Another one of Stalin’s economic polices that had its good points and bad points, was collectivization. Collectivization was the policy under which all farmers were to surrender their land to state control, and combine their farms to create large plots of land instead of smaller ones like it had always been. As well as the state dictating what the farmers were to grow , when to grow it and where to grow it, they also were going to take large amounts of harvest from them for very little pay. No one was more furious about this new policy, than the Kulaks. The Kulaks were a group of people, who when given land of their own when Lenin was ruler, worked very hard to get ahead, and had money and grain to spare. Stalin wanted these people to give up everything that they had worked hard to get, and join the collective farms. Many Kulaks, in an act of resistance, burned their farms down, along with their crops, and killed their livestock. As a result of the Kulaks doing this, there was a dramatic decrease in the agricultural and livestock productions in the early 1930’s. This resistance also lead Stalin to begin liquidating the Kulak people. He had most of the Kulaks marched off to remote and barren areas of the USSR and were left there to die, as about 5 million Kulaks did. By angering the Kulaks and not allowing them to keep their land, Stalin also sent the rest of Russia into a famine that lasted from 1932- 1933. However, because of collectivization, peasant farmers were educated in how to operate machinery that better allowed them to harvest crops. A compromise was made by Stalin, where the state would take 90% of the harvest at a very low, fixed price, then the other 10% could be used by the farmers themselves or sold at market. The collectivization policy was not nearly as successful as the 5 Year Plans, just because he did not have the support of all of the farmers, and the resistance of the Kulaks, ended up severely affecting the outcome of the policy. It was one of poorer polices that Stalin created during his reign.
Another economic decision that Stalin made, was to take approximately 90% of the farmers' crops, and leave 10 % for the family to eat and sell what was left. Stalin used the profit from the harvests, to fund his 5 Year Plans. The speed at which he wanted to industrialize the USSR was extremely costly and he needed that income to help fund it. As a result of the state controlling where the food went, millions of people starved at this time in history. It got so bad that people were dropping dead in the streets because of lack of food. A good example of this was in the Ukraine. Stalin collectivized about 75% of the Ukraine's farms by 1932 and later that year, Stalin ordered that the food being shipped out of the Ukraine, be increased substantially. Again in 1933, Stalin raised the quota for the Ukraine, and people started to starve to death. He even went to drastic measures by sending troops to seize food by going door to door, and not allowing any food into the country. By the spring time, it was said that 25,000 people died every day and in the end, Stalin managed to purge the Ukraine of 25% of its population. This does not seem to me like it was a wise economic move. Although it may have helped to fund the 5 Year Plans, thousands had to die for it.
Lastly, Stalin’s Communist policy was one that affected the economy too. Stalin was very against capitalism, even on a small scale, like the Kulaks. The idea of communism was very popular amongst the citizens, especially the younger people in Russia, because it promised a better life. I think that it was a good policy, but it too had its bad points. Total communism is nearly impossible to create in the short time frame that Stalin expected everyone to do it in. He also had no room for compromise, such as with the Kulaks, which lead to revolt. His political views also made the rest of the world fearful and unwilling to collaborate with Russia, which left the country with no market. Communism was a popular political ideology at the time, but I believe that Stalin went about it the wrong way, and made it more of a dictatorship.
Things in the social aspect of life in Russia, dramatically changed from the time that Lenin was in power, to when Stalin came to power and began implementing his policies. One of those policies, was the newly acquired rights of women. The idea of women entering the workforce and having the same rights to citizenship as men, sounds as if it would be a good idea, but it did not turn out to be all positive results. Stalin’s purpose in allowing women into the workforce was not to better women’s rights at all, but to build a greater work force. There was such a high demand for a labor force in the 1930’s, that women seemed like the next best option. However, it did not improve life for the average woman in the USSR under Stalin’s rule. The work days were long, and women had to take on the roles of mothers, wives and workers, so the work never ended for them. Although the work was almost equal in the workplace, the work at home was not divided between the woman and the man. Stalin also saw that if women from homes that were already in the city, were put to work, there would be a lower influx of peasants coming from rural areas. If there were fewer people moving to the cities, there would be less need to improve and expand on urban infrastructure. Every move that Stalin made, was to save money or to settle his paranoia about being overthrown, and this was no exception.
