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What Were Stalin’s Five Year Plans?

Celeste Neill

20 jun 2023.

On 1 October 1928 Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Russia launched the first Five Year Plan, a series of revolutionary economic reforms which transformed Russia from a peasant society into a power capable of resisting the might of Hitler’s Germany.

Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin had died in 1924, and in the ensuing power struggle the Georgian Joseph Stalin came to the fore as the General Secretary and the de facto leader of Soviet Russia. 

What was Stalin’s Five Year Plan?

Between 1928 and 1932, Stalin’s Five Year Plan was targeted at collectivizing agriculture and developing heavy industry. This was the first of four so-called plans, which took place in 1928-32, 1933-37, 1938-42 and 1946-53.

After a period of relative economic liberalism Stalin decided that a wholesale restructuring of the economy was needed, claiming that unless the Soviets caught up with the capitalist western powers they would be destroyed.

Stalin famously stated: ”We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make up this gap in ten years. Either we do it or they will crush us.”

The requisition of grains from wealthy peasants (kulaks) during the forced collectivization in Timashyovsky District, Kuban Soviet Union. 1933. Image credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Credit: Credited to U. Druzhelubov. The date of death is impossible to determine therefore PMA is not known., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mechanisation and collectivisation

Stalin’s first Five Year Plan involved the mechanisation and collectivisation of agriculture in a bid to make it more efficient. It also involved the opening of huge new industrial centres in previously uninhabited areas rich in natural resources, such as Magnitogorsk, built near huge iron and steel reserves east of the Ural Mountains.

Economic activity was pushed in the direction of heavy industries, which lead to a 350 percent increase in output, in a bid to prepare Russia for an industrialised war . The first Five Year Plan also had a revolutionary effect on society, as millions left the farms to pursue new lives in the cities.

The human cost

Despite these successes, Stalin’s Five Year Plan was not an unqualified success. In addition to mechanisation and collectivisation, key features of the first Five Year Plan included the disastrous impact it had on human lives. Aside from the terrible conditions in the new factories, where unskilled workers had little idea of how to operate machines, the collectivisation of agriculture was ruinous.

Political prisoners eating lunch in the Minlag ‘special camp’ coal mine. In ‘special camps’ prisoners had to wear prison garb with personal numbers. Image credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Credit: Kauno IX forto muziejus / Kaunas 9th Fort Museum, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Millions died in the subsequent famine and peasant disturbances. An entire social class of wealthier peasants – the Kulaks, who had accumulated more land, livestock, or wealth than their fellow peasants — were accused of sabotaging the progress of the Plan. Consequently they were either massacred or imprisoned in Gulags , which were forced labour camps, so that the state could exploit their land for collectivisation.

As many of the deaths were in non-Russian areas such as Ukraine, the Five Year Plan created lasting divisions between Russians and non-Russians.

The policies also played a role in causing the Holodomor, a mass famine in the Ukraine, and Soviet inactivity in response to the catastrophe has lead to a recent re-categorisation of events as a genocide against the Ukrainian people.

World War Two

In World War Two , the tensions caused by the first Five Year Plan proved consequential. Ukrainians, for example, who were subject to its disastrous effects were more willing to collaborate with the Nazis against the USSR.

The first Five Year Plan actually lasted 4 years, as it supposedly met all of its objectives earlier than expected. On the other hand, this can be ascribed to Russian propaganda efforts. Nevertheless, the first plan and those that followed, which continued the general objectives of the first while also emphasising the production of military hardware , were critical in preparing Russia for an industrialised war.

It seems unlikely that Russia could have resisted Nazi invasion without the immense industrialisation program that had been undertaken in the years prior. However, the vast cost in human life of the Five Year Plans and the invasion of Russia itself remain a dark stain on the history of the 20th century.

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Toward the “second Revolution”: 1927–30

The party versus the peasants.

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• Table Of Contents

Stalin had now achieved a majority in the Politburo. As he began to shift to the Left, he was opposed only by Nikolay Bukharin , Aleksey Rykov , and Mikhail Tomsky. From 1927 to 1930 the political struggle between the Stalinists and these “Rightists” continued, although, unlike the early struggle with the Left, it did not become overt until the Right had been defeated and the new policies had been effectively decided on.

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In the Communist Party reluctant acceptance of NEP as realist and rejection of the Left as adventurist gave way to the increasing conviction that a further struggle was now needed against all antisocialist forces, and especially in the countryside. Though they had accepted the NEP as being necessary to stave off disaster, activists remained devoted to the idea that the party’s duty was to create socialism . And the general mood, though chastened, was of a belief that (as was to become a major slogan) “There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm.” In this contest Stalin embodied the attitudes not merely of the people he had brought in through the control of the apparatus but also of the bulk of the old party militants.

Meanwhile the country was dependent on the market’s giving the peasants adequate incentive to sell their grain surplus and feed the cities. The whole feeling of the party was opposed to, suspicious of, and ignorant of the market mechanism. It was also the case that few of the leaders had much economic knowledge and, moreover, the statistics available to them were highly unreliable.

In 1928 the leadership again thought an unacceptable shortfall in agricultural supplies was imminent . It is now clear that, as in 1923, this was miscalculation; the market could have been balanced by quite a small investment. Instead the Politburo —including the Rightists—voted for supplementing normal trade by a forced requisition. Although it was stated that this was an exceptional measure and that the NEP would continue, it was carried out as a class-war operation. This led to a vicious circle. The peasant, no longer confident in the market, lost the incentive to production that had been the key to the country’s recovery. With less produced for the market, more requisitioning seemed necessary, and this was repeated on a larger scale in the winter of 1929.

The rationale of the Communist Party’s approach to the problems of the countryside was that the peasantry was divided into classes with different and opposed interests. The rich “ kulaks ” were implacable enemies of socialism. The “middle peasants,” constituting the great majority, vacillated but could be brought to the proletarian side. And the “poor peasants,” together with the “village proletarians,” were reliable allies.

