AREA 2 : STALIN'S ECONOMIC POLICIES

1. Why did Stalin decide that economic change was essential?

(a) Russia was a backward country. There were few cities. There had been industrial development under Nicholas II but the First World War and the Civil War had brought major destruction and N.E.P. had not managed to radically improve the situation.

(b) Stalin feared that it was only a matter of time before the West attacked. He told the Party that Russia was 100 years behind the West and that either Russia would have to catch up in 10 years or be destroyed. It was vital to build up industry to produce the materials and weapons to defend Russia. Industrialisation had to be rapid. Such rapid progress could not be achieved by allowing individuals control -- it had to be done by the State through central planning and direction. Ever since Western countries had helped the Whites during the Civil War, Stalin believed that an attack from the West would come sooner or later. This fear of western invasion had been highlighted by two events in 1927. Firstly, a right-wing government -- hostile to Communism -- had emerged in Poland; secondly, diplomatic relations with Britain had broken down in that same year.

(c) Modern industry needs modern agriculture so that the factory workers can be fed. Changes in industry would therefore mean changes in agriculture too. Rapid industrial growth would mean a rapid expansion of Russia's towns and cities, but how was this new urban population to be fed? It was difficult enough in 1927 to ensure that sufficient food got through. Some were doing well under the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.), but their farms were small and their methods old-fashioned. Many harvests were still cut by hand with a sickle and threshed by hand with a flail. Russia needed to improve agricultural methods to meet the demands of the population.

(d) Stalin needed to pay for his industrial policies. Nobody would lend Russia money. Russia could only afford to buy machinery from abroad if she was able to export food. Agricultural production had to be increased. Industrial growth could not be achieved unless something drastic was done to improve the food supply. At some time during 1928 or 1929 Stalin decided to improve Russian agriculture through a policy of collectivisation.

(e) For modern industry to function, it needed skilled and literate workers, but most peasants in 1928 could not read or write. They showed little incentive for change : they had their land and wanted to keep it.

(f) The shortage of food led to rationing in 1928. In 1927 and in 1928 the government found that the peasants were less willing to sell their food because the prices offered by the government were very low. Stalin sent squads of men into the Urals region and western Siberia to seize food from the peasants. This "Urals-Siberian" method was only partly successful. Stalin had to find a more efficient system for gathering crops.

(g) The peasants had never been enthusiastic supporters of the communists. In 1918 they had voted for the Socialist Revolutionaries. If Stalin could move them into larger farms with party managers in control, he could monitor them and keep them under control. At the moment they were scattered across Russia on millions of small farms and could not be monitored effectively.

(g) The U.S.S.R. had great mineral wealth, in particular coal, iron ore and oil. Yet even in 1913, under the Tsar, she was far behind Britain and the U.S.A. in industrial development. By taking control of these areas, Stalin could develop them to ensure that output rivalled the West.

(h) From Lenin, Stalin inherited a depressed industrial scene. Years of war meant that many areas of industry had almost come to a standstill. Railway track had either been torn up or abandoned, and although much of Russian industry was now nationalised or controlled by the government, a proportion was still in the hands of private ownership. Stalin was determined to change the situation, to make the U.S.S.R. into a great industrial power.

(i) Stalin could change the face of Russia. He could eliminate the capitalist elements within the economy, such as the Nepmen and the kulaks, impose communist principles, develop the proletariat through industrialisation and thereby secure the survival of communism as well as his own.

(j) Stalin was aware that Lenin was seen as the great communist leader. If he could transform Russia, his achievement would outstrip Lenin's and ensure his status as a communist hero. At the same time if he introduced such changes, it would weaken his rivals on the right, like Bukharin, who favoured keeping NEP.

2. What was Stalin's plan for industry (The Five-Year Plans)?

Stalin believed that rapid industrialisation was essential. Not only would this protect the country, but it would show the superiority of communism in achieving such economic progress at a time when the West was entering depression. If he turned Russia into a great industrial power, he would have an achievement that would rival Lenin's and would no longer stand in Lenin's shadow.

