Overall I think that Source A gives the impression that Stalin was a very harsh person by the way that he stereotypes every Kulak (rich peasant) as ‘…swore enemies of the collective farm…’ I really don’t believe that every rich peasant in Russia had exactly the same views over collectivisation! Source B has the same sort of theme as Source A but it is much more subtle than Source A as it was taken from an article which would have been in the public domain.
2. In my view I think that both sources aren’t typically good examples of Stalin’s policy of collectivisation. Source C is a picture of the soldiers from the Red Army helping the workers and Source D is an English journalist writing about how bad conditions were in Russia.
Source C is particularly interesting because one of Stalin’s favourite ways of manipulation the minds of the people was to use propaganda in a photographic form. This was purely due to the fact that hardly anyone knew that manipulating photographs was a policy that he used since it was a trick that many Russians would not have thought was possible. This was more than likely a fake photograph, it could have be easily done with actors as well…
In contrast Source D tells of the exceedingly poor financial difficulties in Russia. It tells us that all the people were ‘…starving in its absolute sense…’ compared to the soldiers who ‘…were well fed…’. Surely this seems to be a bit hypocritical as communism was meant to make everyone equal. This source could also be biased because the English were always against Stalin’s communist policies. However there does to seems to be a certain element of truth in the source because the journalist actually speaks to a peasant about the situation ‘…’they have taken everything away’…’ seems to be genuine…
Overall I would say that source D is more reliable than source C because it is hard to imagine the Red Army soldiers working alongside normal peasants (as shown in source C) because in my opinion in do not believe that this would have actually happened.
3. In my opinion Source F supports Source E very well. This is because Source F is purely a description of how the Russian workforce was working at a higher level of production than some of the non-communist countries such as American and Czechoslovakia. During the five-year plans in Russia, the main aim was to expand the industry as much as possible and this did work well. Source E would have been used by Stalin to try and invoke more hatred in his people regarding their democratic European counterparts.
Source G goes as far agreeing that Stalin certainly ‘encouraged’ a high work-rate from everyone in the country ‘You are bloodsuckers…’ however I don’t think some of the other points made in this source promote Stalin very well. The factory worker claims ‘You well-fed devils have sucked the juices out of us enough…’ this obviously shows that there was definitely a certain amount of people opposed to the extremely hard work that Stalin demanded. This statement also could be seen as questioning the whole ethic of the communist system. The weaver also questions the point in working ‘If you go to the shop now and buy something, the shops are empty…’ this was probably due to Stalin’s policy of exporting most of Russia’s goods in order to try and make the country richer, even though the majority of the population was suffering severely.
Of course the plan did achieve an awful lot in terms of industrial success although it did come at a immense cost, many lives were lost due to Stalin’s harsh policies and because source F only focus’s on this part of what was going on in Russia it agrees very closely with source E. Source G does moderately with source E because it comments on the extremely hard work expected during Stalin’s reign, however the rest of source G is irrelevant to source E and it has a go at what Stalin was doing.
4. Source F was written by a member of the state-planning agency so it seems to me that he would have been biased towards the five-year plans. I believe that a modern historian must seriously consider the validity of this source because Stalin and others members of his communist party had a reputation of manipulating information to make Stalin’s policies look very effective. The source publicises the fact that Russian workers had a higher production rate than their democratic counterparts…
A member of Stalin’s secret police force wrote source G so we must assume that this source would probably have been reported to either Stalin or one of his senior officers so it probably has a high percentage chance of being accurate. During Stalin’s time in power he was notorious for making sure that anyone who said anything bad about himself or communism in general was punished severely by either ‘disposing’ of them or sending to work in one of the labour camps. This definitely ties in with the link to the secret police, so one can more or less take it for granted that source is very reliable. The source also could be said reinforces the point about…
