Joseph Stalin's Economic Plans. Stalin ended Lenin's NEP and set about achieving modernisation through a series of Five-Year Plans.

Five-Year Plans were used very effectively for propaganda purposes. Stalin had wanted the Soviet Union   to be a beacon of socialism ans his ppublicity machine used the successes of industrialisation to further that objective.Any programme as extreme as Stalin's Five-Year Plans was bound to carry a cost. In the USSR this cost was paid by the workers. Many foreign experts and engineers were called in by Stalin to supervise the work and in their letters and reports they marvel at the toughness of the Russian people. The workers were constantly bombarded with propaganda, posters, slogans and radio broadcasts. They all had strict targets to meet and were fined if they did not meet them. The most famous worker was Alexei Stakhanov. In 1935 with two helpers and an easy coal seam to work on, he managed to cut an amazing 102 tons of coal in one shift. This was 14 times the average for a shift. Stakhanov became a “hero of socialist labour” and the propaganda machine encouraged all Soviet workers to be Stakhanovites. The first Five-Year Plan revealed a shortage of workers, so from 1930 the government concentrated on drafting more women into industry. It set up thousands of new crèches and daycare centres so that mothers could work. By 1937 women were 40 per cent of industrial workers, 21 per cent of building workers and 72 per cent of health workers. Four out of five new workers recruited between 1932 and 1937 were women. By late 1930s many Soviet workers had improved their conditions by acquiring well-paid skilled jobs and earnings bonuses for meeting targets. Unemployment was almost non-existent. In 1940 the USSR had more doctors per head of population then Britain. Education became free and compulsory for all and Stalin invested huge sums in training schemes based in colleges and in the work place. But, on the other hand, life was very harsh under Stalin. Factory discipline was strict and punishments were severe. Lateness or absences were punished by sacking, and that often meant losing your flat or house as well. To escape the hard work and hard discipline, some workers tried to move to other jobs, so the secret police introduced internal passports which prevented free movement of workers inside the USSR. On the great engineering projects, such as dams and canals, many of the workers were prisoners who had been sentenced to hard labour for being political opponents, or suspected opponents, of Stalin, or for being kulaks (rich peasants) or Jews. Many other prisoners were simply unfortunate workers who had had accidents or made mistakes in their work but had been found guilty of   sabotage. On these major projects conditions were appalling and there were many deaths and accidents. It is estimated that 100 000 workers died in the construction of the Belomor Canal. At the same time, the concentration on heavy industry meant that there were few consumer goods (such as clothes) which ordinary people wanted to buy. In the towns and cities, most housing was provided by the state , but overcrowding was a problem. Most families lived in flats and were crowded into two rooms which were used for living, sleeping and eating. What's more, wages actually fell between 1928 and 1937. Stalin was also quite prepared to destroy the way of life of the Soviet people to help industrialisation. For example, in the republics of central Asia the influence of Islam was thought to hold back industrialisation, so between 1928 and 1932 it was repressed. Many Muslim leaders were imprisoned or deported, mosques were closed and pilgrimages to Mecca were forbidden.For the enormous changes of the Five-Year Plan to be successful, Stalin needed to modernise the USSR's agriculture. This was vital because the population of the industrial centres was growing   rapidly and yet as early as 1928 the country was already 2 million tons short of the grain it needed to feed its workers. Stalin also wanted to try to raise money for his industrialisation programme by selling exports of surplus food abroad. The problem was that farming was not organised to do this. Under the NEP, most peasants were either agricultural labourers or kulaks, prosperous peasants who owned small farms. These farms were too small to make efficient use of tractors, fertilisers and other modern methods. In addition, most peasants had enough to eat and could see little point in increasing production to feed the towns. To get round these problems, Stalin set out his ideas for collectisation in 1929. The government tried hard to sell these ideas to the peasants, offering free seed and other perks, but there were soon problems. The peasants, who had always been suspicious of government, whether it was the Tsar, Lenin or Stalin, were concerned about the speed of collectivisation. They disliked the fact that the farms were under the control of the local Communist leader. They were being asked to grow crops such as flax for Russia's industry rather than grain to feed themselves. In short, Stalin was asking the peasants to abandon a way of life that they and their ancestors had led for centuries. Stalin had a difficult time convincing the peasants about collectivisation, but this was slight compared to the opposition of the kulaks who owned their own land. The kulaks simply refused outright to hand over their land produce. Within a short time, collectivisation became a grim and bitter struggle. Soviet propaganda tried to turn the people against the kulaks. The war of words soon turned into violence. Requisition parties came and took the food required by the government, often leaving the peasants to