Stalin and the USSR's Domestic Policy 1

5 Year Plans

Stalin's goals

Collective Farms

Success of industrialisation

  • Staline believed that if the USSR were to survive it would need to transformed into a mordern industrial society
  • 1st 5 Year Plan 1928-1933: focus on heavy industry and the development of the USSR's infrastructure, large scale works were completed in a small period of time such as the steelworks at Magnitogorsk
  • 2nd 5 Year Plan 1933-1938: focuson consumer good and improving the lives of the people of the USSR
  • 3rd 5 Year Plan 1938-1943: focussed on relocation Russia's industry to the Ural mountains in anticipation of Germany's planned invasion of the USSR
  • Collectivised Farms were seen to produce more on a piece of land using less manpower, this would allow more people to work in the booming industrial sectors of the USSR
  • Make the USSR self-sufficient agriculturally and economically
  • 'de-westernise' the Soviet Union and institute a pure socialist society
  • consolidate his own power and establish a totalitarian state
  • The establishment of Collective Farms was not welcomed in the USSR including the Kulaks
  • The Kulaks would burn and kill their produce instead of it being collected by the government, Stalin responded by deporting 6 million Kulaks to the Gulags in Siberia or executing them
  • Stalins 5 year plans were successful as a whole

Success of collectivisation

  • In 1929 there were 11 million industrial workers and by 1938 there were 38 million
  • By WW2, the USSR had the 2nd largest economy in the world and the USSR was able to relocate the majority of their industry in the wake of the German invasion
  • Between 1928-1935, the economy of the USSR grew by 250%
  • Collectivisation allowed Stalin to change the USSR from a agricultural based society into a industrial one
  • In 1928, 2% of farms were collectivised, by 1940 100% were claimed to have been collectivised
  • 20 million small farms were transformed into an estimated 250,000 collectivised farms