Merritt+Ogle

by Merritt Ogle
 * __ Historical Investigation: To What Extent Did Stalin's Agricultural Policies Assist In the Larger Idea of Stalinization? __**


 * __ A. Plan of Investigation: __**

This investigation will center on the question of: ** to what extent did Stalin's agricultural policies assist in his goals laid out in his first Five-Year plan? ** This question will be answered by examining both primary sources from Soviet Russia and modern commentaries from historians regarding Stalin’s policies. Each source will be evaluated on their origin, purpose, value and limitations. Through these evaluations, the investigation will be answered in regards to how Stalin used agricultural policies to complete his goals for the Soviet Union.


 * __ B. Summary of Evidence __**


 * I: Goals of Stalinization/Goals Presented in the Five-Year Plan **
 * When Stalin took power, he established a five years plan that lay out his goals for the Soviet Union to become a major industrial power. However, not only would industry be impacted, with the production of military and farming equipment both systems could be more machine oriented. [i]
 * Stalin believed that the USSR was 5 to 10 years behind the rest of the world and wanted to modernize the country. He feared that if the USSR could not keep up, the West would destroy them.[ii]
 * Stalin planned to increase industrial production by 250% and heavy production by 350%. Growth rates were also determined for transportation, agriculture, energy, raw materials, and fuel. [iii]


 * II. Policies of the Five-Year Plan **
 * The first five-year plan proposed two major policies which some historians could describe this course of action as “extremely demanding and unattainable”. The Communist Party approved the five-year plan in 1928 and was immediately implemented. [iv]
 * Firstly, Stalin demanded the abrupt collectivization of all farmlands, which placed the private ownership of farming into Soviet hands. This policy pushed peasants together into large “collectives”, which required them to reach a quota determined by Stalin. [v]
 * Stalin’s other policy was the need for immediate industrial development. This was his major plan to modernize the USSR because he claimed his country was many years behind the rest of the world. However, he hoped with industrialization they could protect themselves from the West. [vi]
 * These policies could change over time because Stalin created GOSPLAN, a Soviet economic planning committee that created quotas and production goals for various farming and industrial endeavors. These numbers were reported to Stalin who then created new goals for the New Year. [vii]


 * III. Outcomes of the Five-Year Plan **
 * Due to the intensity of these policies, it became apparent that either Russians would need to drastically change or they would become victims of Stalin. One group of wealthy peasants, the Kulaks, who refused to collectivize were being “liquidated as a class” by Stalin. This led to forcible removal of Kulaks from their lands or potentially death for those who resisted removal. [viii]
 * During 1930-1931, over 600,000 individual family farms were collectivized while another 225,000 families left their collective to go and work in the factories in cities. In 1930 alone over 280,000 individual Russians had been arrested and of that, 19,000 had been killed. To avoid this fate, many Russians also fled to other Russian republics however most could not escape. [ix]
 * Another major result was mass starvation because as farm hands disappeared, either to cities, other countries, or concentration camps, it became harder for collectives to produce the amount of food that all of the individual farms were able to produce a few years prior. The famine was widespread all through the USSR and satellite states. [x]
 * Some of the results of industrialization are hard to evaluate because of the fabrication of numbers by the government to promote Stalin’s plan. What is evident however is the tangible success of the amount of Russian exports at the time. [xi]


 * __ C. Evaluation of Sources __**

Lee, Nick, and Erin Hubbard. “Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan: Sowing the Seeds of Hardship.” //Stalin’s First Five Year Plan//. Boston University, Apr. 2000. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. . This source was written by professors at Boston University to inform others about the goals and policies of Stalin’s first five-year plan. It has value because the information is clearly presented and is organized chromatically making it easy to follow. It is also limiting because it does not give a throughout background of what Russia was like before the five-year plan which makes the impact harder to determine from the reader.

United Soviet Socialist Republics. Central Committee and the Central Control Commission. //THE// // RESULTS OF THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN //. By J. V. Stalin. Ed. David J. Romagnolo. Moscow: Pravda, 1933. //Marx to Mao//. Web. 9 Mar. 2012. . This was a publication by Stalin which was presented to the public through the Soviet newspaper, Pravda. This report told the people of the USSR what the results of the first five-year plan was and how it would benefit them. This source is beneficial because it gives the results as described by the government, which is hard to be determined by most other sources because in the case of Stalin, what the government said and what actually happened has the potential to be vastly different. With that being said, the differences in reality can also be a limitation because what is said and what actually happened can be different things.


