Collectivization and Industrialization under Stalin
Collectivization was part of the first five year plan to
industrialize the USSR, It grouped together smaller farms owned
individually by peasants, into much larger farms averaging around
1000 acres a piece starting in 1928. By having peasants’ pool land
and livestock the government was able to control the regulation of
food much more freely, allowing them to feed workers working in
Russia’s new factories. Each farm had a food quota to meet, and if
they were able too they could sell the extra food on the free
market. The larger farms allowed more capital to be put into the
farmland, and new farming machines were shared between the
collectivized farms. Originally only one fifth of the peasant class
was to be collectivized, but Stalin decreed it would be for the
majority of the class in 1929.
Collectivization was not popular in the peasant class. The more
prosperous peasants, called Kulaks, strongly objected to it because
they were doing fine by themselves. The communists used violence
against the Kulaks, even turning the other peasants against them.
Hundreds of thousands of Kulaks were killed, and even more were sent
to remote labor camps in Russia. But almost all farms big or small
no longer cared for their land as it was no longer truly theirs, and
would not be inherited by their children. This resulted in the mass
slaughter of livestock throughout Russia; the peasants decide that
if they couldn’t own their livestock, no one could. This brought on
famine in South- East Russia in 1932, though Stalin still exported
massive amounts of food to get industrial supplies (Palmer, and
Colton 765).
Collectivization was designed to destroy the richer, “bourgeois”
peasant class so they would fit better into the proletariat of the
Marxist Doctrine. Basically this meant that they were people owning
no capital and did not employ labor beneath them; unquestioning
worker ants that never move up in society. By 1939 almost all of
Russia’s farmland had been collectivized. Collectivization actually
failed to increase agricultural output, but did improve success in
industrialization. Less work in the country also resulted in 20
million Russians moving to the city for jobs from 1926 to 1939,
helping to speed up industrialization even more.
Industrialization
From 1928 to 1938 The USSR industrialized at a faster rate
than any country before it. The first five year plan helped to start
industrialization by making factories, mines, and canals, and by
providing workers with food, but it was the second five year plan
enacted in 1933 that really got it going. The second plan was
designed to reduce imports and improve self-sufficiency, especially
with war production. By 1938 Russia was producing four times as much
steel, three and a half as much coal, and had become the largest
worldwide producer of farm tractors and railway locomotive cars
(Palmer, and Colton 767). The two new cities Magnitogorsk and
Stalinsk alone produced as much steel and iron as all of Russia had
in 1914.
The second five year plan also called for the industrialization east of The Ural Mountains, so the Russian parts of inner Asia were being modernized for the first time. Lead mines where opened in East Asia and The Altai Mountains, while copper mines were made in The Urals and near Lake Balkhash. Iron ore was also found in the Urals, and coal was found in the Kuznetsk Basin; these two places became complementary similar to Pennsylvania coal and Minnesota iron in the United States. All of these raw resources resulted in the creation of more railway tracks throughout Russia, which was now shipping five times more freight than in 1913.
Even with all of these improvements to the Russian
industrialization movement, it is often exaggerated. Since they
started so far behind most of the prominent western nations, they
had very far to go before they caught up. Many of their new
factories had been made hastily so they deteriorated faster, losing
much of their initial value. Russia only seemed vastly improved when
compared to its past self, it was still behind the other world
powers. But the success of the Five year plans stopped food
rationing, improved their army, and made The USSR emerge as a major
world power (Cambridge).
Cambridge, Maureen. SILVAPAGES.
Reign of Stalin--Five Year Plans. Brett Silva. n.d.
Web. 14 Feb. 2012.
n.p. ThinkQuest. Russia under
Stalin. n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2012.
Palmer, R.R. and Joel Colton. A History of
the Modern World. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1995. Print.