Russian in nature.

• The republics were forced to adopt the language and traditions of Russia while ignoring their own.

Women

•Under the Communist party, women won equality under the law and gained access to education and a wide range of jobs.

•By the late 1930, some Soviet women were employed in medicine and engineering.

•Others worked in factories in construction and on collectives with in their families. They earned the same low wages as men.