Page 1. Year 12 History Stalin s Economic Policies 1928 1941. Reasons Why Stalin Wanted To Modernise The Soviet Union. 1. To turn the Soviet Union into a modern world power thus giving it the international status that a country with its vast land area, large population and huge resource base warranted. 2. To demonstrate the superiority of communism over capitalism by proving that a modern USSR could out produce the leading capitalist nations. 3. To help improve the living standards of all Soviet citizens. To feed the population, Stalin required the soviet agricultural sector of the economy to be more efficient. He hoped to achieve this through the introduction of new methods of production especially through the increased use of machinery, mainly tractors. However, his main problem was that there wasn t enough investment in industrial machinery to produce the desired quantity of machines. The reason for this lack of investment was that the agricultural sector didn t produce sufficient crop surpluses for sale on the export market. Without the income generated from export sales, there were insufficient funds available for investment in industry. Stalin thus had a massive problem. He needed agriculture to finance the industrial development of the Soviet Union but this could only happen without international investment if industry helped increase agricultural output. The Soviet bunion was thus in a viscous circle of investment deficiency and so by 1930 Stalin sought to break out of this by forcibly collectivising agriculture. He hoped that this would put the agricultural sector totally under the control of the State thus making it serve the purposes of the State. 4. To protect the security of the Soviet Union from any foreign invasion threat. Stalin thus needed a strong industrial sector to supply the armaments required by the State as well as a strong agricultural sector to supply the food and raw materials required by a self-sufficient nation. 5. To make the Soviet Union self-sufficient and therefore no longer dependant upon Western technology and goods for its development.
Page 2. Target. To achieve these aims, Stalin set the Soviet Union a 10-year time limit. In 10 years from 1928, Stalin wanted the Soviet Union to modernise, thus catching up with the leading industrial nations of the West, especially Britain which was considered to be the world s greatest industrial nation. The Steps Towards Modernisation. 1. End the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.) this was done in 1928. 2. Introduce the 5-Year Plans for Industry 1st 5-Year Plan 1928 1932 2nd 5-Year Plan 1932 1937 3rd 5 Year Plan 1938 1941 (ended by World War Two) 4th 5-Year Plan 1946-1950 5th 5-Year Plan 1951 1955 6th 5-Year Plan 1956 1960 7th 5-Year Plan 1961 1965 8th 5-Yearr Plans 1966-1970 9th 5-Year Plan 1971 1975 10th 5-Year Plan 1976 1980 11th 5-Year Plan 1981 1985 12th 5-Year Plan 1986-1990 13th 5 Year Plan 1991 was authorised in 1989, but collapsed when communism collapsed in the Soviet Union in August 1989. 3. Forced Collectivisation of Agriculture commenced in 1930 - ended in 1936. Method of Economic Planning 1. The Party Politburo In the Politburo Stalin outlined the general aims of economic development for the USSR. The decisions of the Communist Party are binding on the State.
Page 3. 2. The Government Sovnarkom 1917 36 Council of Ministers 1936-77 The Government authorises the decisions of the Party. 3. The Government Bureaucracy or Public Service Gosplan The central planning agency called Gosplan had the responsibility of taking the economic goals as established by the Party and authorised by the Government and turning those goals into specific targets. These step-by-step targets were incorporated into medium term economic plans called the Five Year Plans. The Soviet economy had to follow the set Five Year Plan and thus achieve the economic goals set by the Communist Party. The Situation in the USSR in the 1920 s that caused the change from the NEP to a Centrally Planned Economy. From 1921 1928, the new Economic Policy (NEP) operated in Soviet Russia. It was essentially a combination of socialism and capitalism. The State required the rural areas to supply it with the grain it needed to satisfy the needs of the urban areas. The State would determine how much grain and other farm produce it needed and the price that it was prepared to pay for this. Once this production quota (called procurements) was reached, the peasants were then free to sell any surpluses they had grown, on the open market at the current market prices (this was the system of capitalism). By 1928, as far as the Party was concerned, this system was a failure and therefore had to be changed. It was a failure because the Government/Party deliberately set the procurement price low and the peasants objected to having to sell their crops at below market prices since their income would decline on that of previous years. Declining rural income meant that the peasants had to pay more for from less money for the high priced manufactured goods produced by the urban industrial centres. Faced with increasingly high State procurement quotas, low prices for their rural output, falling income and relatively high prices for the manufactured goods that they had to purchase, the peasants reacted by producing less, hoarding grain from the State procurement collectors and working less than they had done in previous years. What grain the peasants managed to keep back from the State, they sold on the open market after keeping what they required for their own needs. Soviet Russia survived these years not so
Page 4. much from the State grain procurements but from the grain produce sold on the open markets. Peasant capitalism not State socialism was sustaining the nation. In the urban areas, life was not significantly more affluent than in the rural areas. Food was in short supply despite the grain procurements from the rural areas and the wages paid to the working class (= the proletariat) were low. There were few consumer goods to buy until 1938, working conditions were poor and the daily working hours were long. Housing was often sub-standard and overcrowding was a common feature of urban dwellings. By 1928, the USSR despite being the world s largest country in terms of population was not a world power. Table One. Selected industrial powers in 1928, based on Gross National Product (GNP) figures, measured in billions of 1964 $US. Country GNP ($US billion) USA 203 France 46 Britain 45 Germany 34 USSR 33 Japan 28 The Communist Party was committed to the building of socialism and according to Marx, this could only occur in a situation of economic abundance. This was why he insisted that a country had first to progress through a stage of capitalism, which would create a sufficient level of wealth for a socialist revolution to occur. The problem for Russia was that the socialist revolution (1917) occurred before the capitalist system had turned Russia into an industrially advanced country and so Lenin and the Bolsheviks faced the task of turning an economically backward country into a socialist nation. Their first attempt to do this was called War Communism (1918-1921) where the State tried to forcibly order the economy. Both peasants and workers fiercely opposed this policy and this resulted in the abandonment of War Communism in favour of the NEP in 1921.