As well as the improvement of women’s rights, was the improvement in education in the USSR while Stalin was in power. It was his belief that the work force needed to be educated enough to run the machines that they operated, but also to be able to read and write. I believe that he was right in thinking that it would strengthen Russia to make her people more educated. Stalin was able to make up to 80% of all Russian citizens at the time, literate. As well as free education was free medical care. As well as this, campaigns were carried out against such things as typhus, cholera and malaria. During this time the number of doctors and nurses skyrocketed as much as the facilities would allow. The death rate went down, as well as infant mortality rates, for the first time ever. This was one of the things that Stalin did that was truly communist, was allowing for free education and free medical care. He believe that the workforce should be healthy, able to read, and know a little bit about their trade. These are some of the only policies that I believe to have benefited the people of the USSR, without harming them first.
However great Stalin’s healthcare and education improvements were, there were still the purges. The purges were perhaps the worst, most atrocious policy that Stalin ever stood for. What happened during the purges, was that Stalin was able to rid himself of anyone he believed was plotting against him, or trying to slow the growth of Russia as a super power. Anyone could be shot for the simple reason that they were thought to be an “enemy of the state.” The purges began with Stalin having a Leningrad party leader named Sergei Kirov, murdered on December 1st, 1934. This event is seen by many to be the prelude to the purges which lasted from 1936 to 1938. The purges were basically Stalin having certain people killed because he was threatened by them. It was his biggest fear that he would be overthrown, so anyone who spoke out against him or questioned his authority, was usually killed. The majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee was exterminated as well, to prevent any of the members from rising up against Stalin. Sometimes, the person who was accused and arrested by the Secret Police, would get a trial. The "Show Trials," as they were called, were set up so that the person being tried was given two choices. Choice number one was to plead not guilty and be shot along with one's family. The second option was to plead guilty, no matter how far fetched the accusation, and your family would live. So, more often than not, the trials ended with the accused being shot, or deported to a prison camp in Siberia. Even Stalin's former partners were murdered in with the other million people who were killed. Of those 7 million who were arrested, about 2 million died in prison camps like the Gulag camps, and the number of those who were just executed, is well over 1 million. Estimates on the death toll all together, are between 8 and 20 million people, 98% of which were men. So not only was Stalin purging the USSR of possible political opposition, he was also purging himself of his workforce. I believe that the Purges, were probably the most senseless and evil thing that Joseph Stalin did during his reign.
It is my belief that Stalin's decisions concerning the economic policies, were not beneficial for the most part. Due to every single one of Stalin's policies or decisions, thousands, if not millions of people had to die. Although Stalin's economic policies sped the rate of industrialization, it was too fast and it was fueled by fear, not the desire for the well-being of Russia. The way that Stalin went about enforcing his new policies also did not go over well. Unlike Lenin, he did not think about the wishes of the people, and this was one of his biggest flaws. In reference to the Social policies, he was better off there that he was with the economic polices. Things like free education and medical care, were things that the people of the USSR wanted, and Stalin gave it to them. However, my overall opinion of his social policies, is that he was a failure. It was the purges that swayed my thinking in the category, because I think that anyone who can murder just on the fact that someone might have spoken out against you politically, is not fit to rule a country. Socially, Stalin did not try make the life of the average man or woman in the USSR at the time, any easier, or more pleasurable, so it is my evaluation that he was not a fit leader.
Overall, in all categories of his regime, he did not succeed in very many ways, and not enough for me to think of him as being a good leader. A good leader would have been able to achieve the things that he wanted, without having to kill or imprison anyone who made him feel threatened. Stalin was in a horrible state of depression, and the whole country of Russia was affected by his anxiety. He may have put the USSR up at the top of the industrial world at the time, but the ways that helped him get there, were not right. His promise of communism turned into more of a dictatorship than anything and his overbearing fears, made him a weak leader. The only policies that were good, that seemed to have no negative effect on the people of Russia, were free education and free medical care. So, my evaluation is that two out of many policies is not a good enough success rate for me to be able to honestly say that I think Stalin was a good leader.