Stalin's method of modernising Russia was through a series of Five-Year Plans. The plan was made by a centrally planning office called Gosplan. Stalin stressed that output had to increase by 300% if Russia was to compete with other countries.

(i) The first Five-Year Plan introduced in 1928, concentrated on heavy industry, the key to industrial power -- coal, iron, steel, oil. Machine-tools, rubber, chemicals, electric power and transport were also targeted. There was no emphasis on producing consumer goods. NEP was now totally abandoned.

(ii) Stalin set each of the heavy industries a tremendously high target. He demanded a 111% increase in coal production, 200% increase in iron production and 335% increase in electric power. When people argued that the figures were too high, Stalin replied that "those who lag behind are beaten".

(iii)Posters were displayed all over the country to urge workers to work harder. Stalin justified these demands by claiming that if rapid industrialisation did not take place, the Soviet Union would not be able to defend itself against an invasion from capitalist countries in the west.

(iv) Gosplan laid down production targets for each industry to be met by the end of the five years. This was then used as a basis on which to draw up the targets for every factory within that industry. Factory managers then had to calculate targets for every workshop, every shift and every worker. Gosplan was able to ensure that certain industries were given priority in terms of resources and manpower.

(v) Stalin increased the pressure on the factory managers and workers by not only expecting them to exceed the target but often expecting it to be done ahead of schedule. At first, targets seemed to be being met and so twice Stalin revised the targets upwards, for example the original target set for coal was revised from 35 million tonnes to 75 and finally to 95-105.

(vi) In order to reach their targets, the Russian people were called upon to make superhuman efforts. They worked long hours, and were fined if they were late. The working day was increased to eight hours, and everyone had to work six days out of seven, but in reality to meet targets most had to accept a seven day week.  Every factory had large display boards erected that showed the output of the workers. Those that failed to reach the required targets were publicly criticised and humiliated. Workers were not allowed to have time off and internal passports were introduced to prevent workers moving area.

(vii) Some workers could not cope with this pressure and absenteeism increased. This led to even more repressive measures being introduced. Absenteeism was punished by a term in a labour camp. Even if a worker was twenty minutes late this was counted as an absence. A second absence meant a labour camp.

(viii) Records were kept of workers' lateness, absenteeism and bad workmanship. If the workers' records were poor, or if they complained about anything, they were accused of trying to sabotage Stalin's Five-Year Plan and if found guilty could be shot or sent to work as forced labour on the Baltic Sea Canal or the Siberian Railway.

(ix) Workers were forcibly uprooted and sent hundreds of miles to live in cold and terrible conditions as in Siberia. School leavers were sent without choice to areas where there was a labour shortage.

(x) Every worker had to carry his record book with him. An unsatisfactory record meant no job. No job often meant starvation or a life of crime in order to survive.

(xi) Women were expected to work in factories and nurseries were provided so that young mothers could return to work and between 1932 and 1937 4 out of every 5 new workers recruited were women. There were improvements in health provision for workers and their families as free healthcare schemes were extended to cover most of the workforce.

(xii) Rates of pay were low and food prices high. One of the most controversial aspects of the Five-Year Plan was Stalin's decision to move away from the principle of equal pay. Under Lenin, for example, the leaders of the Bolshevik Party could not receive more than the wages of a skilled labourer. Although equal pay was not achieved in the early days of the revolution, attempts were made to keep wage differentials as low as possible. With the introduction of the Five-Year Plan, Stalin argued that it was necessary to pay higher wages to certain workers in order to encourage increased output. His left-wing opponents claimed that this inequality was a betrayal of socialism and would create a new class system in the Soviet Union. Stalin had his way and during the 1930s, the gap between the wages of the labourers and the skilled workers increased.

(xiii) Education and training were improved to help train engineers and specialists, such as teachers, scientists, factory managers, engineers and skilled workers. However, it was also necessary to produce a skilled and literate population. All workers' children received free primary education.

