This ideology seemed hopeful for improvement for Russia’s economy although in practice this plan rapidly failed due to massive resistance from peasants to Stalin’s dicatorial approach to implementing collectivisation. The situation was exacerbated in 1932-33 when the soviet state suffered from a devastating famine..Although from 1929-30 60% of peasant farms in the USSR were collectivised peasant resistance was massive with widespread chaos. Peasants slaughtered their own animals and even burnt their own houses as acts of resistance. Peasants killed 25% of cattle, 48% of pigs and 25% of sheep and goats and inn 1930 Stalin called a temporary halt to the process. Collectivisation also led to massive food shortages, especially in the provinces of Ukraine where Stalin ordered the seizure of all the peasants’ grain stock.
Unprepared to blame his poor implementation of collectivisation, Stalin instead blamed the failure of his ideology on the existence of anti-revolutionary peasants, these were the Kulaks and richer peasants. An estimated seven million people died due to famine from 1930-33. Five million of these were Ukraine. Robert conquest states “though confined to a single state, the number dying in Stalin’s war against peasants was higher than the total deaths for all the countries in world war I. Despite strong evidence that collectivisation had failed in its initial form, by 1936 Stalin’s government claimed that several important goals had been achieved. Politically, the government now controlled countryside. Counter-revolutionary peasants could no longer be able to threaten the better-off workers by with-holding food supplies. Also extra labour needed in the new industrial ventures had been provided by the peasants whom had been forced off land. Even so by 1939, soviet agricultural production barely reached the level recorded in 1913.
Industrialisation was also crucial in helping Stalin consolidate his power. He understood that he could not hope to rule without popular support. Power can only be acquired and retained by delivering benefits to significant numbers of people. In Stalin’s case, industrialisation shifted millions of people from the countryside to the cities, where jobs were plentiful and living standards higher than on state-run farms. Many of these people – formerly illiterate peasants – benefited from Stalin's rule.
Through the 5 years plans, the USSR was ultimately turned into a modern state (which was able to ). There was genuine Communist enthusiasm among the young ‘Pioneers’ and there were huge achievements in the following areas - new cities, hydroelectric power, transport & communications, the Moscow Underground, farm machinery, electricity, coal, steel, fertilizers and plastic.There was virtually no unemployment with massive investments in doctors & medicine and education.
Industrialisation under the five year plans were not an unqualified success despite the claims of the propaganda machine. Some historians said the process was poorly organised and characterised by inefficiency, duplication of effort and waste. The Five Year Plans came at an appalling human cost. There was stern discipline with few workers’ rights, secret police, slave labour camps, an enormous rate of & deaths (100,000 workers died building the Belomor Canal). Workers suffered from few consumer goods, poor housing, declining wages and no human rights. Some historians claim the tsars had done the ‘spadework’, setting up the basis for industrialisation, and that Stalin’s effort had very little effect on a process that would have happened anyway.
At the same time, skilled urban workers – particularly those who belonged to the Communist Party – were recruited into positions of responsibility, to run the newly established factories and government departments. As the historian Allan Bullock put it, these people “represented the spearhead of the large-scale upward mobility of the sons and daughters of the working class moving into higher education, administrative and managerial jobs in the years 1928-31.” And as the higher echelons of the Party were purged, the pace and extent of that upward mobility increased. All these people owed their jobs and status to Stalin, and became the bedrock of his power base.
Stalin also used the perception of economic success to consolidate his support within the Party and among the people. Ideologically, he offered a tantalising vision – the building socialism in one country – and to many, he appeared to be delivering the goods. Economically, he engineered the transformation of Russia into a industrialised nation on a par with its rivals in the West. These achievements were impressive, given that they were accomplished over a period of only ten years. Not surprisingly, they elicited considerable respect and admiration from people in the USSR.
To ensure that the goals of the Five Year Plans were met, Stalin set about establishing an apparatus of terror which in effect gave him total control. An essential part of the terror designed to intimidate citizens and eliminate enemies of the state was the Secret Police. The Tsarist CHEKA became the OGPU (1922), then the (1934) and were instrumental in he First Purges, 1930–33 which eliminated anybody who opposed industrialisation, and the kulaks who opposed collectivisation. Propaganda was also an important part of the ways of ensuring totalitarian control. There was total censorship of anything that might reflect badly on Stalin. There was constant stream of Stalin glorification - pictures, statues, continuous praise and applause, Factories, parks and public places were named after him. Mothers were instructed to teach their children that Stalin was ‘the wisest man of the age’. Even history books and photographs were changed to make him the hero of the Revolution, whilst obliterating the names of purged people (e.g. Trotsky).
Such was the success of the initial use of terror in delivering total power to Stalin, he was emboldened to initiate the Great Purges of 1934–39. In1934, , a rival to Stalin, was murdered. Although he probably ordered the assassination, Stalin used it as a chance to arrest thousands of his opponents. From 1934–1939, Stalin’s political opponents were put on ‘Show trials’, where they pleaded guilty to impossible charges of treason (e.g. Zinoviev and Kamenev 1936/ Bukharin, Tomsky & Rykov 1938).
In 1937, the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army and 7 leading generals were shot. In 1938–39, all the admirals and half the Army’s officers were executed or imprisoned. Religious leaders imprisoned and churches closed down as Stalin enforced the ‘Russification’ of all the Soviet Union. Enemies of he State (In the eyes of Stalin and his supporters – the ‘Apparatchiks’ , party members loyal to Stalin, who received special privileges such the new flats, jobs, holidays) were denounced/ arrested/ sent to the Gulag (the system of labour camps). In all 20 million Russians were sent to the camps, where perhaps half of them died.
These measures from Stalin were successful in transforming Russia from a backward largely agricultural economy with limited industry to an emerging industrial force capable of meeting external threats from his enemies by 1941. His efforts to establish totalitarianism had been largely successful but the benefits in measurable terms for agriculture and industry were not without significant impact on Russia’s society and culture especially in terms of personal freedoms and the rights of individuals which had been made secondary to the needs of the state.