There had indeed been a small class of rich peasants, who owned 60 to 80 acres (25 to 35 hectares) of land. These had not been attacked by peasants in the takeover of landlord property but had been liquidated by party detachments in 1918. Through the 1920s the class division in the villages was almost entirely a communist fiction; indeed, this had been shown clearly in the peasant risings of 1918–21. Under the NEP the more enterprising peasants, often former Red Army men, had certainly prospered . But the idea of the existence of a rich exploiting kulak class was false. Moreover, as official documents make clear, the poorer peasants, far from resenting the kulaks, generally regarded them as leaders and depended on them for help in adversity.

As the economy recovered over the last years of the 1920s, Stalin increasingly argued that a slow socialization was impossible. In 1928 and 1929 he increasingly undermined his former allies of the “Right,” implementing a program of faster industrialization and sharper class struggle with the errant elements of the peasantry.

It was clear that the party could no longer combine the market and brute force. Either the NEP had to be properly restored or purely confiscatory measures imposed. In 1928 and 1929 Stalin and his supporters gradually went over to the position that only collectivization would make the grain available to the authorities and that to effect this a great sharpening of “class war” in the countryside was required. Bukharin, with Rykov and Tomsky, saw that this would mean a terror regime and destroy the fruits of the NEP. But they were now almost helpless.

The revival of communist advance from 1928 also resulted in radical changes in the official attitude to the intelligentsia , both technical and creative. It was felt that the new communist specialists in every field were now well enough equipped to take over from their bourgeois predecessors. This was to give much trouble in engineering and also in such spheres as economics and agricultural science.

This purge was accompanied by the enforcement, more rigidly and more shallowly than previously, of ideological criteria in every sphere of culture , science, and philosophy. In the summer of 1928 the new course was signaled by the public trial in Moscow , amid vast publicity, of 53 engineers on charges of sabotage in the so-called Shakhty Case. The theme, repeated in endless propaganda over the following years, was that bourgeois specialists could not be trusted. Large numbers were subsequently arrested. By 1930 more than half of the surviving engineers had no proper training. In all institutes and academies, ideological hacks were intruded to ensure Marxist, or rather Stalinist, purity of theory and practice.

In literature the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers ( RAPP ), which had a dogmatic “party” approach to writing, took effective control. In 1930 Pilnyak and Zamyatin were removed from their posts as chairmen of the Moscow and Leningrad sections of the Union of Writers, respectively, though Zamyatin was allowed to emigrate.

At the end of 1929 both bourgeois and communist economists of note who had urged prudence were arrested, and later most of them were shot.

At the same time the assault on religion was renewed. The Soviet Constitution had guaranteed “freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda.” On May 22, 1929, this article was amended to “freedom of religious worship and anti-religious propaganda .” This presaged a campaign in which village priests were classified as kulaks, while churches were closed on a large scale and often demolished, over the next few years.

From mid-1929 decisions on the extent and speed of proposed collectivization were changed almost monthly, becoming ever more extreme. The Five-Year Plan as approved in April–May 1929 envisaged five million peasant households collectivized by 1932–33; this figure was doubled by November and doubled again during December. By the turn of the year it was decreed that collectivization should be completed in Ukraine by the autumn of 1930 and in the other main grain areas by the spring of 1931.

At the same time, plans for the kulak became harsher. During 1929 many fines were imposed, and dispossessions and even deportations took place. But nothing further than mass expropriation was envisaged, and it was even held that the expropriated kulak might enter the new kolkhozes (collective farms). By the end of the year the official policy became “the liquidation of the kulak as a class.”

The view of reality that the party maintained was that the mass of the peasantry were now in favour of collectivization , that they were fighting for it against the kulak, and that when it was introduced it would result in a great increase in agricultural production. The realities contradicted all these assumptions. In fact, the collectivization operation was supervised by activists from the cities (the “Twenty-Five Thousanders”) and OGPU men, and it was economically disastrous.

Concurrently with the collectivization itself came the mass arrest and deportation of kulaks. Even the most prosperous section of the peasantry now had average incomes no more than 50 to 60 percent higher than those of the least prosperous, and in any case “dekulakization” was extended by the concept of the “sub-kulak,” which could be applied indiscriminately. Stalin was to speak in 1933 of 15 percent of pre-collectivization peasant households as having been “kulak and better off”; these no longer existed. This would mean about 3.9 million households, or more than 20 million individuals. Of these about a third are estimated to have been “self-dekulakized”—that is, they abandoned their holdings and migrated to the cities—though in theory it became illegal for enterprises to knowingly employ ex-kulaks. Some 10 million, possibly more, were deported to the inhospitable areas of the Arctic and elsewhere, some directly, some after a few months landless in their own localities. The casualty rate was high: though exact totals are hard to deduce, some 2 million or more premature deaths probably occurred.

In mid-1929 only about 5 million peasants had been on collective farms. On March 1, 1930, this had risen to more than 70 million. Peasant resistance took various forms, including a number of local insurrections, but its main component was the mass slaughter of farm animals to prevent their being taken by the kolkhoz. Official figures given in 1934 showed a loss of 26.6 million head of cattle (42.6 percent of the country’s total) and 63.4 million sheep (65.1 percent of the total), and this is probably an understatement of the facts. On March 2, 1930, faced with this economic disaster, Stalin published his famous article “Dizzy from Success,” attacking “distortions” that had departed from the “voluntary principle” in collectivization and blaming local officials for this error. Over the next months 40 to 50 million peasants left the collectives .

However, the kolkhozes now existed, located on the best land in every village and in possession of much of the surviving livestock . Large grain quotas and crippling fines were imposed on the individual peasants, and over the next year the main grain growing areas were essentially re-collectivized.

One of the most destructive effects of collectivization was in Kazakhstan , where a nomad herding population was forced, largely on ideological grounds, into permanent settlements, for which no economic basis existed. About one-quarter of a million managed to escape over the Chinese border. But, of roughly four million Kazaks, more than a million, and probably some two million, perished.