 * __ D. Analysis __**

When Stalin came to power after the death of Lenin, he immediately structured plans for the advancement of the USSR. He thought that the USSR was falling behind amongst other large countries in the agricultural and industrial sectors. He released the first five years plan in 1928; Stalin placed an agricultural emphasis on taking smaller farms and placing them into larger collective farms. His plan was to be able to produce the majority of food consumed in the USSR so that the country would not need to rely on imports. This plan of collectivization also hoped to free farming peasants so that they could go work in city factories. Collectivization was immediately implemented in 1928 with policies that took a life of their own within the Soviet population. In order to push peasants into large-scale farms, he told them that they would now be able to afford large machinery, which would make each farm more efficient and able to reach higher quotas. He created GOSPLAN as part of the five years plan, a system, which would determine and collect quotas from the farms and report them to Stalin so he could alter and propose new laws. GOSPLAN allowed Stalin to maintain a strict hold on agricultural production in the USSR because he had direct access to what was being produced and where or more importantly, which farms were not reaching their quotas. At the beginning of the plan’s implementation, Stalin spent most of his time collectivizing people into large farms and punishing those peasants who did not reach regulated quotas. However, as time progressed on the plan, Stalin realized that policies would need to change in order to achieve his tall goals. In 1929, Stalin started a campaign to “liquidate the kulaks” because he believed that the kulaks were the reason collectivization was not as successful as he had expected. The kulaks were wealthy peasants and Stalin’s process of “dekulakization” pushed kulaks off of their privately owned farms and arrested or killed most of the kulaks. Following that pattern, many peasants who resisted collectivization were killed and arrested, however, some who wished to escape this fate, fled to surrounding nations. Even after the “dekulakization” movement, Stalin was not satisfied with the advancements towards his goals and began adding more unrealistic goals to his plan. By July 1930, the government had shortened the five years plan to four years, to be completed in 1932 and by the end of 1932 the plan was publically proclaimed to be complete. In reality, the majority of the original plans remained incomplete. Some of the smaller goals, such as dam and roadway building were complete; Stalin’s major goals in collectivization and industrialization were just barely touched upon. The knowledge surrounding the success or failure of the five-year plan was only determined decades after the reign of Stalin because of all of the fabricated statistics to make the five-year plan to appear as a major success. Even today, it is still difficult to determine if the five-year plan was a success because Stalin’s government officials destroyed many vital documents at the time.

At the end of 1932, some small goals of the five-year plan were completed as well as that there had been growth in both the industrial and agricultural but at the expense of the well-being of the Soviet population. The policies that Stalin implemented helped to produce more raw materials from one farm but many of the demanding quotas were impossible to reach. Stalin also decided which regions food was to be sent to and in result led to the starvation of many Russian people. Because Stalin’s policies for agriculture were so demanding on the working class of the USSR, many were counterproductive because the original plan for the policies was to make the USSR self dependant but instead led to great devastation for the people of the USSR.
 * __ E. Conclusion __**

“Collectivization of Livestock.” //Revelations from the Russian Archives//. Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2012. . Lee, Nick, and Erin Hubbard. “Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan: Sowing the Seeds of Hardship.” //Stalin’s First Five Year Plan//. Boston University, Apr. 2000. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. . Lynch, Michael. “Stalin and the Soviet Economy.” //Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia 1918-56//. 3rd ed. London: Hodder Murray, 2005. 69-90. Print. “1929: Collectivization: Liquidation of the Kulaks as a Class.” //Seventeen Moments in Soviet History//. National Endowment for Humanities, n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2012. . “Soviet Russia: Class Extermination under Stalin.” //Seventeen Moments in Soviet History//. National Endowments for Humanities, n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2012. . // Stalin’s Speech on Agrarian Society //. Hanover College, n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2012. . United Soviet Socialist Republics. Central Committee and the Central Control Commission. //THE RESULTS OF THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN//. By J. V. Stalin. Ed. David J. Romagnolo. Moscow: Pravda, 1933. //Marx to Mao//. Web. 9 Mar. 2012. .
 * __ F. Sources __**

[i] Lee, Nick, and Erin Hubbard. “Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan: Sowing the Seeds of Hardship.” Boston University. 2000. Web. [ii] Ibid. [iii] Ibid. [iv] Lynch, Michael. “Stalin and the Soviet Economy.” //Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia 1918-56//. 3rd ed. London: Hotter Murray, 2005. Print. [v] Ibid. [vi] Ibid. [vii] Ibid. [viii] United Soviet Socialist Republics. Central Committee and the Central Control Commission. //THE// //RESULTS OF THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN//. By J. V. Stalin. Ed. David J. Romagnolo. Moscow: Pravda, 1933. Web. [ix] Ibid. [x] Ibid. [xi] Ibid.