Page 5. The NEP rested upon 4 assumptions for its success 1. Private enterprise (= capitalism) in the rural sector and retail trade sector of the economy and socialist control over the urban and industrial sectors. 2. Low taxation of the peasantry and thus minimal pressure on living standards. 3. Slow economic growth based on a growing exchange of raw materials and food from the rural sector and consumer goods from the urban sector. 4. A foreign policy based on keeping the Soviet Union at peace with its Capitalist neighbouring country. This was the policy of Bukharin and the right-wing of the Party and until 1927, Stalin. It did however have its critics. The left-wing argued that this strategy was too slow for the socialisation of the Soviet Union as it tied economic growth to the most backward sector of the Soviet economy the peasantry. It also depended upon industry to produce cheap consumer goods and it did nothing to develop heavy industries that were needed to develop the Soviet Union s military strength. Thus the USSR would remain at the mercy of its advanced capitalist neighbours for decades to come. In 1927, two events occurred which sent a shudder of fear through the Soviet leadership and ultimately signalled the end of the NEP. In May 1927, the British Government broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The Soviet leadership immediately feared that this was done as a first step towards war. A war, which the USSR couldn t win as it, was militarily weak. Therefore, the USSR had to devote more investment funds to industrial development especially in the areas of heavy industry and armaments. The only way this could occur would be to extract more investment funds from the peasantry and this was not possible as long as the NEP with its slow rate of economic growth remained in place. The second event that emerged towards the end of 1927 was the decline in the grain procurements received from the peasants. A trend that continued into 1928 as the peasants reacted to the low grain prices set by the State and the inability of industry through the lack of investment capital to supply cheap consumer goods to the peasants. It became obvious to Stalin in 1927 that the USSR had to rapidly industrialise. Hence the First Five Year Plan with its emphasis on increasing the development of and output of heavy industry (coal, iron, oil, steel and electricity) was launched in 1928. During its four year duration (its production targets were so
Page 6. high and the disruption to Soviet life was so harsh that Stalin had to end it early and introduce a more realistic and less disruptive Second Five Year Plan), coal and iron production doubled; electricity production trebled; 1500 new industrial enterprises were created and over 100 new towns were established. The official reason given by Stalin for ending the First Five Year Plan in four years was that it had achieved its targeted growth levels but in fact, it had not. One of the features of the first three Five Year Plans were the spectacular building projects that Stalin held up to the outside world as showpieces of Soviet achievement. These included the building of the White Sea Canal which connected the White Sea to the Baltic Sea; the building of the Dnieprostoi Dam on the Dnieper River in eastern Russia to generate hydro-electric power to the Donbass industrial region; the building of new industrial centres at Magnitogorsk and Novosibirsk, both of which were built east of the Ural Mountains; the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal and the construction of the Moscow Underground railway with its lavishly decorated stations. The Moscow Underground was the pride and joy of Stalin and most Muscovites. The Soviet Union had some, but not enough construction and earth moving machinery to do this work during the First Five Year Plan (1928-32) and so Stalin used what the nation had plenty of, the labour of its large population to do the backbreaking construction work. Labour brigades helped build many of these development projects during the Five Year Plans. Soviet Industrial Centres. 1. Leningrad. (was formerly a tsarist or traditional industrial centre) Industries include Metal processing Electrical power stations Machine building Chemical Non-ferrous metals Textile manufacturing 2. Moscow. (was formerly a tsarist or traditional industrial centre) Industries include Iron ore mining Electrical power station Textile manufacturing Metal processing Chemical