The immediate result of these measures was a catastrophic decline in agricultural output across the U.S.S.R. as a whole. The government’s reaction was to base its requirements for delivery of grain from the kolkhozes not on actual production but rather on what became the basis of Soviet agricultural statistics until 1953—the “biological yield.” This was based on the estimated size of the crop in the fields before harvesting; it was more than 40 percent higher than the reality. And in 1932 even this tenuous link to the facts failed: the figure was distorted by merely multiplying acreage by optimum yield. The grain requisitions made on this basis were ruthlessly enforced by activist squads (and, in Bukharin ’s view, this experience contributed greatly to the brutalization of the party).

Such action left the peasant with a notional but nonexistent surplus on which to live. As a result, over the winter of 1932–33 , a major famine swept the grain-growing areas. Some 4 to 5 million died in Ukraine , and another 2 to 3 million in the North Caucasus and the Lower Volga area. Both the dekulakization terror of 1930–32 and the terror- famine of 1932–33 were particularly deadly in Ukraine and the Ukrainian-speaking area of the Kuban. They were accompanied by a series of repressive measures against the Ukrainian cultural, political, and social leaderships, the Ukraine’s defender Skrypnik committing suicide in July 1933. During this period about 1.7 million tons (1.5 million metric tons) of grain was exported, enough to have provided some two pounds (one kilogram) a head to 15 million people over three months. There is no doubt that the Stalin leadership knew exactly what was happening and used famine as a means of terror, and revenge, against the peasantry.

A census was taken in January 1937, but it was suppressed, and the Census Board was arrested. Its figures, finally revealed in 1990, showed a population of 162 million. The Soviet demographers had counted on about 177 million. The population deficit, including a decline in births, was thus some 15 million, of which premature death due to deportation and famine are believed to account for at least 10 million.

IB History: Stalin's Five Year Plan

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Non Fiction Books in the Fisher Library

Many of the books on Stalin and Russian History contain some details of the Five Year Plans. Listed below is a selection which contain more detail.

Books in the Reference Collection in the Fisher Library

• Europe Since 1914 by eds. J. Merriman & J. Winter Call Number: R 940.503 EUR Volume 2: 1097-1101 (also available online through the Gale World History in Context database)

For an overview of your topic use  the encyclopedias in the Reference Collection.The following two books provide a summary of Stalin's Five Year Plan:

Specialised Information in Online Databases

Use the online databases to find articles from journals. Start with JSTOR through the State Library, and then try the other  State Library databases which are listed in the box.

Also make sure that you search the GGS subscription database: Gale World History in Context .

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Spartacus Educational

Stalin's five year plan, primary sources, (1) joseph stalin, speech (1931).

No comrades... the pace must not be slackened! On the contrary, we must quicken it as much as is within our powers and possibilities. To slacken the pace would mean to lag behind; and those who lag behind are beaten.... The history of old Russia... was that she was ceaselessly beaten for her backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongol Khans, she was beaten by Turkish Beys, she was beaten by Swedish feudal lords, she was beaten by Polish-Lithuanian Pans, she was beaten by Anglo-French capitalists, she was beaten by Japanese barons, she was beaten by all - for her backwardness... We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. we must make good this lag in years. Either we do it or they crush us.

(2) British Embassy report (21st June 1932)

A record of over-staffing, overplanning and complete incompetence at the centre; of human misery, starvation, death and disease among the peasantry... the only creatures who have any life at all in the districts visited are boars, pigs and other swine. Men, women, and children, horses and other workers are left to die in order that the Five Year Plan shall at least succeed on paper.

(3) Eugene Lyons , Assignment in Utopia (1937)

The period of the Five Year Plan has been christened Russia's "Iron Age" by the best-informed and least sensational of my American colleagues in Moscow, William Henry Chamberlin. I can think of no more apt description. Iron symbolizes industrial construction and mechanization. Iron symbolizes no less the ruthlessness of the process, the bayonets, prison bars, rigid discipline and unstinting force, the unyielding and unfeeling determination of those who directed the period. Russia was transformed into a crucible in which men and metals were melted down and reshaped in a cruel heat, with small regard for the human slag. It was a period that unrolled tumultuously, in a tempest of brutality. The Five Year Plan was publicized inside and outside Russia as no other economic project in modern history. Which makes it the more extraordinary that its birth was unknown and unnoticed. The Plan sneaked up on the world so silently that its advent was not discovered for some months. On the momentous October first of 1928, the initial day of the Five Year Plan, we read the papers, fretted over the lack of news and played bridge or poker as though nothing exceptional was occurring. It was the beginning of a new fiscal year, precisely like the October firsts preceding it. The "control figures" or plan for the ensuing twelve months were rather more ambitious, with new emphasis on socialization of farming through state-owned "grain factories" and voluntary collectives of small holdings. But they were not sufficiently different from other years to arrest the attention of competent observers. The fact is that the Kremlin itself was far from certain that a new era had been launched. It had not yet charted a course. Or rather, it had charted alternative courses and hesitated in which direction to move. Not until Stalin and his closest associates see fit to reveal what happened in the crucial months of that autumn will we know how close the Soviet regime came to choosing a course which would have altered the whole history of Russia and therefore of the present world. There was nothing in the figures for the fiscal year of 1929 that committed the ruling Party to a Five Year Plan of the scope eventually announced. But a feeling of tense expectancy now stretched the country's nerves taut. A sharp turn of the wheel to one side or the other was inevitable, and the population squared for the shock. Economic difficulties were piling up dangerously and the Kremlin could not steer a middle course much longer. Food lines were growing longer and more restive. The producers of food had tested their strength and tasted a measure of victory; they rebelled more boldly against feeding the urban population and the armies for rubles which could buy nothing. Millions of grumbling mouths had to be either filled with food or shut by force. A partial crop failure in southern Russia aggravated the situation. Grain collections were not going well and, as always happened under these circumstances, the collectors began to resort to strong-arm tactics. Arson and assassination flared up once more in the villages, and Red troops were said to be "pacifying" the most unruly districts with lead. Schools, clubs, government buildings, and other institutions typifying the Soviet power were burned down in dozens of places. The published details of the peasant revenge were sufficiently harrowing, and what the press reported, we all assumed, was no more than a fraction of the picture. Death penalties, with and without trials, were the government's automatic answer. But they did not suffice. Something decisive had to be done that would either placate the peasants or end their insubordination.