(xiv) Shock brigades of young communists were sent into the factories to encourage people to work harder by setting examples. These were known as the Young Pioneers. Thousands of such people believed in the communist vision of building a better future.

(xv) Occasionally a Russian worker was made a hero; coal-miner Alexei Stakhanov, with the help of the rest of his work team, cut ten times the usual amount of coal in a shift in 1935. He was made a hero : given extra holidays, better housing, and other privileges. Stakhanovism, as it came to be called, occurred in other industries. The result for the other workers, however, was that targets were then set even higher and even greater efforts were expected of them. Some Stakhanovites were killed, demonstrating their unpopularity with some workers.

(xvi) The Five-Year Plans concentrated on heavy industry, so very few consumer goods were made. The shops were empty; clothes were dull and badly made and household items difficult to find. Housing, especially in the new towns, was cramped and poorly built. The situation was made worse because Stalin had banned private trading.

(xvii) New towns, cities and industrial areas had to be built, some of them in entirely new areas. Whole new industrial cities were created in remote mountain areas like Magnitogorsk in the Urals for iron and steel production. The Urals were far enough from western Europe to place the new cities and factories far away from western invasion. Magnitogorsk had a population of 1157 people in 1929, living in tumble-down houses with unpaved streets and open sewers. Four years later it had a population of over 100,000, together with mills, blast furnaces, shops, a school and a hospital, as a result of Stalin's Five-Year plan. Yet not all these people had been forcibly moved to the new city. Many were young people, filled with enthusiasm by the persuasive publicity to flock to the industrial centres. Many were illiterate and so schemes had to be set up to educate and train these workers. There was a huge increase in literacy in Russia in the 1930s. Figures for 1933 show that about 45,000 people in Magnitogorsk came of their own free will, another 18,000 were recruited, but 50,000 were forced labourers who were made to do all the heavy work such as digging foundations and wheeling concrete. This number was mainly made up of kulaks and political prisoners. In the years 1929-39 the population in Russia's cities increased by 29 million.

(xviii) Slave labour was central to many of Stalin's monumental schemes. In the period of the first Five-Year Plan alone, 1500 new industrial plants were built. A huge dam was built on the Dnieper to generate hydro-electric power and oil-fields developed in the Caucasus.

(xix) Since skilled workers were in short supply, Stalin offered huge wages to foreign workers to come and work on the new schemes. This was at a time when there was massive unemployment in Europe and the U.S.A. Stalin hoped to take advantage of the economic depression that was taking place in the west. Whereas capitalism was suffering from decline and unemployment, the Soviet Union would show the world that socialism was a superior economic system. Stalin also refused to allow skilled workers to change jobs.

(xx) The authorities claimed that the targets were reached a year ahead of schedule but, in fact, the targets were reached only by the oil industry, and then only in terms of the unrevised target.

THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1928 - 1932

ALL FIGURES IN MILLION TONS

(xxi) By the beginning of 1932 it became clear to Stalin that the high targets that he had proposed would not be reached, even the ones before they had been revised. Central planners had ignored local situations when setting targets and the targets themselves were impossibly high. Despite this the results were impressive. Yet people were often meeting their targets by ignoring quality. In addition Stalin often met opposition from technical experts who complained that Stalin was making unrealistic demands. However Stalin needed to explain why the targets had not been met. He then came up with a scheme that would enable him to provide both a scapegoat and an incentive for the Soviet labour force to work even harder. In March 1933, six British engineers working for Metro-Vickers in the Soviet Union were arrested and accused of sabotage. After being held by the Soviet Secret Police for several days, the men signed confessions that they were indeed guilty of the charges made against them. The men were portrayed as British secret agents attempting to weaken the Soviet economy. Stalin told the Soviet people that it was part of a plan that would eventually lead to a military invasion of the country. Although the men received long prison sentences, they were quietly allowed to leave the country after the British government threatened a trade embargo on the Soviet Union. Several foreign engineers were put on trial during this period to encourage the belief that the Soviet Union was in danger from the West. However, the 1932 figures were an enormous advance on the 1928 figures in all cases, and the Second Five-Year Plan (1933-1937) saw an even more amazing growth :

THE SECOND FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1933 - 1937

ALL FIGURES IN MILLION TONS

(xxii) The Second Five-Year Plan concentrated, like the first, on heavy targets, but focused on agriculture, machinery and transport. The targets were set to be more realistic and there were plans for some consumer goods, but when Hitler came to power, fear of western invasion increased and armaments became the priority. The production of armaments trebled.

