Collectivization was introduced into the system. The idea was all small plots of land used by the peasants to grow food on would be taken over by the government and made into a single patch of land, that would be run by a committee official. The impact of which was supposed to increase food production thus being able to support a larger population of industrial workers. But that was not the case. In actual fact, the peasants who worked very hard on their fields and were thus able to make extra money rebelled against this as that meant the loss of their land. This led to Stalin declaring them as the enemies and killed or sent them off to concentration camps. The impact of this fell on the whole system as the best farmers had been lost. The result of this was a famine, which was the cause of over ten million people’s deaths. All the farmers were also very depressed and thus were not enthusiastic about their jobs, which lead to a decline in production of food.
The first year plan that was based on producing more food was actually done so in order to ensure more food would be available to the workers in the industrial jobs. Stalin felt that their industry had a lost a lot of time in terms of development and would now have to make up for that loss. This was done so by focusing the industrial companies on what is known as heavy industry/primary industry such as electricity, iron, oil and machine building. In order for these industries to work Stalin asked for them to be set up outside of the main rural areas. There was also much development made on roads and railways.
The second five-year plan began a year early in 1932. These years aimed to bring back the popularity of Stalin and win the people over to the positive side again. In order to do this, rationing of commodities was cut short but not eliminated and thus a lot of the shops were able to provide a few more goods. Also army grain stores were shared out among the peasantry. Also as a lot of the farmers were still rebelling due to the loss of their land, in the mid thirties, they were given small pieces of land to cultivate on the side as well as a few animals. Having said that there were still a lot of difficulties, which took the lives of another ten million people, as well as majority of the resources still being pumped into primary industries. Finally this plan was also cut short a year as it only ran for four years.
The third five-year plan started in 1936 and ran its full course of five years. These years were started with the vision of increasing the thus far poor quality of goods as opposed to the old ideology that asked for quantity. But this meant a decrease in production of the goods so though the quality was better it was reaching less people. In the end this plan was a difficult one to pull through because Russia was beginning to feel international threat and thus began producing arms in order to be well prepared for any wars that were upcoming which obviously meant lack of resources and attention being focused on the needed commodities and thus the people in general suffered from lack of goods. Also a great number of men were lost to the armed forces meaning yet again a transfer of resources, which in turn leads to a decrease in production.
To conclude one might say some good did take place during the five-year plans but the fact bluntly remains that the negatives out weigh the positives. A lot of lives were lost during these years due to lack of food and basic commodities. A lot of rebellion against the collective farms took place and generally they were dealt with through deaths or concentration camps. Thus one could say Stalin’s plans did barely any good and caused more destruction than anything else.