(4) James William Crowl , Angels in Stalin's Paradise (1982)

With the defeat of Trotsky and the Left Wing in 1927, Stalin apparently began to look for a way to outmaneuver the final power bloc in the Party: the Right Wing led by Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky. It was not by accident that the economy provided him with the issues he needed to destroy his erstwhile allies. Midway through 1927 the Politburo had initiated an ambitious economic program that included a number of expansive construction projects such as the Turkish-Siberia railroad and the Dnieper dam. Such an undertaking involved a risk since it was to be underwritten largely by the sale of grain, and the grain collection program had become increasingly unreliable during the mid-1920's. The yearly crises stemmed in part from insufficient supplies of consumer goods, but they were even more the result of the low price the government offered for grain. As a result of that price, peasants turned over to the state only the grain they were required to deliver through the procurement quotas, and they sold the rest through Nepmen on the private market where the price was substantially higher. Yet, in order to raise the additional revenue needed for the industrial program in 1927, the state dropped its price for grain still lower and cracked down on the private market in an effort to force the peasants to sell their grain to the state at the lower price. The peasants responded, however, by feeding their grain to their cattle, turning it into alcohol, or hoarding it in expectation of higher prices. By late 1927, grain collections fell off more sharply than in earlier years, and the regime faced a crisis. Signs of disagreement over the response to the crisis appeared as early as October 1927. Stalin and his henchmen sounded the need for anti-kulak measures, while Bukharin and his allies worried aloud about the lagging collections but insisted on the need for caution in finding a solution. Unity was maintained at the Fifteenth Party Congress in December, however, as even the Politburo rightists agreed that action was needed to convince the peasants to relinquish their supplies. Thus the Congress that vanquished Trotsky fairly bristled with leftist declarations. A heavier, graduated procurement tax was issued that hit directly at the kulaks and promised to bring the state additional grain. In addition, a land act rescinded the right to hire labor and lease land that had been granted to peasants in 1925 and 1926, and kulaks were deprived of their voting rights in order to curtail their power in the village soviets. The Congress encouraged collectivization as well, although it stressed that it should be a gradual and voluntary process. Because of such measures, the Fifteenth Congress is often cited as marking the end of the N.E.P, era. In the weeks following the Congress, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky apparently again supported Stalin in the attempt to compel the peasants to turn over their grain. Stalin was given control of the effort, and he singled out West Siberia for his personal attention since the harvest there had been excellent and the peasants were believed to be holding back substantial grain supplies. Though the Politburo still issued reassuring reports claiming that the Party had not broken with past agricultural policy, the Soviet press wrote about the grain "front" as if a military campaign had begun. Violence was widespread as officials tried to ferret out the grain, and Alec Nove claims that for some time thereafter such arbitrary and violent grain seizures were referred to as the "Urals-Siberian" method, after Stalin's tactics of early 1928. Though grain collections lagged and even the new procurement quotas fell short in January and February, by March the grain seizures were successfully at last in bringing the state the needed grain. Until February and March of 1928, when the confrontation with the peasants reached a highpoint, it appears that Bukharin reluctantly agreed that temporary measures against grain-hoarding were necessary. The violence of the campaign was repulsive to the Politburo Right, however, and jolted it into an awareness of the deep division that had been developing in the Party since the fall of 1927. As a result, the two Politburo factions clashed repeatedly in the late winter, and Stalin found it necessary to publicly repudiate the "Urals-Siberian" methods at times over the next few months. Nevertheless Stalin had apparently committed himself to a radical economic stance by the late winter of 1927-1928, if only as a means of striking at his foes, and the power struggle had begun again in earnest.

(5) Eugene Lyons , Assignment in Utopia (1937)

Was the first Five Year Plan a "success"? For whom and for what? Certainly not for the socialist dream, which had been emptied of human meaning in the process, reduced to a mechanical formula of the state as a super-trust and the population as its helpless serfs. Certainly not for the individual worker, whose trade union had been absorbed by the state-employer, who was terrorized by medieval decrees, who had lost even the illusion of a share in regulating his own life. Certainly not for the revolutionary movement of the world, which was splintered, harassed by the growing strength of fascism, weaker and less hopeful than at the launching of the Plan. Certainly not for the human spirit, mired and outraged by sadistic cruelties on a scale new in modern history, shamed by meekness and sycophancy and systematized hypocrisy. If industrialization were an end in itself, unrelated to larger human ends, the U.S.S.R. had an astounding amount of physical property to show for its sacrifices. Chimneys had begun to dominate horizons once notable for their church domes. Scores of mammoth new enterprises were erected. A quarter of a million prisoners -a larger number of slaves than the Pharaohs mobilized to build their pyramids, than Peter the Great mobilized to build his new capital-hacked a canal between the White and the Baltic Seas; a hundred thousand survivors of this "success" were digging another canal just outside Moscow as the second Plan got under way. The country possessed 3 blast furnaces and 63 open hearth furnaces that had not existed in 1928, a network of power stations with a capacity four times greater than pre-war Russia had, twice as many oil pipe lines as in 1928. Hundreds of machines and tools formerly imported or unknown in Russia were being manufactured at home and large sections of mining were mechanized for the first time. The foundations were laid for a new industrial empire in the Urals and eastern Siberia, the impregnable heart of the country. Two-thirds of the peasantry and four-fifths of the plowed land were "socialized"-that is, owned and managed by the state-employer as it owned and managed factories and workers. The defensive ability of the country, in a military sense, had been vastly increased, with new mechanical bases for its war industries. Measured merely for bulk, the Plan achieved much, though it fell far short of the original goals. On the qualitative side, the picture is much less impressive. Here, we find reflected the low caliber of the human material through which the Plan was necessarily translated from paper to life. Overhead costs were greater all along the line than expected.