Page 7. Machine building 3. Donbas. (was formerly a tsarist or traditional industrial centre) The name Donbas refers to the area south of the Donets River in the eastern Ukraine. It is an important coal mining and industrial region. Industries include Coal mining Sugar-beet processing Metal processing Machine building Chemical Non-ferrous metals 4. Baku. (was formerly a tsarist or traditional industrial centre) Industries include Oil Chemical Electric power station 5. Batumi. (a new industrial centre established by the Communists on the Black Sea in Georgia) Industries include Oil Non-ferrous metals Coal mining Textiles Electric power station 6. Ural Mountains region. Includes the towns of Perm, Sverdlovsk, and Magnitogorsk. (a new industrial centre established by the Communists) Industries include Coal mining Iron ore mining Electric power stations Oil Machine building Metal processing Non-ferrous metals Chemical
Page 8. 7. Fergana Valley. (a new industrial centre established by the Communists in Uzbekistan) Industries include Coal mining Oil Textiles Non-ferrous metals Electric power station Machine building 8. Kusbass or Kuznets Basin in Siberia. (new industrial centre established by the Communists). Important for its coalfields. Industries include Coal mining Iron Ore mining Electric power station Machine building Non-ferrous metals An electric power station, machine building and coal mining also occurred at Irkutsk (a new industrial centre established by the Communists) and Vladivostok (formerly a tsarist or traditional industrial centre). The Five Year Plans for Industry. Table 2. Actual production figures for selected Soviet industries in 1927 under the NEP, prior to the introduction of the first Five Year Plan. Industry 1927 Production (in millions of tons) Coal 35 Oil 12 Iron Ore 5 Pig Iron 3 Steel 4 Pig iron is iron produced in a blast furnace, poured into special moulds in preparation for making wrought iron, cast iron and after further refining into steel and alloys.
Page 9. Table 3. The First five year Plan 1928-32 Targets, Actual Production, Results in millions of tons Industry Target Actual Production in 1932 % Increase on 1927 Production Coal 75 64 83% Iron 22 21 75% Iron Ore 19 12 140% Pig Iron 10 6 100% Steel 10 6 33% Table 4. The Second Five year Plan 1933-37 Targets, Actual Production, Results in millions of tons Industry Target Actual Production in 1937 % Increase on 1932 Production Coal 152 128 100% Iron 47 29 38% Iron Ore Not known Not known Not Known Pig Iron 16 15 150% Steel 17 18 300% Table 5. Assessing the increase in Soviet Production 1927 37. The impact of the Five Year Plans. Figures quoted are in millions of tons. Industry 1927 Production 1937 Production % Increase Coal 35 128 266% Oil 12 29 142% Pig Iron 3 15 400% Steel 4 18 350%
Page 10. Note. 1. One of the problems associated with using Soviet Statistics is that many figures were falsified to show that production targets were being met or exceeded. Also, after 1930, important economic indicators such as national income figures and price index numbers were not released to the world until after Stalin s death in 1953. 2. These figures do not show the wastage of resources and the inefficiency of some industries that operated under the communist central planning or command economy model. 3. Many Western visitors to the USSR were full of glowing reports for the Soviet economic achievements of the 1928-41 period, but they were only allowed to see what the government wanted them to see. Visitors were only allowed to travel to model collective farms and industries. They were not permitted to see the areas of economic failure. In June 1937, visitors to Moscow only saw new cars in the streets because in April 1937, the government banished all old automobiles from Moscow to the provincial areas. Leningrad and Moscow were turned into showplaces of communism for the outside world. Thus, Soviet economic achievement had a foreign propaganda component to it in addition to its obvious economic development aim. 4. Despite these problems, what is clear is that the USSR did achieve significant rates of economic growth between 1928 and 1941. How did Stalin make the Soviet Workforce work so hard to achieve the Goals of the Five Year Plans for Industry? Stalin used a number of methods to mobilise the workforce to support the Five Year Plans for industry 1. Appeals to one s pride and altruism (= having regard for the welfare or best interests of others). Many people, especially the young believed in the vision of a modern Russia and they volunteered in their hundreds of thousands to create the necessary transformation of Russia. They needed little persuasion to leave their homes and volunteer to work on the most distant projects under the most primitive of working conditions and in harsh weather conditions of Siberia. They believed in what they were doing and were prepared to make present sacrifices for future gains. They believed that they were building a better society not only for their children but for future generations as well. These people required very little motivation to work. Others who were less enthusiastic and less altruistic required sterner incentives to work.
