How Successful Were Stalins Economic Policies in the 1930s free essay sample

It is debatable as to whether these policies can be viewed as successful, for example; the conditions of the Soviet industrial workers were marginally lower than in 1928. Yet whatever hardships the workers faced, the fact that Russia was ultimately capable, in an economic sense, of defeating Nazi Germany in a successful military struggle shows that some of the economic implications enforced during the 1930s were at the very least marginally productive and gainful. In this essay, I shall highlight the extent to which the aforementioned policies can be viewed as successful. Stalin’s economic policies had one essential aim—the modernisation of the Soviet economy via two essential methods: collectivisation and industrialisation. Beginning in 1928, much of Russia’s economy (in terms of agriculture and industry) was brought directly under state control. Under Stalin, this was to be total. The way these radical were changes implicated has meant that the process was referred to as the ‘second revolution,’ a way of equating the importance of industrial/modernisation as that of the 1917 revolution. When Stalin introduced these drastic changes, he claimed that they marked a significant and vital stage in Soviet Communism as had Lenin’s actions during the October Revolution of 1917. It is understandable to claim that these comparisons show that the process of modernisation in Russia was intended primarily to enhance his own position as leader of Russia, following the footsteps of Lenin, with actual hopes for true economic progress taking second priority. However, it would be biased and unarguable to regard Stalin’s policies as purely a matter of political expediency. His former policy of ‘Socialism in One Country,’ that is, reforming Russia into that of a modern state capable of defending itself against the surrounding capitalist nations prove that he believed the needs of the USSR could only be met via the modernisation industry. This appeal that modernisation was the only way the nation could survive was later used as a pretext for the severity and coercive methods that accompanied the collectivisation of Russian agriculture. The collectivisation of agriculture was viewed by Stalin as being the only viable way to raise the necessary capital needed to industrialise the Soviet Union. However, it has been speculated that the way in which this policy was enforced was ultimately counter-productive. Collectivisation was the process of taking all the suitable farming land from the peasantry and bringing it under state control. Peasants would no longer farm for individual profit; they would instead combine their efforts together and receive a wage. Stalin believed that this change would allow the USSR to pool the collective profits together from the land in order to finance a colossal industrialisation programme. In keeping with Marxist philosophy, the needs of Industry and the industrial working-class were viewed as more important than that of the agricultural peasantry—a class of people seen as obsolete. In a major propaganda offensive, a class of ‘Kulaks’ were identified who were responsible for supposedly holding back the workers’ revolutions by controlling the best land available and employing other peasants to work for them—reminiscent of Feudalism, an ideology seen as the forerunner to capitalism in the eyes of Karl Marx and subsequently denounced by Marxist philosophy as a result. Stalin believed that unless this alleged class was dispersed, the modernisation of Russia would be impossible. In actuality, however, the mere concept of a Kulak class has been described as a Stalinist myth. These people were, in actuality, only the best farmers who had naturally begun to rise above their peers as a result of their superior traits. They were not the exploiting landowners made out to be by state propaganda. The subsequent â€Å"de-Kulakistation’ that followed suit could be seen as counter-productive overall. Stalin had merely purged the new collective farms of their finest and most competent workers severely hindering his agricultural productivity. Indeed, not only did this process hinder the effectiveness of agricultural production by the elimination of the state’s most capable farmers, the period between 1929 and 1930 in which mass disturbances occurred throughout the whole USSR shows that the attitudes of the peasantry towards collectivisation was extraordinarily negative. As the peasants made up 80% of Russia’s populace, their support could seen as near-essential were modernisation to be effective. In the aforementioned years, there were over 30,000 arson attacks and organised rural disturbances increased by one-third from 172 to 229. Bewildered and confused, the peasants would often refuse to co-operate in the deliberate destruction of their traditional way of life. As a result, the majority of the peasants would eat their own crops and slaughter their livestock in protest. Despite the lack of crops and livestock, Soviet authorities instead responded with even fiercer coercion, which made the matter entirely worse. Their tactics of imprisonment, deportation and execution did nothing to quell the real problem of the decline food consumption per head. Between 1928 and 1932 the consumption in bread fell from 350kg per head to only 214. 6. The same can be observed in the fall of livestock. Between the same years, the fall in cattle fell from 70million to 34million. Stalin’s solution to this was to spend special contingents of party workers to the rural towns in order to restore the food production levels by working on the agricultural land themselves. This however, was ultimately counter-productive. Their lack of farming knowledge only added to the disrupted. Even as mass famine set in, the little grain that was being harvested was being exported as ‘surplus’ to obtain the foreign capital needed to fuel industrialisation. However, in terms of industrialisation, it could be argued that Russia made significant progress throughout the 1930s. As well as attempting to eliminate the failings of Russia’s backwards past, he also asserted that he was preparing Russia for war against its capitalist rivals abroad. In Stalin’s view, Iron, Steel and Oil were all fundamental for the strength of a nation from a military perspective. He believed that were Russia to achieve the same industrial revolutions the West had experienced, which had been based on iron and steel production, then Russia would ultimately too become equally powerful. Throughout the 1930s, Soviet industrialisation took the form of a series of Five-Year Plans (FYPs). The first of which operated between 1928 and 1932; the second, 1933 to ’37, and finally; the third plan ran from ’38 to ’41, when it forced to a halt by Operation Barbarossa. A significant weakness and flaw in these supposed ‘plans’ was that they were not really plans to any extent at all. They were merely a set of targets that Stalin demanded be achieved by a specific date. This created a number of problems. The methods of coercion that had been employed during the collectivisation process had struck terror into the local officials and managers. Subsequently, they purposely falsified their production figures to give the impression they had indeed met their desired targets when, in fact, they had fallen significantly short. These positive (but largely exaggerated) figures only helped to fuel Stalin’s economic naivety, and prompted him to create an ‘optimal’ plan which reassessed the targets upwards. These revised demands were hopelessly unrealistic seeing how the original targets were not being met in the first place. However, no matter how overly exaggerated the figures submitted may have been, the success of the 1st FYP plan was indeed a significant success. The overall output in resources, such as coal and iron all increased in huge proportions. Between 1927 and 1932, the production in coal rose from 35 million tonnes to 64million. The increase in oil was also significant, rising from 12 million to 21 million tonnes. In conclusion, I believe Stalin’s economic policies were ultimately a pyrrhic victory, in that the achievements made were significant and desirable, notably in terms of industry, but were gained at the severe cost of other aspects of Russia’s economy, for example; agriculture was ignored and ultimately suffered at a colossal scale. Despite Stalin’s ambition to bring Russia up to scale with Western society, old-fashioned, wasteful methods of construction were being utilised. Rather than using efficient machinery (of which had been adopted in the West), massed labour continued to be used. As peasants were removed from the rural, agricultural locations and brought to work in the industrial plants and factories, their inexperience and lack of discipline and knowledge proved to be instrumental in hindering Russia’s progress from an economic perspective. Nonetheless, they can be considered a success owing to the fact that Russia was in a strong enough position by 1941 to beat Germany after the latter’s invasion.