The second five-year plan kept its focus on heavy industry but many other areas were also developed including transport and communications. The third five-year plan was designed to help Russia’s agriculture, this plan was begun but it was disrupted by the Second World War. The five-year plans were overall a great success for Russia and for Stalin, however there a great deal effort and waste in it.
One of Stalin crimes was Collectivisation, Stalin wanted go export food to other nations therefore making money, but the current farming system was no where near ready for that to happen. Stalin had to set out his plans for Collectivisation; this meant that all farmers would receive an even patch of land owned by the government and they were to be trained to use tractors, fertilisers and other methods of farming. Those who owned their small private farms were known as the Kulaks, and many of them were simply not going to give up their land to the government and so they were sent to labour camps by the hundred. In the end Stalin ended up wiping out the Kulaks, this was a huge price to pay for trying to export food.
Another one of Stalin’s faults were his purges. Stalin simply got id of any opposition as soon they posed any sort of threat, he wiped them out rapidly leaving him with no enemies to try and over throw him. Furthermore he accused many of his opposition or those who doubted him with crimes they had not committed; this was known as show trails. It resulted in many of those opposing him imprisoned. He made up many false charges in 1931 and many former Mensheviks were put on trail charges that were obviously made up, he had many of his opponent’s murder and sent to labour camps. However many Russian citizens in the 1930’s would have probably said that the Purges were nothing to do with Stalin himself. For the majority of Soviet citizens, Stalin was not a tyrant who was dominating an oppressed country; in fact his style of government was rather popular as the Soviets saw him as a “dictator of people”.
Stalin did amongst his crimes make great strides in Foreign policy. By making an alliance with Nazi-Germany he bought Russia the time needed to build up their forces and their economy. Stalin had therefore been able to carry out the rebuilding of his country without too much worry or events outside of his boarders.
Stalin’s labour camps were certainly not popular at the time; many of the Kulaks who were opposed to collectivisation were sent to the camps and were imprisoned and murdered. They were arrested by the police of party officials before being sent away to the dreaded labour camps. Although many of the Soviets citizens were against the labour camps, they did the job they were supposed to do and collectivisation was finally achieved, also many of those who were sent tot the labour camps were made work very hard as well, so it was cheap labour.
On the hole Stalin really did help the USSR advance forward to keep up with other powerful countries, and that’s what Stalin wanted and he achieved it. However also he achieved great success this came at a price. That price was paid by the loss of many peoples lives.