Page 11. 2. Better wages. Wages were paid on the basis of productivity and so skilled workers could earn up to four times the wages earned by unskilled workers. The State would also pay higher wages to those industries that they had given a priority to in order to facilitate the development of the Soviet Union. Managers and engineers often were paid more than doctors. Lenin s wage equalisation policy was thus abandoned in 1931. 3. Awards and titles were given to individuals and groups who exceeded the expectations of the State. Women who gave birth to ten or more healthy children were given the title of Mother of the Soviet Union and were allowed to wear their medal in public. Groups were encouraged to work against each other in friendly competition in order productivity. In 1935, a Donbass coal miner, Alexei Stakhanov (1906 77) through a combination of hard work, help from other workers on his team (2 helpers shored up the tunnel and removed the coal whilst he worked at the coal face) and cheating, produced 102 tons of coal on his own, whilst working a single shift. This was 14 times the expected target for one worker (the expected target was 7.28 tons per worker) and it earned instant fame for Stakhanov. He then showed other workers how to emulate his feat thus spawning the Stakhanovite Movement (1935-39). Stakhanovite workers (= those who exceeded their production quotas) received extra wages but they were hatred by their fellow workers as they pushed up the production targets expected of each worker as the State now felt that 7.28 tons of coal per shift was too low. With higher production targets it was harder to receive higher wages. Workers who exceeded their production targets also received better housing, free holidays and cash bonuses. 4. Propaganda. Massive propaganda campaigns were launched in the cinema, on the radio, in the newspapers and in posters to encourage the Soviet people to work hard in order to modernise their nation. 5. Punishments. The fear of being accused of sabotage and sent to a labour camp (= Gulag) encouraged workers to carry out their assigned tasks. Often the really heavy work of building dams, canals, towns and factories and in particular the clearing of building sites and the digging of foundations were done by prisoners of the labour camps many of whom were peasants sent there as a result of resisting the process of forced collectivisation 1930-36). In November 1932, the State passed a Decree on Absenteeism which allowed for The dismissal of workers absent from work without a reasonable excuse. The removal of a ration card from absentee workers thus denying them food and threatening their survival.
Page 12. The eviction of workers who shirk (= don t do or work very slowly when they could work a lot faster) their work responsibilities from State housing, In 1938, the government introduced even tougher penalties for workers who were not working well. Every worker now had to carry a workbook that included a complete record of his or her employment. Should a worker arrive late for work, they could lose their health and maternity rights for six months and the working day was increased from 7 to 8 hours per day. The working week was increased from 5 to 6 days. In 1940 a worker had to get permission to leave his/her job and it was made a criminal offence for any worker to arrive more than 20 minutes late for work. Within six months, approximately 30,000 workers had been sent to labour camps for breaching the laws of 1940. Laws that were not repealed until 1956. Pride, better wages, free holidays, extra holidays, titles, propaganda and punishments were all methods used by Stalin to make the workers work. With the introduction of an internal passport system the government gained a greater control over where people lived and worked. Thus, people either lived as urban workers or as peasants. Stalin s Russia thus had two classes of people and movement from one area to the other was extremely difficult. Stalin also ensured the success of the Five Year Plans by 1. Using specialist advisers from other countries to help develop Soviet industry. USA experts helped supervise the Dnieper Dam Project, the building of the Soviet asbestos industry and the Soviet car industry. The Ford Motor Company helped the Soviets to build 140,000 cars in 1932. A lot of American and British engineers were used to develop Soviet industry until Stalin could train sufficient Soviet technocrats for the job. 2. Scrapping the concept of workers committees running State enterprises and reinstating the system of single managers who were directly responsible for the enterprise reaching its set production targets. Managers who exceeded their targets were rewarded with larger houses, motor vehicles and higher wages. Problems with Central Planning. Central Planning (= the Five Year Plans) suffered from many problems thus making it inefficient despite the successes claimed by Stalin 1. Production targets were not met as they were set to high.