Student Activities

(1) isaac deutscher , stalin: a political biography (1949) pages 320-321, (2) john simkin , stalin (1987) page 50, (3) james william crowl , angels in stalin's paradise (1982) pages 88-89, (4) roy a. medvedev , let history judge: the origins and consequences of stalinism (1971) page 103, (5) robert service , stalin: a biography (2004) page 264, (6) john simkin , stalin (1987) page 52, (7) bertram d. wolfe , three who made a revolution (1948) page 197, (8) isaac deutscher , stalin: a political biography (1949) page 337, (9) edvard radzinsky , stalin (1996) pages 234-235, (10) robert service , stalin: a biography (2004) page 264, (11) eugene lyons , assignment in utopia (1937) pages 383-389, (12) walter duranty , new york times (18th january, 1931), (13) isaac deutscher , the listener (8th july 1948), (14) walter duranty , speech reported in the new york times (3rd may, 1932), (15) british embassy report (21st june 1932).

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What was the main purpose of Stalin’s 5 year plan

Joseph Stalin’s five years plan is an important way of planning economic growth over a limited period of time. The five-year plans are created with the objective of making a proper plan so that economic growth can be achieved as expected. It was fully utilised in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin, and later it has been adopted by many socialist states. The first five year plan in the Soviet Union started in 1928 and continued till 1932 under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The main purpose of this first five year plan was on developing heavy industry and collectivising agriculture and at the same time it was aimed at achieving a drastic fall in consumer goods. The main purpose of Joseph Stalin under the five year plan was to convert the Soviet Union into a world power. This is to achieve by way of a massive agricultural and industrial advancement within a short period of time of five years.

Collectivisation of agriculture remained the focus area in first five year plan

Agriculture was collectivised during this period of five years with the objective of achieving bigger farms under state control. Collectivisation of agriculture means the land would no longer belong to individual peasants and it is acquired by the state. However it does not prove to be effective because it has resulted into a grain crisis and there was lack of effective participation in this collectivisation among many of the peasants. The strategies used by Stalin to ensure active participation were highly abusive and those who disobeyed were shot or sent to labour camps. Collectivisation was forced among the peasants with the objective of industrialisation of agriculture, but there was resistance identified among many of the peasants to collectivise. They were highly interested in working on their own land rather than supporting the attempt to collectivise.

Industrialisation is used as a factor to promote collectivisation

Industrialisation was an essential requirement for the collectivisation to succeed. There were requirements for tractors and agricultural machines by bigger farms, and emphasizes were made on heavy industry and rapid industrial progress. The overall infrastructure was developed at a rapid pace with new factories and towns were set up in record time. New roads and railways were built up with the objective of supporting industrialisation and ultimately collectivisation. The target set up by the government was highly ambitious and industrialization was aimed to accomplish through forced labour, terror, competition and incentives, low wages, technical training and literary programs.

Success/failure of the Stalin’s first five year plan

The overall Emphasis of the first five year plan was therefore on achieving industrialisation and collectivization through forceful measures, and Stalin has declared the success of the first five year plan by all these strategies. Such claims of success of the first five year plan were made on the basis of exceeding the production goals for heavy industry. However, in reality, the plan was considered a failure despite many actions because it failed to meet all the quotas and had a negative implication on human life. All the initiatives to achieve industrialisation were made at the cost of human life and it is the major factor that indicates the failure of the first five year plan. Joseph Stalin carried out many such five year plans after recognising the first one as a successful one.

Subsequent five year plans for Stalin to promote economic growth

The second five year plan started in the year 1933 and continued till 1937 and the focus of this five year plan was on continuing the objective of the first plan i.e. to collectivisation and industrialisation. In addition to this, the second five year plan also emphasised on stanlinist policies and they have created terrible famines that caused the death of millions of people. The third five year plan was carried out from 1938 to 1942 and it focused on the production of armaments. The fourth five year plan started from 1946 and lasted till 1953 and the main emphasis during this period was on heavy industry and military build-up. As a result of this development, the western powers got angry with the Soviet Union.

Important questions on Stalin’s five years plan we can help         

Our professional writing experts are good at providing answers to any of the questions relating to spellings five year plan. Some of the important questions related to Stalin five years plan include:

• ‘Stalin was ruthless in his mission to implement communism in Russia through the Five-Year Plans, from 1928 to 1939.’Critically discuss this statement. Use relevant historical evidence to support your line of argument.
• The first Five-Year Plan, introduced in 1928, concentrated on the development of iron and steel, machine tools, electric power and transport. Joseph Stalin set the workers high targets. He demanded a 110% increase in coal production, 200% increase in iron production and 335% increase in electric power. Write an essay in which you discuss the impact of Stalin’s Five-Year Plans on the Soviet Union.
• Discuss the impact of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan on the people of the Soviet Union. KEY ASPECTS Introduction Stalin’s economic policy of industrialisation – make a statement linked to the question. Purges and show trials of the 1930s and the effects of Stalin’s policies on the Soviets

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History Grade 11 - Topic 1 Essay Questions

Explain to what extent Stalin succeeded in transforming Russia into a superpower by 1939.

Stalin came to power on the back of Lenin’s death in 1925, after which he instituted a range of far-reaching policy changes that would alter the course of Russian society and politics for the rest of the 20th century. The communist Soviet Union we now remember was the product of Stalin, although it can be argued that Lenin was responsible for laying the foundations of its highly authoritarian political culture. The new Russia under Stalin was supposed to radically break from the economic and social backwardness that characterised the Tsarist regime, and which Lenin had little time to achieve. In many ways, Stalin did create a completely different Russia, one almost unrecognisable from before the October revolution which overthrew the provisional government. However, whether that translated into it being a superpower is quite another thing. This paper will argue that although momentous and radical, the reforms Stalin instituted did not transform Russia into a superpower by 1939, although it did lay the framework for such a status to be attained during the post-WWII era.