(xxiii) The Third Five-Year Plan switched the emphasis from heavy to light industry so that consumer goods could be produced to raise the standard of living, by producing items like bikes and radios. But the plans for consumer goods had to be dropped and production switched to armaments instead as the threat of war spread its shadows.

3. How successful was industrialisation?

   SUCCESS:

   (a) USSR turned into a modern industrial state. By 1940 the U.S.S.R. had overtaken Britain in iron and steel production and was within 20% of Germany's output. Historians disagree about the effects of the Five-Year Plans. One thing on which all historians do agree is that the U.S.S.R. was transformed into an industrial power. By 1940 the U.S.S.R. was in the 'first division' of industrial powers, along with Britain, Germany and the U.S.A. Industrial production had increased by 400% between 1928 and 1940. The figures below have been compiled by an economic historian using Soviet and Western resources:

   (b) There was genuine Communist enthusiasm among the Communist pioneers (young communists

    (c) The achievements in many fields were remarkable. Vast projects like the Belomor Canal, the Dneiper Dam, and the metalworks at Magnitogorsk were completed with amazing speed.

    (d) Allowed Russia to be ready for Hitler’s invasion – factories able to produce weapons. Huge towns and factories were built from nothing, deep inside the U.S.S.R. to protect them from invasion. Otherwise Russia may have collapsed and Hitler won war

     (e) Foreign technicians were brought in and enormous investment was put into education and training to produce skilled workers.

            FAILURES / CRITICISMS

             (a) It was poorly organised. The system was inefficient, there was duplication of effort and enormous waste

         (b) The human cost was appalling : the discipline and punishments were harsh; slave labour was used; the secret police watched you; gulags were set up for those who made mistakes, accidents     and deaths were common, eg 100,000 workers died building the Belomor Canal. Much of the achievement was due to the labour camps. Anyone who spoke against the Plans, or against Stalin personally could be arrested. To be a kulak, or the son of a kulak, was a crime. Sentences were usually ten or 25 years in a labour camp (gulag). These labour camps were set up in areas where special industrial projects were to be built, often in remote parts of Russia. Here the prisoners worked on dams, canals, factories and hydro-electric power stations. No wages were paid, and there was not enough food. The poor food and the harshness of the climate meant that thousands died. The N.K.V.D. (previously the Cheka) simply replaced the dead with others. Not all the work of Zeks (prisoners) was done in remote areas. Moscow's underground system was built by prisoners at great speed and with a huge loss of lives, as safety was ignored in order to get the work done quickly. Quite often they had no machinery or tools and had to do everything with their bare hands.

         (c) The Stakhanovite Movement only made people angry and the campaign had to be dropped in the late 1930s after a number of Stakhanovites were killed by fellow workers.

   (c) There were few consumer goods and the housing in the new cities was poor. Many people felt despair and there was a huge increase in crime, alcoholism and juvenile delinquency.

   (d) Wages fell by around 50% for most workers, except the new elite.

   (e) There were no human or political rights.

   (f) Figures were often falsified to avoid punishment for not meeting targets. Also workers produced shoddy goods quickly as the target set numbers not quality. Half the tractors produced for collectivisation soon broke down.

   (g) The targets demanded more skilled workers than were available. As a result targets often could not be met, eg a target was set for 170,000 tractors, but due to a shortage of skilled workers only 50,000 were produced.

4. What was Stalin's plan for agriculture?

Stalin's agricultural plans are known as Collectivisation. So why did Stalin introduce such a policy?

