Industrialisation

Stalin wanted ‘war’ against his capitalist enemies, outstripping them in the production of coal, oil, iron and steel, and would grant them the readiness to protect the USSR from the rest of the world. Stalin’s industrialisation coincided with depression in the west, and he claimed that the USSR could avoid such errors. Soviet expansion took the form of Five Year Plans. There was to be five separate plans.

The first FYP 1928-32 laid down what was to be achieved, targets, and their figures of production were falsified to satisfy Stalin, and show Stalin that they were on course. Stalin impressed then raised the quotas of production to a point that was completely impossible. These figures were altered many times of productions. The plan was mainly a propaganda campaign at convincing the soviet people that they were part of a huge expansion. There was so, an enthusiasm that many believed they were building a new and better world. Under Stalin, a cultural revolution happened, in that the people shown such enthusiasm, the soviet people genuinely thought that they were creating a new type of individual ‘homo sovieticus’

No matter how rigged the results of product were, it was still a striking achievement with coal, iron and generation of electricity increased massively. However, nothing was done to improve the quality of life, with no incentive to do good work. Stalin claimed the FYP was to defender the USSR against foreign intervention. Public trials followed to scare the workers into line. Canals, bridges and docks were all built.

The workers, were predominately unskilled peasants, so the first five year plan stressed quantity and not quality, often whole factories were ruined due to the lack of skills, but Stalin remained untroubled, because he just blamed ‘wreckers’, the managers, in which he spied on using the OGPU and ‘cadres’, with simply mistakes being harshly punished, aswell as managers who didn’t bring back good numbers could be put on trial for being a USSR enemy, and so the numbers were very unreliable.

Second and third five year plans were modelled around the first but with realistic targets. However, it still lacked planning properly, and there was overproduction and underproduction in some areas. Some machines also lay broken for long periods of time. The factories also failed to co-operate over supplies, each anxious to meet its targets to save their own neck. Successes did happen however, because of the large scale plants created at the time of the first plan. However the negativity was that real economic growth was stunted as everyone lied about the truth with bad planning from the top. Workers conditions also failed to rise, but they couldn’t complain from fear of persecution. All houses built for the workers were cheap and had mainly one toilet, with all other money spent on armaments.

The five year plan figures indicate a huge increase in production, in a little over twelve years, all output had more than doubled, it proved vital as in 1941, its ‘war economy’ managed to survive and win a war against Nazi Germany after four years of occupation, an aim of Stalin to survive an foreign danger. However, there were some weaknesses, as increased production and expansion only happened in heavy industry, with the building of canals, refineries and factories increasing hugely too, but the economy remained very unbalanced. One weakness was the fact that the workers were unskilled, and no efficient machinery was used, meaning the wasting of vital resources. Stalin also never concentrated on creating material goods that could be sold for capital; he instead built large projects (magnitogorsk, white sea canal). The schemes also failed in the fact that they did not increase agricultural production, and they were completely ignored, as was the well being of the workers. Because of ignoring agriculture and the failure of collectivisation, Russia faced constant famines. Stalin’s constant war atmosphere however, did prepare Russia for Nazi occupation.

SUMMARY
Stalin to modernise Russia using five, Five Year Plans. He did this by enforcing strict workers policies and rapid building of factories (Magnitogorsk). Stalin also put high industrial targets, only concentrating on heavy industry, so high that its impossible to get exact figures as workers would possibly be executed or charged by the infiltrated OGPU.

Stalin did this to ‘protect the USSR from its foreign enemies, a war economy’, and to catch up and overtake with the advanced west. Stalin did have successes
- massive expansion of industrial output
- War economy gave it enough power to maintain occupation and beat germany.

More limitations however
- Only concentrated on Heavy Industry
- Economy was unbalanced (over and underproduction)
- Workers rights and conditions were very poor
- Agriculture remained in tatters
- A lot of the work was wasteful and inefficient – not modernised properly