Learning Curve Main Menu Stalin - How did Stalin Industrialize Russia
 

 

A report written by the British Government about the 1936 targets
Ways in which Stalin tried to get more from Russian workers
Gergori Tokaty a Russian talking in 1984
British summary about Soviet Labour Discipline (1931)

What were the methods Stalin used to industrialize? Were they acceptable methods? Which methods were worthy of a hero? Which are those that only a villain would use?

Official targets for 1938
Soviet propaganda poster published in 1931
Speech given by Molotov, the Russian foreign minister

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The key to industrialization was heavy industry and the pace of its production was to be achieved through a series of Five Year Plans. Every five years the Soviet government under Stalin's instruction would set targets that industry and agriculture would have to meet.

New factories were built, especially in places in east of the USSR such as the Ural mountains.

A famous example was Magnitogorsk. Other achievements were the Dnieper dam that provided hydro-electricity. Whole new industrial centers sprung up in Kuzbass and the Volga.

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The Rapid industrialization meant peasants leaving the land and working in towns or industrial centers. These workers had to be fed, so agricultural production also had to increase. Stalin ordered the collectivization of all farming. Peasants would work together on larger, more productive farms.

Almost all the crops they produced would be given to the government to feed the industrial workers. Fewer workers were needed on these collective farms, so more peasants could become factory workers.

Every year the amount of steel, coal, iron, railway lines and oil rose.

Capitalist countries admired these achievements. However, there was a darker side to these successes. In the drive to industrialize Stalin often adopted harsh methods; forced labor camps, removal of those who did not co-operate and punishments for those who failed to reach targets.

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Success or Failure?

 
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 1953 : Stalin died1942 : Siege of Stalingrad1941 : Trotsky murdered in Mexico1941 : Operation Barbarossa: Germany attacked the USSR1939 : Nazi-Soviet Pact1935 : Stakhanovite movement1934 : Murder of Kirov1933 : Belamor Canal completed1932 : Stalin's wife committed suicide supposedly because of the brutalities of collectivization1932 : Famine in the countryside1931 : New regulations in the workplace1930 : Gulags created1929 : Policy of collectivisation began1929 : Stalin became undisputed leader of the Communist Party and hence the USSR1924 : Lenin died1918 : Treaty of Brest-Litovsk1917 : November Revolution: Bolsheviks (Communists) led by Lenin took control of Russia1917 : March Revolution: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and the Provisional Government took over1914 : Russia entered the First World War on the side of Britain and FranceStalin timeline