(a) Need to improve agriculture. Russia still backward, primitive country. Using antiquated methods. Millions of small farms. Some were doing well under the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.), but their farms were small and their methods old-fashioned. Many harvests were still cut by hand with a sickle and threshed by hand with a flail. In 1928, the Russian peasants were not very efficient producers of food. The prices they received were low, they remained poor and they had no encouragement to modernise.

(b) Inability to feed population. As population grew and more peasants moved to new industrial cities, so need for remaining peasants to be more productive. ? It was difficult enough in 1927 to ensure that sufficient food got through. The N.E.P. had succeeded in boosting Russia's agricultural output but the grain harvest of 1928 (73 million tons) was still 7 million tons below the 1913 figure. At the end of the year it was revealed that food production had been two million tons below that needed to feed the population of the Soviet Union.

(c) Stalin needed money to finance industry. Nobody would lend Russia money, so needed to sell crops abroad to raise money. For the Five-Year Plans to work, there would have to be new cities, with more workers. The peasants would have to provide not only food, but also workers. The peasants would have to provide food for export as well. Russia would then get foreign currency to buy the machines which were not available there.

(d) The move towards collectivisation was also part of the power struggle. Bukharin had argued that N.E.P should remain. Stalin therefore supported Collectivisation as a means of undermining Bukharin. Yet there were also real concerns about the effectiveness of N.E.P. It was clear that the shortage of food was partly due to greed. In 1927 and in 1928 the government found that the peasants were less willing to sell their food because the prices offered by the government were very low. Stalin sent squads of men into the Urals region and western Siberia to seize food from the peasants. This "Urals-Siberian" method was only partly successful. The government was forced to introduce food rationing in 1928.

(e) Stalin could use Collectivisation to increase his control over the peasants. In the 1918 elections most peasants had supported another party; in 1921 the peasants had opposed Lenin’s economic policy and forced him to introduce N.E.P. Stalin wanted the peasants brought to heel. The Communists had never been popular among the peasants. The old Bolshevik Party had been supported mainly by workers and soldiers before the revolution. By replacing millions of small farms with around 250,000, he could ensure all farms were run by party managers and that the peasants were watched.

(f) As millions of peasants needed to be moved from the countryside to the cities, so there would be fewer peasants growing food, but the demand would continue to rise. Russian agriculture had to change.

(g) Moves towards Collectivisation would end the embracing of capitalism and return Russia to more communist policies. Under the N.E.P., farming was run on capitalist lines : each peasant ran his own little holding for his own profits. Some better-off peasants, the kulaks, did quite well. Even leading Communists agreed that the N.E.P. could not go on indefinitely allowing peasants to own their own land and sell their produce for a profit. Marxist theory required that the land should be farmed in state or collective farms. Some Communists, like Bukharin, believed that the peasants and the N.E.P. should be left alone for the time being. But Stalin, who at first supported Bukharin, declared in 1929 that the farms must be collectivised and the class of wealthy landowning peasants, the kulaks, "smashed".

(h) Stalin was keen to eliminate the kulaks. It soon became clear that the kulaks were producing more food per acre than the small farmers. In 1925 it was decided that the best way of improving food production was to encourage the development of the kulaks. The tax system was changed in order to help kulaks buy out smaller farmers. By 1928, kulaks made up 40% of the peasants in some regions, but still not enough food was being produced. When Stalin discovered that there was evidence that kulaks were holding back supplies in order to force up prices, he decided to change his policies. In December 1929, Stalin made a speech at the Communist Party Congress. He attacked the kulaks for not joining the collective farms. He then went on to define kulaks as "any peasant who does not sell all his grain to the state". Kulaks, or, according to Stalin, peasants who were unwilling to join collective farms, "must be annihilated as a class". Though Stalin intended to collectivise all land, he began by attacking the kulaks for two main reasons. Firstly it was a warning to the rest of the peasants about what would happen to them if they did not co-operate with collectivisation. Secondly, it enabled Stalin to claim that collectivisation was an act of social justice -- taking land from "greedy capitalist kulaks" and making it available to the poor majority of peasants. Stalin told the Russian people that the kulaks were parasites living off the work of others. Stalin hated the fact that they were making a profit and were not loyal to him and the Party. He also knew that they would be the first to oppose any agricultural policy. The "liquidation" of the kulaks began in 1929. Liquidation meant forcible deportation to Siberia and Central Asia, where they were given the chance to start new farms in these infertile regions. The government did not care that large numbers of them starved to death.