Page 13. 2. Some factories were left idle for weeks as they waited for the equipment and resources allocated to them to arrive. 3. Some managers reduced the quality of their goods in order to increase their output thus exceeding their production targets. The decrease in quality lead to the manufacture of sub-standard goods, which soon broke and could not do the job that they were designed for. 4. Managers inflated their production figures to meet their production targets. 5. Machinery was unwittingly damaged by unskilled workers many of who were ex-peasants who were only accustomed to primitive levels of technology. 6. Unable to admit their mistakes, many managers had to blame saboteurs for their failure to reach their production targets. The famous Shakhty Trial of 1928 blamed 53 foreign engineers for conspiring to wreck Soviet industry when the Donbass coal industry failed to reach its production targets. The hunt for scapegoats intimidated workers into working harder and managers into inflating their production figures as well as covering up any mistakes or faults so that they could not be accused of failing to fulfil their production targets. The Collectivisation of Agriculture. In the 1920 s, prior to the forced collectivisation of agriculture (1930-36), Russia s 124 million peasants (approximately 80% of the population) lived in 614,000 rural settlements of which the average size was 200 people or 30 to 40 households. These peasants were either individual landowners or rural labourers and farming methods were often quite primitive (strip farming, using wooden ploughs, scythes, horses, human labour and very little use of modern machinery and methods). Approximately 96% 0f all arable land in European Russia was owned and farmed by these individual peasants. The State owned the remaining 4% and it was farmed collectively using the Sovkhoz or State Farm Model. On the Sovkhoz, the State owned all land, buildings, supplies, machinery and produce. The peasants worked the land and were paid to do so by the State. The State kept all output and the peasants used their wages to purchase goods and services that they needed to live. The Sovkhoz were more efficient than the individual peasant farms since they had greater access to modern methods of production and the Sovkhoz workers were thus able to produce more than the individual peasants who tended to consume 90% of what they produced. The bulk of Russia s population and resources were thus tied up inn the rural sector of the economy. This represented a huge problem for the communists since their supporter base was the urban workforce and this meant that if Russia was to modernise it could only do so by transferring resources from the rural sector of the economy to the industrial sector. The rural sector had to feed the
Page 14. urban centres supply additional labour to the industrial workforce and finance the Communists industrial modernisation programmes (= the Five Year Plans). Bukharin and the right wing of the Communist Party believed that this could be done slowly through the market forces of the NEP whist the left wing felt that the State had to directly move these resources from the countryside into the cities by force if necessary. The rightwing view, which was initially supported by Stalin, prevailed until 1929 although it came under increasing pressure from 1927. In 1926, the growth that heavy industry was receiving from the NEP showed signs of slowing down as the amount of investment capital it required was not being supplied by the grain procurements from the peasants. By 1927, the peasants were growing enough food to feed themselves but they weren t growing a sufficient surplus to feed the growing urban population. The peasants could see no reason to grow a huge crop surplus when the money they received from the State was so low and there was insufficient consumer goods being produced by the urban centres for them to buy. Thus, the 1927 grain procurements by the State had fallen and the 1928 procurements also looked grim for the State. Bukharin proposed that the State increase its grain procurement price to encourage the peasants to grow more food but Stalin was opposed to this. Stalin felt that the peasantry could not be allowed to hold the State to ransom by refusing to plant and harvest more crops. The heavy industry priorities of the State would have to be abandoned or reduced if more consumer goods had to be produced to satisfy the peasants. Stalin would not tolerate the compromising of the goals of the First Five Year Plan. In 1928, Stalin and the other Party members went into the Ural region of western Siberia to see for himself the difficulties being experienced by the State in procuring grain from the peasants. Exasperated, he told the local communist officials to use whatever methods they had to in order to get the grain from the peasants. The forceful methods of War Communism were revived and the amount of grain obtained increased. Stalin was now convinced that force (now called the Urals-Siberian Method of grain procurement) was the way to tackle the grain problem. On this, he had a major falling out with Bukharin (a Communist Party right winger) in 1928 and ultimately this lead to Bakharin s dismissal from the Politburo in 1929. By mid-1928, it was clear that using force on the peasantry was having an adverse effect in some areas. There were over 150 peasant riots in Siberia and the area under crops was being reduced by the peasants. The procurement crisis of 1927 and 1928 meant that bread and meat rationing had to be introduced into the urban areas in 1928 and 1929. Tired of this annual battle to extract sufficient grain and