Stalin rose to power as the leader of the Soviet Union by crushing his opposition in the Central Committee led by Leon Trotsky. Although we shall not detail this complicated political battle, it is important to note that the vying for power between the powerful figures was also a contestation over the ideological and policy framework which the Soviet Union should take. By the late 1920s, Stalin had emerged victorious, and went on to institute his own brand of communism in the Soviet Union. This centred on the notion of ‘Socialism in one Country’, which was ideally to build up the “industrial base and military might of the Soviet Union before exporting revolution abroad.” [1] This was in contrast to earlier pronouncements made by Lenin and Trotsky, which indicated the need to establish a worldwide ‘uninterrupted revolution’ of workers. [2] The logic here was that socialism could never survive independently outside of a socialist world order; Stalin, on the other hand, saw a national socialism – which, ironically, would be compared to Nazism – as the only way for socialism to survive. [3]

The practical effects of Stalin’s socialism in one country was the rescindment of the New Economic Policy (NEP) – which had allowed for small-scale capitalist enterprise to operate – the collectivisation of agriculture, and rapid forced industrialisation. [4] Socialism in one country forced the Soviet Union to look inwards, to create a socialist nation whose lessons and ideas could then be exported overseas. This means that, for all practical purposes, Russia was not interested in attaining any overtly ‘superpower’ status in global politics. It meant, in terms of foreign policy, of “putting the interests of the Soviet Union ahead of the interests of the international communist movement.” [5] Ideally, when Russia became powerful enough, it would then ferment for workers’ revolutions the world over.

The costs and benefits of these sweeping policy changes – which essentially closed off the Soviet Union from the outside world – are difficult to determine. On the one hand, they certainly led to large-scale industrialisation which outstripped the pace of Russia’s Western counterparts. Through the policy instrument of Five-Year Plans, which set production targets for industries and farms, Stalin was able to bring Russia up to date with modern heavy-industry production techniques and increase output exponentially. For example, cast iron production increased 439% in ten years, and coal extraction 361%. [6] Russia also went on an extensive electrification programme, called GOELRO, which increased electricity production from 1.9 billion kWh in 1913 to 48 billion kWh in 1940. [7]

However, despite the resounding success with which certain - especially heavy - industries benefitted from forced industrialisation, many other industries and rural farmers often suffered. Because of the focus on heavy industrialisation, lighter industries that catered for consumer goods were often poorly made and faced shortages. The agricultural collectivisation programme which was conducted with increased inflexibility and violence across the Russian hinterland cost the lives of millions of peasants, who died of hunger resulting from famine caused by the upheaval of forced collectivisation. Figures range from 5.6 million to 13.4 million. [8] Millions of other prosperous peasants – known as Kulaks – were sent to gulag camps in Siberia for work; Molotov suggested that between 1.3 and 1.5 kulak households (accounting for between 6 and 7 million persons) were expropriated. [9] Thus, whilst Stalin broke the back of these peasants – by 1941, 97% of agriculture was conducted in collectives, and finally there was enough food to feed the cities – the human cost remains an ever-contested aspect of this period.

What is clear about this period, is that these policies centralised the economy and political power in Russia in Stalin’s hands. The increased industrial output, and the ability for (eventual) increased agricultural production to feed the cities, allowed Russia a certain amount of confidence in its ability to conduct itself as an industrial nation. As Stalin was once quoted as saying, “We are fifty to one hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.” [10] Thus, one of the primary reasons for industrialisation was for the ability for Russia to protect itself. This fits in well with the overall ideological implication of Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’, which advocated for an insular reading of socialism that would allow for ‘proper’ socialist conditions to be reached within the massive country before a worldwide socialist revolution took place.

And in many ways, the industrial capacity generated during Stalin’s leadership up to 1939 was crucial for Russia to defend itself against Germany in 1941. Not only did allow for the production of millions of armaments and supplies crucial to the success of any armed conflict, but it also laid the groundwork for a post-war reconstruction. Because the Soviet Union boasted such impressive industrial capacity, it could rebuild after WWII much easier – and more importantly, without the help of aid from the West, especially the USA. The Marshall Plan, in which the USA loaned $15 billion to European countries to help rebuild industry and cities after their decimation during the second world war, was largely a strategic move to counter the spread of communism in Europe. [11] The spread of Russian influence into eastern Europe, on the other hand, was premised on its industrial power, which resulted in its alternative to the Marshall Plan - namely the Molotov Plan - which extended aid to socialist regimes in central and eastern Europe. [12]

The success of Russian industrialisation and agricultural collectivisation during the pre-war years allowed for the repel of German forces and the extension of Russian influence into the eastern European region. It was then that Russia became a superpower. In fact, it is only during the post-WWII war era when the notion of an international ‘superpower’ becomes widespread, when the cold war divides the world into two ideologically opposed sides – America on the one side and the Soviet Union on the other. [13] One could thus argue that the relative military strength of Russia after WWII, a result of its impressive industrial capacity – and its focus on heavy industry and agricultural production – meant that it could become a superpower. Thus, although no one would suggest that Russia was a superpower before WWII in 1939, its ability to retain its industrial strength after the war meant that it would become one. In conclusion, although Stalin did not transform Russia into a superpower by 1939, he laid the necessary groundwork for that to occur in the post-war era.

This content was originally produced for the SAHO classroom by Sebastian Moronell, Ayabulela Ntwakumba, Simone van der Colff & Thandile Xesi.

[1] "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Stalinism#ref539199

[2] Erik Van Ree. "Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment." Studies in East European Thought 50, no. 2 (1998): 77.

[3] Kate Frey. 2020. "An Introduction to Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution". Left Voice. https://www.leftvoice.org/an-introduction-to-trotskys-theory-of-permane… .

[4] "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica.

[6] John P. Hardt and Carl Modig. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century. Research Analysis Corp. McLean, 1968, pg. 6.

