Stalin's Plans and Collectivisation

Stalin decided to impose the USSR on a huge programme of reform, agriculture and industry to be revolutionised, the cue for this was by the 1926 congress, which wished the change the agrarian Russia into an industrial one. Stalin’s essential aim was ‘modernise the soviet economy’ by Collectivisation and Industrialisation. This was to be the Second Revolution or ‘Stalin’s revolution’ or the revolution from above. Stalin’s state control was to be total, as he saw the hardliner policy to be the most secure.

Stalin genuinely believed Russia needed modernisation to survive, to catch up and overtake the USA and Western Europe. Simply, he wanted a second revolution to both assert his authority and so the Soviet Union could catch up with the rest of the world.

Firstly, was Collectivisation, as Stalin and the Bolshevik parties often refused to take in foreign loans from the capitalist countries. Collectivisation saw the Russian government take all land, and that peasants would not farm for individual profit, but would put efforts together and have a fixed wage. He wanted to use the surplus profits to fund the Industrialisation, as Stalin wanted the Soviet Union to become an industrial rather than an agrarian state. The Motorised tractor was introduced to make farming more efficient, hopefully creating surplus that could be sold to create capital for new factories. Collectivisation was forced upon the reluctant peasantry, and he also identified the Kulaks as the problem with agriculture ‘holding the best land and cheap peasant labour’. Kulaks were actually the hardest working peasants who simply did better work that their neighbours. Stalin had little sympathy for the peasants however. The land could be used for industrial investment funds and new workers. Surplus grain = funding, Surplus peasants = workers, as the countryside was overpopulated. Stalin argued that the food problems were because of Kulaks, and so de-kulakisation began. Land and property were seized off kulaks and were physically attacked. They were arrested by the OGPU (Cheka). Most thought it was the best way to speed up collectivisation.

There was some resistance to collectivisation, with half the peasant farms in the USSR being so. This amounted to civil war in the countryside, with thirty thousand arson attacks and rural mass disturbances. However, requisition squads pressed on, (after a temporary halt due to disturbances) The Peasants either would not or couldn’t co-operate with the destruction of their old ways, the peasants so ate their seed crop and slaughtered their animals. The Soviet government made matters worse, as imprisonment did not make the peasants restock. Grain and live stock fell hugely. The National famine occurred at its worst. Collectivisation ruined the peasantry, but it did cause huge migration, Stalin did the wrong thing for the right reason.

SUMMARY

Aims:
Farms were to be collectivised, Government owning and paying a wage
Surplus Foods were to be sold to fund Industrialisation
Surplus peasants would become industrial workers
Stalin also wanted to sort out food problem
Catch up with the rest of the world.

'Kulak's' were the problem, held grain and took the best land
'De-kulakisation' saw their land removed and them arrested.
Removing them would 'speed up collectivisation'

Consequences however:
-Land becomes disrupted - no incentive to work
-Peasants cant handle the change
- Big fall in food production
- Peasants begin to revolt
- Hunger and national famine
- Government deal with it the wrong way,
- DID HOWEVER, achieve unpopulisation of the countryside.
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