Soviet Union Under Stalin

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Soviet Union Under Stalin
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Stalin's Five-Year Plan

• Stalin proposed the first of several "five-year
  plans" in 1928. 
• It was aimed at building heavy industry,
  improving transportation, and increasing farm
  output. 
• Government now controlled all economic activity.
• This led the Soviet Union into a command economy.

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Command Economy

• The Soviet Union developed a command economy
  under Stalin.
•  
• In a command economy, government officials made
  all basic economic decisions.
•  
• The government owned all businesses and
  distributed all resources.
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4
Collectivization in Agriculture

• Stalin also brought agriculture under
  governmental control.
• He wanted all peasants to farm on either state
  owned farms or on collectives.

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Collectivization in Agriculture

• The government wanted farmers to produce more
  grain to feed workers in the city.
• This also helped to sell grain abroad to earn
  more money.

6
Collectives

• Collectives are  large farms owned and operated
  by peasants as a group.
• Stalin thought that small farms run by peasants
  were inefficient and a threat to state power. 
• Stalin wanted all peasants to farm on either
  state-owned farms or collectives. 
• Government provided tractors, fertilizers, and
  better seeds. Peasants learned modern farming
  methods and they were allowed to keep their
  houses and personal belongings.

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Collectives

• Animals and implements were turned to a
  collective. 
• The state set all of the prices and controlled
  access to farm supplies. 
• Peasants were upset because they didn't want to
  sell their crops at low prices. 
• They burned their crops, killed their animals and
  destroyed their tools.

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                          Kulaks

• Stalin believed that kulaks, or wealthy farmers,
  were behind the resistance by burning their
  crops, killing their animals and destroying their
  tools. 
• In 1929, Stalin liquidated the kulaks as a class.
  He did this by confiscating their land, sending
  them to labor camps where thousands were killed
  or died from being overworked. 
•  This made the peasants angry, so they grew just
  enough crops for themselves.

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                          Kulaks

• In response, the government seized all the grain
  to meet industrial goals leaving the peasants to
  starve.
• Between that policy and the poor harvest of 1932,
  there was a bad famine named "Terror Famine". In
  the Ukraine, five to eight million people died.

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Gulags

• Stalin used terror as a weapon against his own
  people by violating their rights, opening private
  letters, planting listening devices, having no
  free press, and no safe way of protesting. 

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Gulags

• Critics of Stalin were rounded up and sent to the
  Gulag, a system of brutal labor camps, was
  created in Siberia (north-central Soviet Union)
  where many died.

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                  The Great Purge

•  
• Stalin and his secret police went after
  Bolsheviks who were involved in the original 1917
  Revolution.
• The terror then targeted army heroes, industrial
  managers, writers, and ordinary citizens.
• They were charged with crimes ranging from
  counterrevolutionary plots to failure to meet
  production quotas.

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                  The Great Purge

•  
• 1937-1938, was mostly directed against Ukranians
  . The secret police rounded up millions of people
  and either sent them to  Siberian prisons or the
  executed them. The entire Central Committee and
  Politburo of the Ukraine were killed.
  Stanlin wanted to get rid of any potential
  enemies from within the Communist Party. 
• "Trials" and executions were carried out by the
  NKVD (secret police) who had pratically unlimited
  power over innocent people's life and death.

14
Comintern

• Policy that encouraged world-wide communist
  revolution. The Comitern's supported
  revolutionary groups outside the Soviet Union and
  used propaganda against capitalism.
• It made Western powers highly suspicious of the
  Soviet Union.

15
                   Socialist Realism

• Stalin required artists and writers to create
  their works in a style that showed Soviet life in
  a positive way and promoted hope in the communist
  future.
• Socialist Realism was thought of as following in
  footsteps of the great Russian authors Tolstoy
  and Chekhov.

16
Russification

• Stalins policy was to make the culture of all
  Soviet Republics, Russian in nature.
• The republics were forced to adopt the language
  and traditions of Russia while ignoring their own.

17
Women

• Under the Communist party, women won equality
  under the law and gained access to education and
  a wide range of jobs.
• By the late 1930, some Soviet women were employed
  in medicine and engineering.
• Others worked in factories in construction and on
  collectives with in their families. They earned
  the same low wages as men.