Page 15. agricultural produce from the peasants, Stalin decided on 7 November 1929 to smash the hold of the peasants on the economic development of the USSR. From the Urals-Siberian Method, Stalin decided to use force to bend the will of the peasantry to that of the State. He was also convinced that from the superior produce figures from the Sovkhoz experiment that collective farming was superior to the system of individual peasant farming. Hence, Stalin forcibly collectivised Soviet agriculture between 1930 and 1936. The pace of collectivisation was so great that in February 1930, the government claimed that 50% of all peasants had given up their individual farms to live on the collective farms. However, this was not a true claim and the formation of the collective farms was chaotic as many peasants resisted this move. Fearing that this rural unrest would jeopardise the spring sowing, Stalin announced on 2 marches 1930, that collective farms must not be established by force. Thus, by July 1930, 24% of the rural community had formed collective farms. The government however had not retreated from its goal of collectivisation and renewed pressure in 1931 had 53% of all peasants living on collective farms by July. By July 1936, 90% of all peasants had been moved either voluntarily or by force onto collective farms. Thus by the end of 1936, the collectivisation of agriculture had been accomplished. Rural capitalism (= individual landownership and the sale of the produce from this farm at market prices for a profit) was a thing of the past in Stalin s Russia. Stalin had been able to defeat the peasants because 1. Their geographic dispersion made it difficult to organise themselves and thus coordinate resistance against the policies of the government. Policies to which they were opposed. 2. The bulk of the peasants were illiterate and therefore they couldn t articulate compelling arguments against collectivisation. 3. They lacked a strong, national leader. 4. The nature of the Communist Party had changed and as such it was prepared to confront the peasantry in 1929 whereas in 1917 and 1921 it was not prepared to do so. The pre-1917 Bolsheviks were not the same as the post- 1917 party members. The pre-1917 Bolsheviks were recruited from the intelligentsia into an underground revolutionary party. The post-1917 recruits joined the urban workforce and they joined a party with a large membership (250,000 in December 1917; 700,000 in 1920 and 1.7 million in 1930) and a party, which was also the government. These new recruits were conditioned to obedience and knew that their careers depended upon carrying out the policies of the Communist Party. Thus, when the politburo
Page 16. decided to confront the peasantry, the Party membership did not dissent. Rather, they obeyed. 5. Stalin had the will and the instruments of power (the army, secret police, government bureaucracy, the courts, the media) to impose his will on the peasantry. Reasons why the Communists Collectivised Agriculture. 1. The agricultural sector had to produce sufficient in order to finance the industrial development of the USSR and it couldn t do this using the old fashioned methods of strip farming, which used antiquated (= old) technology. 2. Collective farming made it easier to introduce modern farming methods and new technology, especially the use of tractors 3. The more agriculture was mechanised, the more peasant labour could be freed from the rural sector and diverted to the industrial areas that needed a growing workforce if its productivity was to increase. 4. Collecting grain from collective farms was an easier task for the government than collecting it from individual farmers who were reluctant to part with their grain at the low prices being offered by the government. 5. Ideologically, rural socialism (= collective farming) was more acceptable to the communist leadership than rural capitalism (= private landownership and individual enterprise). Types of Collective Farms. 1. Sovkhoz State run farms with peasants paid a wage. These were very expensive to run and were often created from the former estates of the nobility. 2. Kolkhoz This was the most common type of collective farm. Landownership was held in common by all members of the collective and all property was communally owned. All members had to work collectively and therefore all were entitled to a share of the farm s output after it had supplied its procurement quotas to the State and to the Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) as payment for the use of the agricultural machinery stored at these establishments. The State would build and equip the Machine Tractor Stations and neighbouring collective farms would hire the equipment when required. The hire fee being paid in product procurements.
Page 17. How Collectivisation was carried out. Collectivisation occurred when the peasants signed a register petitioning the government to allow them to form a collective farm. Thus the government could claim that collectivisation was a voluntary process. The government also embarked on a massive propaganda campaign to persuade the peasants to join a collective farm. However, despite the official government position on collectivisation, the real situation was that it was hatred by most peasants and forcibly opposed by them. In many cases, Party activists supported by the OGPU (= the Soviet Secret Police 1922-34, the successor to the Cheka 1917-22) pressurised the peasants into petitioning the government to allow them to form collective farms. Those who still refused to join a collective farm were labelled as Kulaks (= rich peasants) and either shot, deported, exiled to Siberia or sent to labour camps. Sometimes whole villages were shot or exiled as an example to others as to the fate that awaited them should they resist the process of collectivisation. Dekulakisation. Dekulakisation or the elimination of the kulak class was an integral part of the collectivisation process. Inn order to deflect the anger of the peasants from the government s policy of forced collectivisation, the government blamed the kulaks. They said that it was the kulaks and not the bulk of the middle to poor peasants who were opposed to the process of collectivisation since they stood to lose their wealthy. Stalin wanted to dominate the peasantry by turning the process of collectivisation into a class war between whose who opposed it ( the Kulaks). However, Stalin had a problem with this strategy, as there were very few rich peasants in 1930. He solved this by creating a kulak class. He invented a group of people called sub-kulaks and these people he labelled as having Kulak aspirations. Quite often the people referred to as kulaks and this term also included the sub Kulaks were simple the most efficient farmers who owned a few animals and some machinery. According to Stalin, these people had to be liquidated, as they were class enemies opposed to the modernisation of the Soviet Union. Where kulaks did not exist, the Moscow Communist Party instructed the local district communist party branches to find some kulaks and draw up a list of name for exile, imprisonment or execution. The class war had thus returned to the countryside. Peasants who were jealous of other peasants often denounced them as kulaks thus settling old scores with their neighbours. Even children were encouraged to inform the local government authorities of anyone including their own parents who opposed the government s policy of forced collectivisation.