[8] Massimo Livi-Bacci. "On the Human Costs of Collectivization in the Soviet Union." Population and Development Review (1993): 751

[9] Ibid, pg. 744.

[10] Flewers, Paul. 2021. "The Economic Policy of The Soviet By Isaac Deutscher 1948". Marxists.Org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/economic-policy.htm .

[11] "Marshall Plan". 2021. History. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1 .

[12] Morroe Berger. "How the Molotov Plan Works." The Antioch Review 8, no. 1 (1948): 18.

[13] Joseph M. Siracusa. "Reflections on the Cold War." Australasian Journal of American Studies (2009): 3.

• Berger, Morroe. "How the Molotov Plan Works." The Antioch Review 8, no. 1 (1948): 17-25.
• "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Stalinism#ref539199 .
• Flewers, Paul. 2021. "The Economic Policy of the Soviet by Isaac Deutscher 1948". Marxists.Org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/economic-policy.htm .
• Frey, Kate. 2020. "An Introduction to Trotsky’S Theory of Permanent Revolution". Left Voice. https://www.leftvoice.org/an-introduction-to-trotskys-theory-of-permanent-revolution .
• Livi-Bacci, Massimo. "On the Human Costs of Collectivization in the Soviet Union." Population and Development Review (1993): 743-766.
• "Marshall Plan". 2021. History. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1.
• Siracusa, Joseph M. "Reflections on the Cold War." Australasian Journal of American Studies (2009): 1-16.
• Van Ree, Erik. "Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment." Studies in East European Thought 50, no. 2 (1998): 77-117.
• Hardt, John P. and Carl Modig. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century. Research Analysis Corp. McLean, 1968.

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Stalin Five Year Plan Essay Grade 11 History Memorandum (Questions and Answers)

An answer guide for Stalin Five Year Plan Essay History Grade 11 with memorandum on pdf:

The Five Year Plan was a set of economic goals that were developed in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The plan was launched in 1928, and it aimed to transform the Soviet Union from an agricultural economy into an industrial powerhouse.

One of the main goals of the Five Year Plan was to increase the production of heavy industry, such as steel and machinery, in order to support the growth of other industries. The Soviet Union was still primarily an agricultural country at the time, so this was a significant shift in economic policy.

Another key goal of the Five Year Plan was to improve the infrastructure of the Soviet Union, including transportation and communication systems. This was important in order to support the growth of industry and to facilitate the movement of goods and people throughout the country.

The Five Year Plan was implemented through a series of measures, including the collectivization of agriculture, the nationalization of industry, and the use of central planning to direct economic activity. The government also encouraged the development of new technologies and the training of skilled workers to support the growth of industry.

The results of the Five Year Plan were mixed. On the one hand, the Soviet Union did experience significant industrial growth during this time, and the country’s infrastructure was greatly improved. However, the focus on heavy industry came at the expense of consumer goods and agriculture, and many people suffered as a result. The collectivization of agriculture led to a famine in which millions of people died, and the forced labor camps that were established to support the growth of industry were infamous for their harsh conditions and human rights abuses.

In conclusion, the Five Year Plan was a bold and ambitious economic program that aimed to transform the Soviet Union into an industrial powerhouse. While it did lead to significant industrial growth, it came at a great cost to many people, and its legacy continues to be debated to this day.

Do you need Help with your History Grade 11 Essay for 2023?

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Common Essay Questions

Here are ten potential essay questions on the Stalin Five Year Plan for Grade 11 :

• What were the goals of the Stalin Five Year Plan, and how were they intended to transform the Soviet economy and society?
• How did Stalin’s Five Year Plan differ from the New Economic Policy (NEP) that had been in place in the Soviet Union during the 1920s?
• What were some of the successes of the Stalin Five Year Plan, and how did they contribute to the growth of the Soviet economy?
• What were some of the challenges and failures of the Stalin Five Year Plan, and how did they impact the Soviet Union?
• What role did forced labor and purges play in the implementation of the Stalin Five Year Plan, and what were their consequences?
• What were the economic and social consequences of collectivization, which was a major aspect of the Stalin Five Year Plan?
• How did the Stalin Five Year Plan affect the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens, particularly workers and peasants?
• What was the role of propaganda in promoting the Stalin Five Year Plan, and how did it shape public perceptions of the plan?
• How did the Stalin Five Year Plan impact the global balance of power, and what were its implications for the emerging Cold War?
• What lessons can be learned from the Stalin Five Year Plan, and how do they relate to current debates about economic planning and socialism?

COMMUNISM IN RUSSIA 1900 T0 1940: STALIN’S INTERPRETATION OF MARXISM

Answer Guide for Stalin Five Year Plan Essay Grade 11

SYNOPSIS In writing this essay, candidates should be able to take a line of argument and critically discuss how Stalin, through the series of Five Year plans changed the economy of the Soviet Union and made it a superpower.

MAIN ASPECTS Candidates should include the following aspects in their response: Introduction: Candidates should contextualize the question and establish a clear line of argument

ELABORATION

• Lenin’s death
• Abandonment of NEP
• Aims of the 5Year plans
• Collectivisation of agriculture
• Elimination of the Kulaks
• Modernization of farming
• Grain requisition
• Rapid industralisation
• Development of heavy industries
• Improvement of transport and communication net works
• Exploitation of newly discovered mineral wealth
• Rapid urbanisation
• Electrification
• Force labour
• Police state and party purges
• Any other relevant response

Conclusion: Candidates should round up their argument with a relevant and contextualized conclusion

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Economic developments: Lenin’s decrees; the Stalinist economy; collectivisation and the Five Year Plans

Lenin’s decrees.

Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, issued a series of decrees in 1917 that aimed to redistribute land and resources to the working class. These decrees were part of Lenin’s vision for a socialist economy, where the means of production and distribution were owned and controlled by the state.

Historian Anthony Beevor describes them as Lenin’s three lies:

Peace: An immediate end to Russia’s involvement in the First World War (Beevor points out that Lenin wanted a global civil war in which the bourgeoisie world wide would be destroyed).

