To what extent were the sufferings of the Soviet people in the 1930s a price that was worth paying for the progress that was made under Stalin?

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To what extent were the sufferings of the Soviet people in the 1930s a price that was worth paying for the progress that was made under Stalin?

In my opinion, the suffering that the Soviet people went through was worth it as Russia progressed a lot under Stalin’s leadership.  Although some things did not change, and some seemed to get even worse, important changes were made that brought Russia nearer the line with other European countries; and ultimately helped them defeat Germany in the Second World War.

Agriculture was a major part of Russian society.  This was because most people living in Russia were illiterate peasants and could only really work on land.  Under the NEP, peasants were either agricultural labourers with no land, or prosperous peasants (known as Kulaks) who owned small farms.  These people used old-fashioned, out of date farming methods.  These farms were small and inefficient; so many fertilisers, machinery such as tractors, and other modern methods were not used.  These could not be afforded anyway.

Stalin planned to modernise this.  He wanted to build factories to increase the industrial centres to make the country strong and wealthy, but there was the problem of feeding all the workers.  As early as 1928 Russia was already 2 million tons short of the grain needed to feed its workers.  He also wanted to raise money for his industrialisation programme, and needed money to buy machinery from other countries.  Foreign experts would also need to be hired and paid to help get things running.  The problem was that no other country wanted Russian currency, so the Russians had to export food (especially grain) to get foreign currency.  Extra grain was also needed to feed the growing urban population.

Now that Russia needed to sell its grain, Stalin decided to make the peasants hand in their land and make it into one big collective farm (known as a kolkhoz).  The name given to this was Collectivisation.  The peasants had to work on the farms, but weren’t allowed to control it.  All the grain produced was sold to the government at a fixed low price.

Although there was a lot of propaganda to gain support for collectivisation, many of the 100 million peasants opposed to this plan, so Stalin realised that he had to deal with them.  Firstly he dealt with the richest peasants, the ones who would object to his plan the most as they had more to lose – the Kulaks.  They were the scapegoats, and got the blame for stopping collectivisation.  The government often encouraged people to attack the kulaks.  In December 1929 Stalin announced that the kulaks were to be sent to concentration camps in places like Siberia.  Their land was confiscated and given to local kolkhoz.  In 1934 all the kulaks were wiped out.

In February 1930 over half the peasants in Russia had joined the collective farms, but the grain shortage problem had not been solved.  Many framers destroyed their crops, tools and farm buildings, and killed their animals rather than hand over their grain and animals.  Stalin still sent armed squads to collect grain from the peasants.  This meant that too much food was being exported; which was a punishment for not cooperating.  All these factors caused a sudden drop in food production, and a man made famine was created.  Over the next 3 years about 5 million people starved to death.  As the famine was not reported because of censorship, in theory it did not exist so nothing could be done about it.

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Collectivisation seemed to have failed.  Wiping out the kulaks was a bad idea as they were the most successful farmers, who knew new techniques.  This could have benefited Stalin’s collective farms, and helped modernise Russia’s agriculture.  Also the famine caused by Stalin left many dead.  But some good did come out of it.  Now Russia was making some money from exports.  New farming methods were being given a chance.  This helped Russia improve its farming.  Also, the second time collectivisation was done, people got to keep a bit of land for themselves.  Despite the failures, collectivisation was a push ...

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