Page 18. Many innocent peasants thus suffered as a result of this dekulakisation policy. The tragedy for the Soviet Union was that by wiping out the most efficient farmers, agricultural output declined and it was not until 1939 that output levels reached those of 1913. Forced collectivisation was disastrous for Soviet agriculture but when it ended in 1936, the Party had smashed the power of the peasantry and all of the USSR was subject to its will. The peasants were now treated on the same basis, as the urban workers for all incomes were dependent upon the State. The Impact of Forced Collectivisation. The peasants hatred collectivisation. The freedoms that they sought from the Tsar and had gradually won since 1861 (= Serf Emancipation Act) were now removed. They likened forced collectivisation to a return to serfdom and communal living. As a reaction to this, the peasants slaughtered their animals (pigs, cows, chickens, horses), burnt their crops, burnt their houses and destroyed their tools rather than turn them over to the State. Riots broke out in the countryside, government and party officials were attacked, women were used to lead many peasant attacks as the officials were reluctant to use force against women. In one riot, the trouble lasted for 5 days and the government had to use armoured cars from the army to restore control. Forced collectivisation began to assume a military styled operation. The disruption in the countryside was so great that in March 1930, Stalin and the Party had to call a temporary halt to the process of forced collectivisation because they feared that there would be no summer crop to harvest if it continued. However, once this was harvested, forced collectivisation recommenced albeit at a slower pace but with just as much violence as before. The peasants responded as they had previously done. Those that had not as yet joined a collective farm horded their grain, planted fewer areas of crops, slaughtered their animals, destroyed their tools and burnt their houses and sheds when it came their turn to be forcible removed to the collective farms. Given that the USSR did not have a highly mechanised agricultural sector, the destruction of work animals was a disaster. Since half the agriculture capital were work animals, their slaughter caused a 25% drop in productivity. With less fodder crops planted the peasants were forced to kill their animals, as there was insufficient food for them. Other peasants killed their livestock to avoid being called kulaks and punishment whilst others slaughtered their animals just to stop them becoming the property of the State. Whilst all of this peasant resistance was occurring the State was still requisitioning grain. The grain procurement quotas were not lowered and the State granaries were overflowing with grain. In 1932, there was a poor harvest in the Soviet Union due
Page 19. partly to a poor growing season and partly due to peasant reaction to collectivisation. However, grain procurements still rose and the USSR still sold grain overseas so that the industrial development projects could be financed. The peasants starved during 1932-33 yet the State never admitted this and Stalin refused to ask for international aid. He could not afford to admit that his policies had brought the rural sector to the point of starvation. It is difficult to know how many peasants died as a result of the 1932-33 famine because accurate statistics were not kept but estimates put this figure at somewhere between 4 and 6 million people. Stalin was very careful to hide the excesses of forced collectivisation from the Soviet people and the rest of the world. The official image portrayed was one of success and happiness. Prior to the forced collectivisation of agriculture in 1930, only 2% of the peasants had voluntarily joined collective farms. Under forced collectivisation, the face of Soviet agriculture rapidly changed. Table 6. Date % of Peasants on Collective Farms July 1929 2% July 1930 24% July 1931 53% July 1936 90% Having smashed the power of the peasants, the State could allow some concessions to entice them to increase their productivity. In 1935, the Collective Farm Charter Law was passed. This law allowed all peasants on the Kolkhoz to cultivate a private plot of household land, usually ¼ - ½ hectare in the European parts of the Soviet Union and 1 hectare in the less populated regions of Asian Russia, especially Siberia. On this land they were able to cultivate agricultural produce that they could use for their own needs and any surplus, they could sell on the open market. This was similar to the NEP concessions 1921-28 and it was one of the last remains of capitalism permitted to survive in the Soviet Union. It was the output from these private plots that enabled the Soviet Union to survive the harshness of forced collectivisation.
Page 20. Results of Soviet Economic Policies 1928-41. (1) Soviet industrial output increased. (see table 7) Table 7. Product 1921 1928 1933 1940 % Increase From 1928 Oil 4 12 22 31 158 (million tons) Coal 9 35 76 166 374 (million tons) Steel 0.2 4 7 18 350 (million tons) Electricity 0.5 5 16 48 860 (billion kwh) Trucks 0 0.7 4 14 1900 (million) Tractors 0 0.1 7 3 2900 (million) Shoes (million pairs) 28 58 90 211 264 Table 8. Index numbers of Soviet Economic Development 1928-40 where 1928 is the base year. This means that all comparisons are made back to the 1928 production figures. Year Population Number Of Town Dwellers Number Of People Employed Grain Harvest Number Of cattle Meat Production A B C D E F 1928 100 100 100 100 100 100 1932 Not Available Not Available 197 95 64 57 1940 125 229 262 101 80 96
Year Total Consumption Iron Steel Coal Oil Electric Power Motor Vehicles G H I J K L M 1928 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 1932 Not 188 137 181 184 270 2988 Available 1937 97 439 412 361 246 724 24988 1940 93 452 426 467 268 966 18125 How to read an index numbers table. Page 21. All figures in a price index table are compared to the base year (the year from which the comparison is to be made) whose index number is 100. In 1932, iron production (see column H) rose by 88% from that of 1928 (188-100 = 88). The increase in iron production between 1928 and 1940 was 352% (452-100 = 352). Consumption (column G) fell by 7% (100-93 = 7) between 1928 and 1940. Note One can t compare price index numbers other than too the base year. One can t compare 1932 to 1937 or 1940 the comparison must be 1928 to 1932, or 1928 to 1937 or 1928 to 1940 as these figures were mathematically calculated on the year 1928. (2) Collectivisation of agriculture achieved the main aims of the Soviet leadership The State could now commandeer food from the peasants at prices (often quite low) that they determined. The mechanisation of agriculture that was a product of the Five Year Plans for industry especially with the increase in tractor output (100,000 in 1928, 3 million in 1940), freed millions of peasants from the rigours of rural wear thus allowing them to be redeployed into the urban industrial workforce. Grain procurements from the rural sector increased.