Land: Lenin offered the redistribution of the land to the peasants (a promise he never intended to keep, believing that state control of land was the only way that the new Bolshevik state could feed itself).

All power to the Soviets: Lenin proposed that the workers and soldiers councils take power in the USSR (Beevor points out that this was merely a vehicle for the Bolsheviks, who controlled the Soviets by late 1917).

The most significant of these decrees was the Decree on Land, which abolished private ownership of land and instead of transferring it to the peasants, transferred it to the state. The Decree on Workers’ Control gave workers the right to control production and distribution in their workplaces (something that was overturned during the period of War Communism), while the Decree on Nationalisation allowed the state to take over key industries such as transportation, banking, and communication.

Lenin’s decrees, at first glance, appeared intended to create a more equal and just society, where the working class had greater control over their lives and livelihoods. However, Lenin’s increasingly dictatorial stance following the seizure of power in 1917 was at odds with this new emancipatory philosophy. From 1918 onwards the Bolsheviks were fighting a civil war and saw the new state they had captured as being under siege from anti revolutionary forces within Russia and overseas.

Lenin believed that the most brutal and authoritarian methods were necessary for the regime’s survival and this included the state control of the economy.

For a full description of Lenin’s two key policies – War Communism and The New Economic Policy – click here.

The Stalinist economy, which emerged in the 1930s, built on Lenin’s vision by implementing policies of rapid industrialisation and collectivisation.

The Stalinist Economy

(For expert advice on writing essays on the Five Year Plans, click here )

Following Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1924. He implemented a series of economic policies that transformed the country into a industrial power. Stalin’s economic policies were characterized by the development of a command economy, rapid industrialization, and collectivization.

One of Stalin’s first actions was to implement the First Five-Year Plan in 1928. This plan aimed to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union, and it set ambitious targets for heavy industry, such as coal, iron, and steel production. The plan was successful in achieving its targets, but it came at a cost. The Soviet Union experienced a shortage of consumer goods, and the living standards of ordinary people declined.

Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, in her book Everyday Stalinism, states that during the first five year plan, hunger and hardship were as extreme as they had been during the Russian civil war. Ordinary Soviet citizens struggled with acute housing shortages along with food shortages in Russia’s cities. The USSR was still a highly chaotic country by the early Stalin period, with hunger and desperation fuelling violence and crime.

Stalin’s economic policies also included collectivization, which aimed to consolidate individual farms into large collective farms. This policy was intended to increase agricultural productivity and feed the growing urban population. However, collectivization was met with resistance from the peasantry, and it led to widespread famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933.

Despite the challenges and human cost of Stalin’s economic policies, the Soviet Union became a major industrial power by the end of the 1930s. The country’s heavy industry grew rapidly, and it was able to withstand the German invasion during World War II. However, the Stalinist economy was characterized by a lack of innovation, inefficiency, and corruption, which ultimately contributed to its decline in the post-war period.

In conclusion, Stalin’s economic policies had a significant impact on the Soviet Union and the world. The Stalinist economy was characterized by rapid industrialization, collectivization, and a command economy. Although it achieved its goals, it came at a cost, including the suppression of individual rights and the suffering of ordinary people.

The end goal of rapid industrialisation was to build a defence industry that would withstand the war that Stalin believed would inevitably come to the USSR from the ‘enemies’ he perceived in the capitalist world (Stalin initially thought that Germany, Poland and Japan would be the three main threats, with older imperial countries like Britain and France supplying the finance and equipment).

When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, there was a substantial industrial base beyond the Ural mountains with which to produce aircraft and tanks in vast numbers (by the end of the Second World War, the USSR was able to outproduce Nazi Germany), suggesting that rapid industrialisation had a significant impact on the outcome of the Second World War.

Collectivisation

Collectivisation was a policy implemented by Stalin in the late 1920s with the aim of consolidating individual peasant farms into collective farms. This policy was seen as a way to increase agricultural productivity and to support the industrialisation drive of the Soviet Union. The process of collectivisation was met with resistance from many peasants who were reluctant to give up their land and property.

In order to implement collectivisation, the Soviet government used a combination of propaganda, coercion, and force. Peasants were encouraged to join collective farms voluntarily, but those who refused were often subjected to violent repression, including the confiscation of their land and property, and imprisonment or execution.

The process of collectivisation was a difficult and painful one for many peasants. The forced collectivisation of agriculture led to a decrease in agricultural productivity and a decline in living standards for many peasants. In addition, the collectivisation process was often accompanied by violence and repression, which led to the deaths of millions of people.

For a full article on Collectivisation, click here

For an exploration of the differing debates on Collectivisation click on the following historians below:

Timothy Snyder

Robert Conquest

Sheila Fitzpatrick

Five Year Plans

The Five Year Plans were a series of economic development plans created by the Soviet government under Stalin’s leadership. The first plan was implemented in 1928 and the last one ended in 1991, with a total of 13 plans being implemented. The main goal of the Five Year Plans was to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union and catch up with the Western powers.

The plans were characterized by centralized control, with the government setting production targets for each industry and directing resources towards achieving those targets. The emphasis was on heavy industry, such as steel, coal, and machinery, rather than consumer goods.

Each Five Year Plan had specific targets for production, and the success of the plan was measured by how well those targets were met. The targets were often ambitious and required significant investment in infrastructure and technology. The government used a variety of methods to achieve the targets, including forced labour, collectivization, and the use of incentives and rewards for workers who exceeded their targets.

The Five Year Plans were successful in rapidly industrializing the Soviet Union, but they came at a high cost. The emphasis on heavy industry meant that consumer goods were often in short supply, and living standards for ordinary people were low. The forced labour and collectivization policies led to widespread famine and suffering, particularly in rural areas.

Despite these drawbacks, the Five Year Plans helped to transform the Soviet Union from a largely agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse. The legacy of the Five Year Plans can still be seen in the infrastructure and technology that was developed during this period.

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