5. How was Collectivisation introduced and how did people react?

(a)  A Collective Farm is one which combines all the small farms of all the peasants in a village into one large unit so that they can farm their land co-operatively. They sell a fixed amount of their produce to the government at a low price and keep any surplus for themselves. In theory collectivisation sounded a good idea. However, two points must be noted. First, collectives were set up at a great speed. Second, collectivisation meant a great extension of state control and Communist Party control over the life of every Russian peasant. A Collective was run by a committee of which the chairman was always a Communist Party member. The deputy director of every M.T.S. was a member of the secret police. The first Five-Year Plans required certain crops to feed the workers in the new factories of the growing cities. Each collective had to supply a certain amount (not a per centage) of its crops to the State regardless of the harvest. Stalin called this the First Commandment. To the Russian peasants, these tremendous changes, which had to be carried out almost overnight, seemed to destroy their whole way of life.

(b) There were some 25 million peasant small-holdings in Russia in 1928, which were too small for efficient agriculture. In 1928 98.3% of farmland was privately worked by peasants. In theory the single large farm can be run more efficiently. Fields will be larger, so machines, fertilisers and modern farming methods can be used. Few peasants before collectivisation could afford to buy tractors. Under Stalin M.T.S. (Motor Tractor Stations) were set up. Tractors from M.T.S. could go out to work in a group of collectives. In exchange for crops, peasants could loan the latest farming equipment. Stalin's advisers told him that the Soviet Union would need 250,000 tractors. In 1927 they had only 7000. Thus industries were forced to build more. By the end of the 1930s there was one M.T.S. for every forty Collective Farms.

(c) Stalin set up two types of farm units. The SOVKHOZ (State Farm) was a farm where land was owned by the State and the peasants worked on it as paid labourers. This meant that they received their wages however badly the farm did. It was felt that the SOVKHOZ was closer to the Communist ideal, but because they were expensive to run, not many farms of this type were established before the Second World War. The goods produced on a SOVKHOZ were simply delivered to the State, and the farm workers bought food from their wages.

(d) The most common type of farm unit was the KOLKHOZ (Collective Farm). By 1940 there were approximately 240,000 farms of this type. Here, villagers pooled their land, animals, tools and machines. They worked the fields of the kolkhoz and in return they were paid a share of the profits. Of the kolkhoz output : 15% had to be given to the government at a fixed low price. 5% had to be given to the government at a higher price. 15% had to be given to the M.T.S. which supplied each collective with the machinery it needed. 40% was used to but seeds, etc. 25% was distributed among the peasants as wages. The quota had to be delivered even if the kolkhoz peasants went hungry. In addition the peasants were also allowed to keep small plots of land of their own to grow vegetables and fruit and to keep a few animals. They were permitted to sell this produce privately in the local markets.

(e) Not surprisingly, many peasants disliked this new system. However IT MUST BE REMEMBERED THAT NOT EVERYONE WOULD BE OPPOSED. Some poorer peasants actually benefited from the system and lots of party agents had jobs as managers, which gave them status and better standard of living. However, the vast majority of peasants lost their land and their freedom. The kulaks suffered worse, but others also lost out. The landless peasants, the vast majority of Russia's 100 million peasants, were only too happy to join the collective farms, but other peasants, and particularly the kulaks, refused to give up their land, sheep, cattle and barns to the government.