Page 22. Statistical Analysis of Soviet Agricultural Production. Table 9. Cow, Pig and Grain Production. Cows (Million head) Pigs (Million head) Grain (Millions of tons) 1913 1921 1928 1933 1940 30 24 30 20 29 23 13 19 10 28 86 36 73 69 95 Table 10. Crops sown in millions of acres. 1913 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 Total 252 283 305 326 321 309 sown Cereals 227 232 242 249 237 242 Technical 11 21 25 33 36 29 Vegetables 9 18 19 22 22 21 Fodder 5 12 16 21 25 17.5 Table 11. Gross production in thousands of tons. 1913 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 Cereals 80,100 71,740 83,540 69,480 69,870 89,800 Raw 740 860 1,113 1,290 1,270 1,320 Cotton Flax 330 360 430 550 500 550 Fibre Sugar 10,900 6,240 14,000 12,000 6,560 8,990 Beet Sunflower Seed Not Available 1,700 1,600 2,500 2,200 2,350
Page 23. Table 12. Live stock in millions. Working Horses Large Horned Cattle Cows (included in the large horned cattle figures) Sheep and Goats 1913 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 Not 24 21 20 16 14 Available Not 67 52 48 41 38 Available Not Available Not Available 30 27 24 21 20 147 109 78 52 50 (3) The human costs associated with the rapid economic growth of the USSR 1928-41 were very high The Kulaks were wiped out as a class of people. Men and women worked longer and harder than before. Housing conditions declined during the 1930 s and 1940 s as the government diverted investment funds from the housing industry into heavy industry. The people paid more taxes. There was a turnover tax on grain as well as a tax on vodka, safety matches and salt. Living standards declined and inflation rose as the government printed more money. Individual freedoms were curtailed through the introduction of the workbook system and the internal passport system (= people could not move from one area to another without the permission of the State). Millions of people died as a result of the 1932-33 famine.
Page 24. (4) The Bolshevik Revolution (1917) was a revolution from below and the Stalinist Revolution (1928-41) was a revolution from above with the latter completing the revolutionary process in Russia. By 1921, revolution and civil war had removed the upper classes of Tsarist society. Gone were the nobility, the bourgeosie and the clergy through emigration, expropriation (= the removal of privileges and property) and death. Only the small propertyowners, Nepmen and peasants remained after 1921. In 1929, the government attacked these last remnants of capitalism. From 1930, the activities of the Nepmen were banned, the Kulaks were wiped out as a class and the rest of the peasants were forced to give up their private plots of land and join them together to form collective farms. Thus, Collectivisation and Dekulakisation began the revolution from above, which by 1936 completed the revolution from below that had been commenced in 1917. After 1936, the revolution from above ensured that there were no longer any classes living off the ownership of private property. All members of Soviet society with the partial exception of collective farmers lived on wages earned from their labour. The collective farmers received a share of the collective farm s output once the procurements were taken by the State. Thus, the Nineteenth Century classification of productive and nonproductive classes in Russia had all but disappeared after 1930. The 1936 Constitution recognised the existence of only two classes of people in the USSR, the proletariat (= urban working class) and the peasantry (= rural working class). It also recognised the existence of a new elite (= a privileged group of people) drawn from the working class. This Soviet intelligentsia (called vydvizhentsy = those brought forward) included all white-collar workers trained as technical specialists (= technocrats), scientists, artists, clerks and typists. It was a larger group than the former Tsarist intelligentsia.
Table13. The Changing Class Structure of Russia/USSR 1913-70. Figures given as a % of the total Population. Page 25. Class 1913 1939 1970 1. Nobility, clergy, merchants, 4.9 0 0 senior public servants, professionals 2. Peasants (a) Individual Farmers (b) Collective Farmers Total 78.1 0 78.1 2.6 47.2 49.8 0 20 20 3. Urban Workers (Proletariat) 14.7 32.5 55 4. Intelligentsia (office 2.3 17.7 25 workers, specialists) Total 100 100 100 The process of social change initiated by Lenin and accelerated by Stalin in 1930, continued even after Stalin s death in 1953. By the time that Stalin s revolution (the revolution from above ) had been completed, the basic institutions of a totalitarian society had been established Collective (kolkhoz) and State farms (Sovkhoz). A command economy geared for rapid industrial growth through the Five Year Plans A centralised political system with real political power held by one man; the General Secretary of the Communist Party. A rigidly controlled and censored communication system. A political system supported by an extensive network of informers, secret police, the prison system, the courts and the military.