starve. Kulaks were arrested and sent by the thousand to labour camps or were forced on to poor-quality land. In revenge, many kulaks burnt their corps and slaughtered their animals so that the Communists could not have them. The countryside was in chaos. Even where collectivisation had been introduced successfully, peasants watched Communist officials sending food for export. Not surprisingly, food production fell under these conditions and there was a famine in 1932-33. Millions died in Russia's richest agricultural regions. When the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941, they were at first made welcome for driving out the Communists. Despite the famine, Stalin did not ease off. By 1934 they were no kulaks left. By 1941 almost all agricultural land was organised under the collective system. Stalin had achieved his aim of collectivisation.It was not possible to make the huge changes which Stalin was carrying out without making enemies. However, one of Stalin's aims was to control his people to such an extent that they would be afraid even to think of opposing him. Throughout his time in power he used the secret police to crush any opponents of his policies. The first signs of terror which was to come appeared in 1928 when Stalin, without much evidence accused a number of engineers of sabotage in the important Donbass mining region. In 1931 a number of former Mensheviks were put on trial on charges that were obviously made up. However, the really terrifying period in Stalin's rules, known as the Purges, began in 1934 when Kirov, the leader of the Leningrad (the new name for Petrograd from 1924) Communist Party, was murdered. Stalin used this murder as an excuse to “purge” or clear out his opponents in the party. Historians strongly suspect that Stalin arranged for Kirov's murder to give him this excuse. In great “show trials” loyal Bolsheviks, such as Kamenev, Bukharin and Zinoviev, confessed to being traitors to the state. It was not only leading figures who were purged. Estimates suggest that around 500 000 party members were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities and either executed or sent to labour camps. In 1940, Trotsky, in exile in Mexico, was murdered by Stalin's agent. After the trials, Stalin turned his attention to the army, particularly the officers. Approximatively 25 000 officers were removed, around one in five, including the Supreme Commander of the Red Army, Marshal Tukhachevsky. As the Purges were extend, university lecturers and teachers, miners and engineers, factory manages and ordinary workers all disappeared. It is said that every family in the USSR lost someone in the Purges. One of the most frightening aspects was the unpredictability. Arrests would take place in the middle of the night and victims were rarely told what they were accused of. Days of physical and psychological torture would gradually break the victims and they would confess to anything. It the torture failed, the secret police would threaten the families of those arrested. By 1937 an estimated 18 million people had been transported to labour camps. Ten million died. Stalin seriously weakened the USSR by removing so many able individuals. The army purges were nearly fatal to the USSR. When Hitler invaded USSR in 1941, one of the key problems of the Red Army was a lack of good-quality, experienced officiers. Stalin had also succeeded in destroying any sense of independent in destroying any sense of independent thinking. Everyone who was spared knew that their lives depended on thinking exactly as Stalin did. In the population as a whole, the longterm impact of living with terror and distrust haunted the USSR for a generation.In 1936 Stalin created a new constitution for the USSR's. It gave freedom of speech and free elections to the Russian people. This was, of course, a cosmetic measure. Only Communist Party candidates were allowed to stand in elections, and only approved newspapers and magazines could be published. Today, Stalin's rule is looked back on as a time of great terror and oppression. However, if you had visited the USSR in the 1930s, you would have found that the average Soviet citizen admired Stalin. Ask about the Purges and people would probably say that they were nothing to do with Stalin himself. For most Soviet citizens, Stalin was not a tyrant dominating an oppressed country. He and his style of government were popular. The Communist Party saw him as a winner and Soviet citizens saw him as a “dictator of people”. The Soviet people sincerely believed in Stalin himself. It developed into what is known as the Cult of the Personality. The history of the Soviet Union was rewritten so that Lenin and Stalin were the only real heroes of the Revolution. The Soviet education system was geared not to independent thinking but to Stalinist propaganda. Schoolchildren were also expected to join the Young Pioneers. The Soviet people were deluged with portraits, photographs and statues of Stalin. Comrade Stalin appeared everywhere. Every Russian town had a Stalin Square or a Stalin Avenue and a large Stalin statue in the centre. Poets and playwrights praised Stalin either directly or indirectly. Composers wrote music praising him. All music and other arts in the USSR were carefully monitored by the secret police. Regular processions were organised through the street of Russia towns and cities praising Stalin and all he had achieved. Religious worship of any kind was banned? Stalin did not want the people to have loyalty to anyone else but him. Instead, people were encouraged to worship Stalin. Belief in God and the words of priests had to be replaced by belief in Communism and the words of its leaders. Ay’va Roberts