(f) Stalin was not prepared to tolerate opposition and so accused them of being enemies of the state and of "disrupting the economy". He hoped to stir up jealousy among the poor peasants against the more prosperous kulaks so that they would accept collectivisation. Local communist officials were given instructions to confiscate kulak property. This land would then be used to form new collective farms. The kulaks themselves were not allowed to join these collectives as it was feared that they would attempt to undermine the success of the scheme. Kulaks that resisted were arrested and sent on forced marches to remote and barren areas where they simply perished. As many as 5 million kulaks were killed in this way.

(g) Yet it is clear that despite the propaganda and terror used by Stalin, most of the peasants, however, were against collectivisation and Stalin had to send soldiers into the villages to shoot peasants who refused to co-operate. Despite Stalin's claim that 50% of peasants had joined by February 1930, resistance was still strong. Some peasants felt so strongly about the issue that they preferred to destroy their property rather than give it to the state. In the first months of 1930 alone 14 million head of cattle were killed. Of the 34 million horses in the Soviet Union in 1929, 18 million were killed, further, some 67% of sheep and goats were slaughtered between 1929 and 1933. Riots broke out in several regions and Stalin, fearing a Civil War, and peasants threatening not to plant their spring crop, called a halt to collectivisation.

(h) Stalin was not use to admitting mistakes and was not going to allow the peasants to undermine his policies, but he needed a breathing space. His usual method in such situations was to blame others and make him look like a kindly father figure shocked by the excesses of others. On 2nd March 1930, Stalin wrote an article for Pravda attacking officials for being over-zealous in their implementation of collectivisation. Stalin portrayed himself as the protector of the peasants. Stalin decided that the peasants should be allowed to own their own houses, a small plot of land on which to grow fruit and vegetables and a few head of livestock. He hoped that these concessions would make the Collective Farm system more popular, but during the lull in Collectivisation after March 1930 many peasants left the Collective Farms which they had been compelled to join. Within three months the number of peasants in collective farms dropped from 60% to 25%. This was something that Stalin could not allow.

(i) The dramatic fall made Stalin change his mind. Once again he ordered local officials to start imposing collectivisation. By 1935, 94% of crops were being produced by peasants working on collective farms and by 1940 there were 240,000 collective farms.

6.  How successful was Collectivisation?

(a)   The cost to the Soviet people was immense. At least 5 million peasants starved to death during the terrible famine of 1932-33, caused, in part, by the destruction by the kulaks of their crops and by the poor levels of grain output. Some historians claim that Stalin deliberately engineered the famine to destroy the kulaks. He exported grain from the Ukraine and sat by whilst millions of his own people starved to death. In some areas of Russia people resorted to cannibalism in a desperate effort to survive. International agencies and the U.S. actually sent grain into Russia to help end the famine.

(b)   In 1939, however, food production in Russia was just about the same as it had been in 1928 only the population had risen by about 20 million so even more food was needed.

(c)   Thousands of young people left their homes to try to get work in towns because they thought they would be better fed and better paid than if they stayed at home.

(d)   On the collectives, the rest of the peasants worked half-heartedly. Most had little experience with new crops and new methods.

(e)   Sometimes, the experts sent in from Moscow made mistakes. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of collectivisation. Stalin admitted to Churchill during World War Two that approximately ten million people died as a result of collectivisation. By 1937 well over 90% of Russian farmland had been collectivised.

(f)   The policy had been a disaster. It was not until 1953 that the numbers of cattle, horses and other livestock reached the 1928 figures. The state farms were now provided with new machinery. Before 1930 there were fewer than 25,000 tractors and 1000 combine-harvesters in use in Russia. By 1933 the numbers were 200,000 tractors and 25,000 harvesters. Despite the mechanisation, it was a long time before Russia's grain output recovered from the effects of collectivisation.

(g)   To make matters worse, Stalin's reforms had not produced excess crops for export, instead agriculture proved a drain on the Soviet economy.

(h)   HOWEVER Stalin had control over the peasantry and some collectives did have hospitals and schools.

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